Microsoft Office Project Standard 2007 gives you robust project management tools with the right blend of usability, power, and flexibility, so you can manage projects more efficiently and effectively. You can stay informed and control project work, schedules, and finances, keep project teams aligned, and be more productive through integration with familiar Microsoft Office system programs, powerful reporting, guided planning, and flexible tools.

 

Note   Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007 includes all the capabilities in Office Project Standard 2007. In addition, Office Project Professional 2007 provides collaborative enterprise project management capabilities when used with Microsoft Office Project Server 2007.

 

Understand and control project schedules and finances

Effectively track and analyze projects with a better understanding of the schedule and impact of changes. Benefit from better financial control and richer analytics.

 

New! Trace the source of issues. Quickly determine factors that are affecting task dates and easily trace the source of issues to promote accountability. Task Drivers help you determine the factor (such as task dependency, calendar constraints, schedule date, or vacation time) driving the start date of the task, so you can follow a chain of factors back to find the root cause of a particular delay.

 

New! See the impacts of a change. Office Project 2007 will automatically highlight all items that shift as a result of the most recent change you make. Now, with Change Highlights you gain a better understanding of the impacts of your choices.

 

New! Experiment with what-if scenarios. Undo and redo changes to views, data, and options with Multiple Level Undo. You can undo actions or sets of actions from macros too, so you can test several what-if scenarios in order to fully understand the implications of each choice while making scope changes.

 

New! Easily control finances. With the budget field, you can assign budgets to projects and programs. The new “Cost” resource type improves cost estimation and tracking. Other cost enhancements include more predefined fields, such as cost code, that map to financial fields tracked in project accounting systems.

Enhanced! Flexible project tracking and analysis. Compute and track core metrics unique to your project by defining custom fields based on your formulas. Graphical indicators can alert you when specific conditions are met

 

Effectively communicate and present project information

Improve the organization of your projects and people with the scheduling power and capabilities of Office Project Standard 2007. Easily report and communicate information in various formats according to the needs of stakeholders

 

New! Leverage charts and diagrams. The Visual Reports feature uses Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Visio Professional to produce PivotTable views, charts, graphs, and diagrams based on Project data. A user can easily define custom report templates and share these with other Project users.

 

New! Add visual highlights. You can change the background color of a cell or row with Background Cell Highlighting. Shade cells, similar to how you can in Excel, in order to convey additional meaning.

 

Enhanced! Use improved views. With new enhancements to the Calendar interface and the addition of 3-D Gantt bars, you can create even more visually effective reports.

 

Enhanced! Share information. Share and manage documents related to your projects using Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services workspaces (requires Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or later), which are integrated into the Tasks pane of the Project Guide.

 

Get productive quickly

 

Office Project 2007 helps you better organize work and people to help ensure projects are delivered on time and within budget.

 

Enhanced! Follow the Project Guide. Quickly master the project management process with the Project Guide, a step-by-step, interactive aid that helps you set up projects, manage tasks and resources, track status, and report project information.

 

Enhanced! Get help as you need it. Access built-in online Help to get the latest training, articles, templates, and resources. Get timely and relevant assistance as you work with smart tags that alert you to alternatives when you make changes to your plan.

 

Enhanced! Save time with templates. Start your projects prepopulated with a template to save time. Create your own custom template, or use one of the many new, out-of-the-box templates provided with Office Project Standard 2007. You can also download templates from the Web at Microsoft Office Online.

 

Microsoft Office Project Standard 2007 gives you robust project management tools with the right blend of usability, power, and flexibility, so you can manage projects more efficiently and effectively. You can stay informed and control project work, schedules, and finances; keep project teams aligned; and be more productive through integration with familiar Microsoft Office system programs, powerful reporting, guided planning, and flexible tools.

 

Key reasons for using Office Project Standard 2007 include:

 

·         Effectively manage and understand project schedules.

Set realistic expectations with project teams, management, and customers using Office Project Standard 2007 to build schedules, allocate resources, and manage budgets. Understand the schedule with features such as Task Drivers for tracing the source of issues, Multiple Level Undo for testing scenarios, and Visual Cell Highlighting for automatically shading the tasks affected by a change.

 

·         Get productive quickly.

The Project Guide, an interactive step-by-step planning aide, helps you quickly master the project management process. Customizable for different methodologies, this tool walks you through creating a project, assigning tasks and resources, tracking and analyzing data, and reporting results. Intuitive toolbars, menus, and other features enable you to quickly master project management fundamentals.

 

·         Leverage existing data.

Office Project Standard 2007 integrates smoothly with other Microsoft Office system programs. Build projects with a few keystrokes by converting existing task lists in Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Outlook into project plans. Resources can be added to projects from Microsoft Active Directory or from a Microsoft Exchange Server address book.

 

·         Build professional charts and diagrams.

Analyze and report Project data in professional reports and charts by using the Visual Reports engine, which generates templates for Visio diagrams and Excel charts based on Project data. You can share templates you build with other users. Or you can choose from a list of customizable, ready-to-use report templates.

 

·         Effectively communicate information.

Easily present information in various formats according to the needs of stakeholders. You can format and print one-page schedules or other reports. Use the Copy Picture to Office Wizard to smoothly export Project data into Microsoft Office Word for formal documents, Office Excel 2007 for custom charts or spreadsheets, or Microsoft Office PowerPoint for crisp presentations.

 

·         Gain greater control of resources and finances.

With Office Project Standard 2007, you can easily assign resources to tasks and adjust their assignments to resolve conflicts over allocations. Control finances by assigning budgets to projects and programs. Improve your cost estimates with Cost Resources.

 

·         Quickly access the information you need.

You can group Project data by any predefined or custom field. This saves you time by consolidating data so you can quickly locate and analyze specific information. Easily identify changes between different versions of a project—thus, efficiently tracking scope and schedule changes.

 

·         Track projects according to your needs.

A rich set of predefined or custom metrics helps you track data (percent complete, budget versus actual, earned value, and the like) relevant to your needs. You can track project performance over the project lifespan by saving project snapshots in up to 11 baselines.

 

·         Customize Office Project 2007 to your needs.

Tailor Office Project Standard 2007 specifically to your project. Choose custom display fields that integrate with your project schedule. Modify toolbars, formulas, graphical indicators, and reports. XML, Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), and Component Object Model (COM) add-ins facilitate data sharing and creation of custom solutions.

 

·         Get Office Project 2007 assistance when you need it.

                Office Project Standard 2007 provides a wealth of assistance to novice and experienced users. It includes a robust Help search engine, smart tags, and    
                wizards. Further enhancements include online   access (requires Internet connection) to training courses, templates, articles, and more.