SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

I have been working with Microsoft Project for a decent amount of time now and I go to a lot of clients during my Project Server implementations. One thing I noticed with the average Project Manager that they never use the feature to customize their ribbon. For the people that do not know what the ribbon is, it is the action bar where all the buttons reside in Office products.

While most buttons you use in Project are already present in the ribbon, they sometimes are not in the place you like them to be. It is my experience that when working on your project plan you mostly use the “Task” tab in your ribbon. What I like to do, is to add a few buttons I use on regular basis in the other tabs to have them in available in the “Task” tab.

Because I work with Project Server a lot I always like to have the “Publish” button in my ribbon, the same goes for the “Set Baseline”, “Entire Project” and “Team planner” buttons.

So how do you do this?

That is the easy part. Go to “File” and select “Options”. In the options menu you can find “Customize Ribbon” and “Quick Access Toolbar”. For this post I will only customize my ribbon.

When you selected the “Customize Ribbon” option you are able to add button to all tabs. Here we will customize the “Task” tab.

Expand the “Task” tab. Now I advise you to make a custom tab for the buttons you want to add. To do this click on “New Group”.

So that is the group. Now that we have our group lets populate it with the extra buttons we want shall we.

Select the button you want to add in my case that is “Publish” and press add. Now select other buttons you want and press ok. Go back to the tab you customized to see the result.

It is that easy. Above the result. Having these buttons all in the “Task” tab saves me the hassle to go the other tabs for them. Everything you need one click away.

via SpeakingSilent » Robin Kruithof http://speakingsilent.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/practice-makes-perfect-part-8-customizing-the-ribbon/

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)