Show off project data

Graphical reports
With Project 2013, you can create crisp, colorful, professional reports without having to export your
data to another program. Add pictures, charts, animation, links, and more — everything you need to
clearly and effectively share project status info with your stakeholders and team members.
To learn how to use the new reporting features, see Create a project report ﾧ.

A whole new set of reports

An entirely new set of pre-installed reports takes full advantage of the new graphics and formatting
capabilities. The walls of data are gone, replaced by vivid charts and images that better tell your
project’s story at a glance. You can add or remove whatever elements you want to these reports. You
can even change the colors!

Burndown reports
Burndown reports show planned work, completed work, and remaining work as lines on a graph. They
give you and your stakeholders an at-a-glance status, letting you know if your project is behind
schedule. Or ahead of it.
Now you can create vibrant burndown reports in Project — no need to export your data!

Talk to your team

Project 2013 helps you stay in touch with your team members. Get progress updates, ask quick
questions, or even have long-term strategy discussions, all without leaving Project. Just hover over a
name and start an IM session, a video chat, an email, or even a phone call.
You need to have Lync 2010 or later installed to take advantage of this feature.
For more info about these new communication features, see IM chat with a team member ﾧ.

Trace task paths

With a complex project, your Gantt Chart can start to look like a tangled knot of bars and link lines. To
help sort this out, you can highlight the link chain — or task path — for any task. When you click a
task, all of its predecessor tasks show up in one color and all of its successor tasks show up in another
color.
To find out how to turn on task paths, see Trace task links ﾧ.
Top of Page ﾧ

Take projects into the far future

With Project 2013, you can set task and project dates up to 12/31/2149. That’s a whole century longer
than before!
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Explore other new features

Share meetings
If you export Project reports, timelines, or data to other Office programs, you can take advantage of
this new sharing feature. Join online meetings and share your PowerPoint slides, Word documents,
Excel spreadsheets, and OneNote notes from any supported device, even if Office isn’t installed.

Save and share files in the cloud

The cloud is like file storage in the sky. You can get to it anytime you’re online. Now it’s easy to save
your Office files to your own OneDrive or to your organization’s site. From there you can access and
share your Project schedules, Excel spreadsheets, and other Office files.

Work from almost anywhere

If you have Project Online ﾧ, you can access a full version of Project from almost anywhere, even
on PCs that don’t have Project 2013 installed. All you need is an internet connection and a PC running
Windows 7 (or later). You’ll always have the latest version because updates are automatic.

What’s new in Project Professional 2013? Special thanks to Alexander Burton.ﾧ

by John Riopel on 7/30/2012 10:35
AMCategory: Technology ﾧ; Microsoft Project ﾧ
With the release of Project 2013, Microsoft has made a number of enhancements and improvements to
project scheduling software.
The ribbon has been modified for both look and feel to provide a flatter approach that is common
across the rest of the Office 2013 platform.
ﾧ
Touch
With the impending release of Windows 8 and the proliferation of touch enabled PC’s and Slates,
Office 2013 introduces a number of enhancements to improve the experience for touch users. The
most obvious improvement is a new touch mode which can be accessed via the Quick Access Toolbar.
When clicked the ribbons will explode out to a larger finger friendly design as can be seen below.

ﾧ
This also extends to the data entry screen where if you use a touch input, the screen shows two finger
friendly nubs to use for selection.
ﾧ
There are a few other touch improvements, including help selecting objects and ‘Minibars’.

Reports
One of the major investment areas in Project 2013 is a new reporting capability that allows rich
dashboard style reports to be built quickly and easily. Project 2013 includes a number of pre-canned
dashboard type reports including work and project overview dashboards and an excellent burn-down
report. You are not limited to the provided reports, a powerful design capability has been included that
allows you to build customised reports for your organisation and theme them in the way you want.
These reports also leverage another new capability of Project 2013, the introduction of improved
office art.
ﾧ
Presence information
The addition of presence information to resources in the schedule is now available. Now as a project
manager, wherever I see a resource name, I can see at a glance their status and connect to them with
one click.
Task path
A new feature is the new Task Path feature and as the name suggests, Task Path enables you to see the
path for a specific task you have chosen. Using this feature you can see the paths of a task to include
Predecessors, Driving Predecessors, Successors and Driving Successors.
As you can see below, clicking on Task 2 has caused two paths to change colour, the driving
predecessors (those that cause the task to be scheduled when it is), turning orange and the driving
successors (those that cause the successor task to be scheduled when it is) to turn purple.

