Create and manage a project task list

It’s important to return to your project tasks list as your project progresses, and update the columns pertaining to each task’s status. This helps to communicate what’s going on in your project with those who may not be tuned in to the day-to-day details of your project’s tasks.

In your project tasks list, complete the following columns for each task to provide an update on your project:

• % Complete    Type your best estimate as to how much work has been completed on the task, using a percentage. For example, if a task is about halfway complete, type 50% in the % Complete column. This percentage is used to draw a progress overlay on the Gantt bar for the task.

• Task Status    Choose the descriptor that most accurately reflects the current status of this task.

In addition, you may run into other changes to your project that require updates to your project tasks list. For example, the Start Date or Due Date for a task may change if a task gets started earlier than planned, or gets delayed. You can update these columns in the table portion of the view, just as you would any other column. In some cases, the person who is currently working on a task may no longer be available to the task. You can also update who is assigned to the task by updating the Assigned To column. For more information, see Assign people to tasks in a project tasks list.

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With your tasks added to a project tasks list, the next step is to assign them to people in your organization. When you assign a person to a task, you identify who is responsible for completing the work on that task.

1. Click once in the Assigned To column for the task you are assigning.

   

2. Enter the name or login information of the person you are assigning, in one of these three ways:

   • Click Browse, which appears next to the Assigned To column, to search for the person you’re assigning in your organization’s address book.

   • Type the login information for the person you’re assigning from your organization, including the domain, in the Assigned To column. For example, type contoso\mollyc, where “contoso” is the domain, and “mollyc” is the username.

   • Type the name of the person you’re assigning in the Assigned To column. This is helpful if you’re assigning a contractor or another individual who does not have an account within your organization.

3. Notify the assigned individuals about their task assignments, letting them know about the project tasks list, and about the work they’re now responsible for.

When creating tasks in a project tasks list, it’s important to plan for which tasks might fall under larger tasks. For example, your project might be completed in phases, with several tasks occurring within each phase. Having the phases represented in your project tasks list provides a nice high-level look at what’s going on in your project.

1. On the Items tab, in the New group, click the arrow on New Item, and then click Summary Task.

2. Complete the form to create the new summary task, filling out the following information, as appropriate:

   • Name    Type the name of the summary task.

   • Predecessors    Choose the summary tasks and/or subtasks that must be completed before this summary task can begin. With these selected in the left box, clickAddto move them to the right box. For more information on predecessors, see the next section in this article.

     : If you’re feeling unsure of your understanding of predecessors, or if you aren’t far enough along in your planning to have all of the summary task’s predecessors added to your project tasks list, you can leave this blank for now and add predecessor relationships later, using the left table portion of the project tasks list view.

   • Priority    Choose the priority level that most accurately reflects the importance of this summary task, as it relates to the other summary tasks in this project.

   • Task Status    Choose the descriptor that most accurately reflects the status of the set of tasks that fall within this summary task. If you are just planning a project and none of the tasks in this summary task have begun, choose Not Started.

   • % Complete Type a percentage that best represents how much work is completed on the set of tasks that fall within the summary task. If you are just planning a project and none of the tasks in this summary task have begun, leave this field blank, or type 0%.

   • Assigned To Use this field to identify the person responsible for this summary task. For more information about assigning tasks, see Assign people to tasks in a project tasks list.

   • Description    Type a brief description of the summary task.

   • Start Date    Enter the date when the first subtask within this summary task should begin.

   • Due Date    Enter the date by when the last subtask in this summary task should be completed.

3. Click Save to create the summary task.

Once the summary task is created, you can click the name of the summary task in the left table portion of the view to open the summary task in a new project tasks list view. Within that view, you can add the tasks that fall within that summary task. To get back to the view that shows your summary task, on the List tab, in the Manage Views group, click Navigate Up.

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Within a single project tasks list, there may be a certain order to how tasks, including summary tasks and subtasks, need to be completed. For example, if you’re building a house, the foundation needs to be completed before the walls can go up, and the walls have to be up before the roof can go on. You can represent this order by using the Predecessors column.

1. In a task row, click the cell in the Predecessors column, and then click the arrow on the right side of the cell to display a list of all tasks within the current project tasks list. This includes any summary tasks and subtasks within the list.

2. Click the checkbox to the left of each task that must be completed before this task can begin.

   : It’s easy to get overzealous here and select every task that comes before the current task. However, you really only need to select those tasks that come immediately before the current task. For example, let’s say I have a project tasks list that contains three tasks: Task 1, Task 2, and Task 3. When Task 1 is complete, Task 2 can start, and when Task 2 is complete, Task 3 can start. When entering the predecessors for Task 3, it’s easy to think that Task 1 and Task 2 both need to be complete before Task 3 can begin. However, since Task 1 is already listed as a predecessor for Task 2, there’s no need to also list it as a predecessor to Task 3.

3. Adjust the dates in the Start Date and Due Date columns to reflect the relationships between the tasks. For example, let’s say you have two tasks that you know will each take about two days to complete. You set up the first task as a predecessor for the second task. You’ll need to adjust the Start Date column for the second task so that the date is after the Due Date for the first task, and you’ll need to adjust the Due Date column for the second task so that it’s two days after the new Start Date.

   : Want this process to be more automated? Consider using an enterprise project management solution compatible with SharePoint Foundation 2010, such as Microsoft Project 2010 and Microsoft Project Server 2010.

Once you’ve identified the appropriate predecessors for each task, you can see these relationships represented on the Gantt chart. When a predecessor is identified for a task, you’ll see an arrow drawn between the end of the preceding task’s Gantt bar and the beginning of the next task’s Gantt bar.

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Project task lists use the same view features in SharePoint as other lists. For more info, see Customize the project tasks list view