ACTIVITY Have the participants follow as you explain the menus and the commands to them. Dialog Demonstrate each of the menus in MS Project and note the commands in each. Also explain that where the participant sees an icon or picture next to a command, this means that the icon is also located on a toolbar and that using the icon is a shortcut to doing the same command. File | This menu provides the file save and retrieve and the print functionality. It also provides functionality to view the project properties. | Edit | This menu provides the cutting and pasting functionality; as well as editing tasks and resources and identifying task dependencies. | Remember to explain that views change the display that the user sees and that the user can print the image displayed. Views | Views are a most powerful feature of MS Project 2000. This menu provides a number of predefined views plus the ability to define new ones. It also provides a number of predefined tables plus the ability to define new ones. It provides access to the report gallery and access to different toolbars . | | The different views provide many ways of looking at the one underlying database in MS Project 2000. Either a single view or a combination (two) view can be displayed. Each view has a name and can be defined by the user. | Also note that the Gantt chart is the default view for MS Project. The Gantt chart is by far the most familiar to all the participants, and it is the easiest way to show what has to be done and when. Views (cont'd) | The Gantt chart view is the default view visible on startup. This default can be changed if required. | | The project database holds data on three areas of the project: | | ¢Tasks | | ¢ Resources | | ¢ Assignments of resources to tasks | | Some of this data (e.g. task names and durations) is input by the user and the rest of this data (e.g. total project duration) is calculated by MS Project 2000. | To continue with the menus Insert | This menu provides the ability to insert new tasks and recurring tasks. It also provides the functionality to insert drawings or objects into a file. | Format | This provides formatting functionality for the text in a file and also provides formatting for specific types of information. In addition, it allows you to create predefined styles for text and Gantt chart bars. | Tools | This provides a large amount of miscellaneous, but essential, functionality. | The Project menu is new in MS Project 2000 and is not in previous versions of MS Project. Project | This menu allows you to see summary project information such as start and end dates, budget consumed against plan and other task and project specific information. It also provides the sorting and filtering functionality. | Demonstrate the ability to split the screen and indicate that there will be an exercise on this later in this appendix. Window | This is the standard Windows application menu which allows you to display a number of windows together. This is useful if you are working on a number of projects at once. This menu also controls the displaying of two views together. | Finally, explain that Help will be looked at more extensively later in the course (see Module 7). Help | This provides comprehensive help accessed via the Windows hypertext functionality. It also provides access to the cue card system from where you can access the tutorial. Note that you can also use the F1 key to get context sensitive Help. | Indicate that both menus and toolbars can be altered to display more or less information. Details on how to do this are available in MS Project 2000's User Guide; however, for a more advanced class, there are exercises later in this appendix on how to do this. The content of some of the menus can change depending on the context from which they are accessed. Note also that you can change the layout of the menus if required and can also change the number and meaning of the commands in each one. |