Understanding the Advanced Tab

     

The Advanced tab of the Task Information dialog contains settings that are important for the way that Project will schedule your task. Constraints, Task Type, and Task Calendar settings are at the very core of how Project will act on this task in various scheduling situations.

A Deadline date is a target you can set for a task. The task is free to go past this date, but if it does, an indicator will be displayed in the Indicators column telling the user that the task has gone beyond its deadline. The Deadline date is also displayed by default on the Gantt chart as a green, downward-pointing arrow. This enables the user to see where the current task dates put it in relation to the deadline.

You can put a constraint on the task here. The default is As Soon As Possible, and this is by far the preferred setting. Chapter 5 covers constraints in more detail.

Enter the Task Type for the task in the drop-down list. Task Type controls how Project recalculates task Work, Duration, or Assignment units in response to task edits. Task types are covered in more detail in Chapter 3 in the "Task Types" For Your Information element.

Select whether the task is effort-driven by using this check box. Effort-driven scheduling means that when additional resources are assigned to a task that already has resources assigned to it, the total amount of Work for the task will not increase. Instead, the Work value for the task will be split evenly among the assigned resources based on their Units values.

Here you can specify the Calendar for this task. The Scheduling Ignores Resource Calendars option tells Project that Task Calendar-specified dates should be used instead of the resource working times. A Task Calendar is useful when the work on a task can only be done on a specific day or set of days.

The Earned Value Method for the task defines whether Project should calculate the Earned Value metrics for this task based on Percent Complete or Physical Percent Complete. This is a pretty advanced topic, and it is best to leave this setting at the default.