SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

With the preview version out I was able to play around with Project Professional 2013. Like always this is the preview version so things might change.

When playing around with Project Professional 2013 I came by a new feature that I just had to blog about. Reports in Project Professional were not always of best use. They had their uses but in my experience I hardly used them.

In Project Professional 2013 however Microsoft decided to do something cool.

They basically made a report dashboard. There are a few pre-defined reports to choose from:

• Project Overview
• Work Overview
• Burndown
• Cost Overview

And much more…

One option in particular is very cool. Creating your own report by the use of a pivot table mechanism. This makes it very easy to create a report in a few clicks. Add that with all the different options available to you, you have the ability to create  a really useful reports in mere minutes.

This for me personally is a major improvement on Project Professional 2010. It enhances the ability of Project Managers to get good and valuable reports. In this dashboard you can do some cool actions. Like for instance, adding your company logo to your report.

This report capability also gives you the ability to rearrange all the fields. This is very handy for any Project Manager. How many times have you been fiddling with a report to fit everything on one page. This time is has been made really easy.

Next to that you have the option to add charts, table and textboxes and much more…

Next to that you have the option to add charts, table and textboxes and much more…

All in all too much to sum up in a small blog post. I would say experiment with it. In my opinion this greatly increases the usability of Project Professional 2013 for any Project Manager. A really good use for these reports would be a Checkpoint Report or Highlight Report.

I am really impressed by this feature, and what it can do, and what it means for anyone that needs to report on a project. The easy to use prebuilt reports already cover the most of report a Project Manager needs.

I am off to see what else Project Professional 2013 has in store for me. But for now consider me impressed.

via SpeakingSilent » Robin Kruithof http://speakingsilent.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/project-professional-2013-reports/

I am Robin Kruithof. I am working at CXS in the Netherlands as a Microsoft Project Consultant. My passion lies in Project Management and everything in the Project Management domain. This article has been cross posted from speakingsilent.wordpress.com/ (original article)