subject: What's New in Microsoft Project 2010 for Project Managers [print this page] What's New in Microsoft Project 2010 for Project Managers
Microsoft Project 2010 has introduced a huge number of new features. If you're contemplating upgrading, we'd certainly recommend it. This article contains a summary of what's new in MS Project 2010.
The Ribbon
A little after it's Microsoft Office cousins, Project finally gets the ribbon (which Microsoft call the fluent user interface).
For those who aren't familiar with the concept of the ribbon, this makes it easier to find commands (although it takes a lot of getting used to). The ribbon replaces the menu and toolbar with a single strip of icons across the top of the screen, divided by task into tabs.
New Timeline View
Project 2010 contains a new timeline view, which you can see above the Gantt chart. Timeline view shows a summary of the project schedule against - as the name suggests - a timeline. You can even add tasks using timeline view.
Manually Scheduled Tasks
If you get annoyed that Project keeps moving your tasks about to fit everything in (although surely that's its main purpose?), you can create manually-scheduled tasks. These will stay in the same place in time unless you manually change them.
The Team Planner
This tool lets you assign resources to tasks by dragging and dropping. You see a split window, and drag a resource from the top half of the window onto a task at the bottom!
Other Improvements
The above are just some of the new features in Project 2010. Here are some more:
- Filtering columns now works in the same way as for Excel
- formatting has improved (for example, you have access to a full range of colours)
