ProjectWork news

The advantage of using summary tasks is that the structure of your project schedule is easier to understand. You can also collapse summary tasks to create a clearer schedule. If you realize afterwards that you want to group tasks under a common summary task, then adding them will involve multiple steps.

With this new feature, adding a summary task afterwards and further indenting the underlying tasks is done in one logical step: select the tasks you want to summarize and then use the Insert summary above function in the Tasks menu or context menu (right-click). Customize the name of the inserted summary as desired.

Predicting a reliable project completion date is not always easy. Giving uncertain task durations a probability distribution is a first step. In the video you see how Monte Carlo simulation then calculates the project completion date distribution. Performing Resource Leveling at the same time is also possible.

See the video on this new feature. There are more videos available in the list.

New demo videos are recorded that show the functionality of ProjectWork. They are screen recordings with a natural-sounding artificial voice giving explanations. Four videos are available now on YouTube for you and your team: install in Google Drive, plan with tasks, track project and plan with resources.

The videos are listed on a support page, where each video has a link to the total video or to the subject you are looking for in the video.

In ProjectWork, a function has been added to post a message from an opened project schedule in a Google Chat space or Slack channel. A link to this schedule is included in the message with its view if desired, such as a selected task and the time scale of the Gantt. Information belonging to the project, such as the description, can also be added to the message. This function is intended to centralize communication about one or more projects.

The function is in the ProjectWork menu and opens a dialog. The connection to a Google Chat space or Slack channel is done using a webhook URL which is created once in the relevant room or channel and stored in the dialog. A Google Chat space is only available to Google work or school accounts. In the dialog there is a circled i that links to the manual.

In ProjectWork the action to save edits and views has been split. The saving of edits remains automatic to keep the schedule the same for all users. Saving the view is now a manual action so each user has their own view, like with expand/collapse or filter, without disturbing others who are working in the same file.

The button to save the view appears below the file name as soon as you change the view. Using the button saves the view in the schedule file and synchronizes the view for all active users. Without saving the view, you keep the common view when you re-open the file.

In ProjectWork you can use a clipboard to copy parts of a schedule and then paste it into the same schedule or one of your other schedules. The clipboard is overwritten every time a new copy is performed and the clipboard will be cleared over time. A new function Save clipboard... has therefore been added to the Tasks menu which opens a popup dialog to save the present tasks on the clipboard and put them back to the clipboard later.

The saved tasks can serve as building blocks for quick and uniform planning. The clipboard tasks are saved in the schedule and can be copied along, so that a planning can serve as a template with building blocks. With the Paste options... function you can scale a building block to the task duration you want.

In ProjectWork you can now open a Copy/Paste options dialog in the Tasks and Resources menu to select what information you like to paste from copied tasks or resources on the clipboard. Tasks and resources can have their color, yellow note and attached Drive documents optionally pasted or not. When you copy tasks or resources from another schedule, custom columns can be optionally pasted to the schedule. The paste options are useful when you copy from a template file.

Tasks have options to paste assigned resources and predecessor links from a copied clipboard or not. Tasks also have the option to repeat the pasting and multiply the duration to plan for example a roll-out.

When you cut instead of copy tasks or resources to the clipboard, the paste options are ignored and all information is pasted.

ProjectWork uses The Critical Path Method (CPM) to calculate the shortest schedule, taking into account links between tasks. Each task has an earliest start date and a latest start date, the duration between these dates is the slack. Tasks on the so-called critical path have a slack of zero, their delay will cause the project to delay.

ProjectWork has a new option in the Settings dialog to indicate the slack duration of each task in the Gantt chart with a dotted bar. This is in addition to the indication of the critical path in the Gantt chart with red task bar borders and red links between them. The slack duration is also visible in the Slack column in the tasks table.

The Columns dialog is opened when you click on the table header in the Tasks or Resources panel or from their menus. Custom columns get a name and type like text, date, amount when added. Their position and visibility can be changed like the default columns.

A new type options has been introduced to add a column with dropdown list and options. The advantage over a text column is that the entry is faster by mouse clicking an option. The entries are without typos which avoids problems when you generate a report by publishing the schedule as a spreadsheet and use a custom column value to for instance filter tasks.

You can now highlight a selected task description from a set of colors in the details panel. The meaning of the color depends on the user, like highlighting milestones or critical tasks that are at risk of slipping. So it would be helpful, especially when presenting to others, to be able to highlight tasks. All highlighted tasks can be filtered from the Tasks menu.

In ProjectWork you can now set the schedule as a baseline (ProjectWork menu > Baselines...). This means a copy is made of the schedule (tasks and resources) which you can use as a reference after for example a milestone. You can save and view multiple baselines and monitor the difference with the actual schedule. The Project Status report (ProjectWork menu > Report > Project status...) includes the latest baseline and the actual schedule for comparison. When you make a copy of the schedule file you have the option to include the baseline(s) or not.