Working with Tasks Projects have some tasks that needs to be completed within specified time period. First, you list your task and analyze possible relationships between the tasks. Then you are ready to create tasks. Tasks can be automatically or manually scheduled, depending on the needs of the project and the information currently available. At any point during a project, you can change a task from manual scheduling to automatic scheduling, or vice versa.

Creating a Manually Scheduled Task By default, all new tasks in Project 2016 are set for manual scheduling. With manual scheduling, you can fully control the task’s duration, start date, and finish date. The duration can be entered in minutes (m), hours (h), days (d), weeks (w), or months (mo.). Manually scheduled tasks are marked with the pushpin icon in the Task Mode field. To create a manually scheduled (Default setting) task:

1. In the first row of the task table, type in name of project, for this “Example Project” in the Task Name field (see Figure 1).

2. Enter Duration of the project in the Duration field, for this I’ll type 3mo. This sets the duration of the task to three months.

3. Enter the day you want to begin the project (for this Monday) in the Start field. Project 2016 automatically calculates the date for Monday from today in this month and the finish date using the given information and fills in the Start date and Finish field respectively. Also, a task bar appears in the timescale (on the same row as the task) showing the task’s time frame.

You can also select start date from the drop down (See Figure)

(Note: - You can also try typing in “Today” or “Tomorrow” in Start field.)

(Note: - Good practice is to first set the project Start date or Project End date. Otherwise, as you can see the project starts field takes today’s date which is not the project start date. Project schedule is always created before the project begins hence project start date is always set in future.)

Creating an Automatically Scheduled Task A complete project has a lot of tasks that can further have subtasks. Let’s create an automatically scheduled task.(Note:- Automatically scheduled tasks are marked with the Gantt bar icon in the Task Mode field.) To create an automatically scheduled task:

1. In the second row of the task table, enter “Task 1” in the Task Name field (see Figure). 2. Click in the Task Mode field, click the down arrow that appears, and then click Auto Scheduled.

By default, Project 2016 assigns the task an estimated duration of one day and automatically fills in the Duration, Start, and Finish fields. Also, a task bar appears in the timescale showing the task’s time frame.

3. Now let’s put a duration to “Task1” for this, enter 25d in the Duration field. Project 2016 recalculates the finish date and updates the Finish field.

4. Here the Task in 1st row has same level of hierarchy with the 2nd row, so need to indent task. To indent task, with the task selected, click on the icon in the task tab.

(Note: - In this example: Task in 1st row “Example Project” is the Main Task i.e. the project itself and there are 3 summary tasks namely Task1, Task2 & Task3. Each has different subtasks namely Subtask1, Subtask2 & Subtask3.)

(Tip: To make the full Timescale visible drag the bar in Timeline.)

5. After creating Task1 under Example Project. Similarly, create Subtasks under it. Then create Task2 & Task3 and out-dent it by using icon in Task tab. Alternatively, you can create summary tasks of same hierarchy using icon in Task tab and then create subtasks. You can

insert tasks using icon in Task tab within Insert panel.

(Tip: You can anytime change default settings of new tasks creating from Manual Scheduling to Automatic Scheduling by clicking on the left corner of screen.)

(Tip: If you have list of tasks in Excel the you can import directly into project. How to do that effectively is covered in Miscellaneous: How to? chapter of this document.)

Drag this bar.

Linking Tasks In a project each task may have certain relation with another. When you link tasks, you create a relationship between them called a task dependency. Project 2016 supports four types of task dependencies (*FS, SS, FF & SF). By default, Project 2016 creates finish-to-start (FS) links, which means the first task needs to finish before the second task can start. Depending upon the relation (between tasks and constraints) the tasks are linked under Predecessors column (here appears the Task ID and type of dependency) of Task Table.

To link tasks: 1. In the Task Name column, click to select the tasks of same hierarchy, for this select Task1, and

then hold down the Ctrl key and click to select the remaining two tasks (Task2 & Task3). After

selecting click on the icon ( Shortcut: Ctrl+F2) on the Task tab. Similarly, link each Subtasks under each Task. You must select the order in which they will execute, the selection order is significant. Now you’ll see arrow line linking three tasks. (Notice that Task2 and Task3 is Auto Scheduled while Task1 is Manually Scheduled. You may try altering them. ). Similarly link other subtasks to each other.

1. Select Sub-task 3 under Task1 and double click in Predecessors column. You’ll see a pop like below. In the ID row enter 3 (Task ID of Sub-task1). This is a way to link task to one another. Here we have Sub-Task3 with FS with 0d lag dependency with Sub-Task1 & Sub-Task2. You can choose different task dependencies based on the task execution schedule.

2. Now, let’s assign durations to Subtasks as in screenshot below.

The faint line highlighted in image above shows the current date i.e. also indicates the tasks and what should be their progress in order to finish as scheduled. Above we can see Sub-Task1 of Task1 must have already finished and in the same Sub-Task2 must have been finished around 25% so we need to update task progress. To show the progress, select Sub-Task1 and choose 100% from

icon located in Task tab. Alternatively, you can input manually in Task Information.

Notice the dark line in task bar.