Apps
One of the most exciting additions to Office 2013 is the inclusion of new app model allowing you to
extend certain client and server applications with add-ons that can be either be purchased from a
central app store, or from a catalogue of approved corporate apps. Project 2013 is one of those client
apps that supports these new apps, allowing new capabilities to be added to Project 2013 via these
apps.

These are a few of improvements to Project 2013. There are others ranging from animations & fit and
finish through to a number of under the cover changes to improve performance and product capability.
You to give Project 2013 a try for yourself by downloading the preview from office.com/preview ﾧ.
*

* Project 2013 will install side by side with Project 2010. Please note that if you are using Project
Server 2010, Project 2013 will not connect to Project Server 2010 and you will still need to use
Project 2010.
Project Professional 2013
Easily collaborate with others to quickly start and deliver winning projects. Improved synchronization
with SharePoint 2013 helps you effectively track status from virtually anywhere.
Microsoft Project Professional 2013 gives you powerful new ways to effectively manage important
projects. Unlock easy collaboration capabilities to quickly start and deliver winning projects while
leveraging the power of Office 365 or SharePoint to work from virtually anywhere. Make
communication instantaneous through seamless integration of Lync 2013 to call or instant message
team members from Project Professional. Extend Project’s functionality with Apps for Office to meet
your specific business needs.
Stay organized
Easily plan & manage your projects with intuitive controls and flexible team tools to help your
organization deliver the intended business value.
 Quickly focus on what matters, easily select actions to take, and seamlessly browse functions
with an enhanced visual experience.
 Tap into the latest Project templates on Office.com from within Project to get started quickly.
 Stay organized by having quick access to recent files and location from the Backstage.

Be efficient and
prioritize by
aggregating everyday
work, project tasks,
important details, and
timelines in a visually
rich and contextual
interface.
 Stay in
control of your
project plans no
matter the size.
 Rich, out-of-the-box reporting tools within a familiar Office-like experience help you quickly
and easily measure progress and resource allocation.
 With Task Path highlighting in the Gantt chart, you always know how your tasks come
together and identify which are most critical to your project’s success.
 Focus on what matters most in a contextual user interface to organize tasks, link tasks, and
create timelines.
Manage anywhere with tools to keep you connected with your team and on top of your projects while
you’re on the go.
 Share the latest status, conversations, and Project Timeline through a dedicated project site
with improved integration between Project and Office 365 (or SharePoint).
 Create your project site with a few simple clicks to quickly share project details with your
team, keeping everyone connected and organized.

Deliver Projects
Successfully

Deliver effective
presentations that
offer immediate
insight into task
planning, resource
allocation, cost efficiencies, and the many important details of your projects.
 The Project timeline view helps you visualize your project to deliver stellar presentations to
your team, executives, and stakeholders.
 Easily share insights that help you better communicate progress and achieve results.
 Use out-of-the-box reports such as Burndown and Resource Overview, or create your own
with a familiar Excel-like experience to quickly measure progress and communicate effectively
with your team, executives and stakeholders.
 Easily copy and paste from Project to familiar Office applications like Word and PowerPoint
without losing fidelity or the ability to make changes to labels and styles.
Anticipate Change with forward-looking views into the everyday work going into your projects and
the resources needed to get that work done.
 Enhanced tools like Team Planner help you see and amend potential problems before they can
impact your schedule.
 With Project, you can set tasks to "Inactive" and quickly analyze "what if" scenarios without
recreating your entire project plan.

Explore the Office

Store to quickly
innovate with flexible
options to customize
and extend out-of-the-
box capabilities.
 The new
Office Store
provides Apps for
Office that extend
the functionality
of Project to solve unique problems to meet your needs and the needs of your business.
 Find apps at Office.com and choose distribution options or provide access through a corporate
app catalog.
 Tap into robust application architecture with a readily available software development kit
(SDK) for custom programmability.
Improve everyday collaboration
Work seamlessly across tools to help everyone on your team work together with the information they
need to be successful.
 Project works well with Office, Office 365, SharePoint, and Lync to give you a complete
collaborative project management system.
 Easily copy project information to Office applications like PowerPoint and email, or save
important plans and details to Office 365 and SharePoint.
 Task list synchronization between Project and Office 365 or SharePoint is better than ever and
helps you quickly deliver project information to your team and easily receive their changes from
virtually anywhere.

Communicate in real
time with team
members down the
hall or across the
globe with tools
designed to transmit
your critical
conversations quickly and securely.
 See whether a team member is available to talk or instant message with Lync by glancing at
their presence status in your project plan.
 Send instant messages to kick off real-time conversations and shared meeting spaces right
from your project with Lync Online integration between Project and Office 365.
 Deliver project information, effectively track status, and receive changes from virtually
anywhere by using improved list synchronization between SharePoint and Project.