Microsoft Project Professional 2010

The Project Professional 2010 Software from Microsoft is designed to help you keep track of the tasks necessary to complete projects. It can be used for any type of project, from IT to construction and anywhere in between. You'll be able to use it to set and track milestones, assign tasks to team members, and much more!

Project Professional includes a number of features not found in the Standard Edition. These include a Team Planner and Task Inspector which help team members better collaborate. It also lets you track inactive tasks and task status updates, and can connect with the optional Project Server 2010 software. The application is compatible with Windows operating systems.

New in Project Professional 2010

Microsoft Fluent User Interface

• Work more efficiently with the simple and intuitive Microsoft Fluent user interface -- new graphical menus and a familiar experience provide the tools you need to plan and manage your project
• Task-oriented tabs and contextual menu groupings reveal powerful features, making it easier to get started and realize results
• Learn about features and rich formatting controls quickly with descriptive tooltips and drop-down galleries
• Simply be more productive by choosing your own menu options, quick access toolbar settings and setting defaults
• Save to XPS or PDF. Quickly share, print, and publish project information from one location using the new Microsoft Office Backstage view

Excel-Like Flexibility & Ease

• Enhanced copy and paste makes it easy to share information effectively with other Microsoft Office applications while retaining formatting
• Add columns dynamically by entering data without having to first select the data type
• Simplify data entry with auto-complete which displays a list of previously used values to select from
• Automatic text wrap eliminates extra formatting steps by adjusting row height to display full task names
• Quickly mine data and analyze results with easy access filtering for all columns
• Create emphasis with rich color options and text formatting to express ideas and solve problems in new ways

User-Controlled Scheduling

• Gain flexibility with user-controlled scheduling-manually schedule tasks with the information you have right now or choose to automatically schedule tasks with calculated dates and durations
• Be alerted to potential scheduling concerns with squiggly lines and choose how to manage potential problems
• Gain insight with the Task Inspector to recognize issues and take action early-solving problems before they occur
• Support rolling wave planning and easily create high level forecasts using manually scheduled top down summary tasks
• Identify gaps by comparing manually scheduled summary tasks with information rolled up from subtasks
• In Microsoft Project Professional 2010, you can simplify planning with inactive and active tasks to perform what-if analysis

Timeline View

• Simply create the ultimate graphical timeline to express your schedule and plan
• It's easier to see and share-drill into details and visually recognize differences with a clear view of tasks, milestones, and phases
• Reach your audience with new impact by quickly copying the timeline into an e-mail, presentation, or any other document with formatting retained

Team Planner

• Visualize the right mix of resources and assignments with a simple and intuitive resource view
• Simply drag-and-drop to effectively plan tasks and optimize resources for your entire team and project
• Quickly identify unassigned or unscheduled tasks to proactively solve problems
• Simply hover over tasks to instantly view task-level details to plan with ease
• Be visually alerted to potential problems, choose to manually level resources as you work
• Automatically level over allocated resources on a task-by-task basis using Task Inspector to instantly resolve problems

Connected Teams

• Enhance team collaboration by sharing information more efficiently-simply save, print or publish in one easy-to-manage Microsoft Office Backstage view
• Convert Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 task lists to realize project schedules
• Publish your project plans to SharePoint Foundation 2010 task lists so team members can update task status-automatically synchronize to receive updates directly into your project plans
• Save, share and manage-simply be more connected in the ways you expect with Project Professional 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010
• Connect Project Professional 2010 with Microsoft Project Server 2010 and gain control across all types of work, improve project selection and strategic alignment, maximize resource utilization and visualize performance through powerful dashboards

Top Benefits

Familiar and Intuitive
The Ribbon makes finding and using your favorite tools simpler with new graphical menus and a familiar experience to help you easily create and manage projects. Tooltips and contextual guidance provide information and shortcuts so you can accomplish more in less time. In the new Microsoft Office Backstage view, simply save, share, print, or publish your projects from one location

Save Time and Effort
Save time and effort with familiar and essential functions like text wrapping, filtering, auto-complete, scroll and zoom, and more. Insert new columns on the fly-data types are readily identified so that you can quickly and effectively organize and analyze details. Quickly share schedule details through enhanced copy-and-paste, and retain key formatting between Project 2010 and other Microsoft Office applications

Flexible and Powerful
User-controlled scheduling puts you in control and brings together the flexibility and ease of use of a tool like Microsoft Excel 2010 and the power of the Project 2010 scheduling engine. Create project schedules at the level of detail that's right for your project. Work with summary data initially or shift to a more detailed approach when it's convenient. Place notes as reminders of where additional schedule information is needed, or simply add information as it becomes available

Easier to See and Share
With a completely new and visually enhanced timeline view, you'll have a clearer view of tasks, milestones, and phases. Newly expanded color palettes and text effects help you make every timeline and plan look their best-and help you to swiftly see and share important dates and deliverables

At-a-Glance
See the right mix of people and resources: simply drag tasks to effectively plan work for your entire team and project. The new Team Planner view in Project Professional 2010 shows resources and work over time, to help you spot problems and resolve issues. New in Project 2010, the Task Inspector offers additional analysis and intuitive guidance to resolve scheduling conflicts derived from a task's attributes and assigned resources, which you can choose to act upon or not

Control and Deliver
Quickly compare budget versus actual versus forecasted values to measure an initiative's progress with the flexibility of setting multiple baselines. Create high-level time-phased budgets with user-defined categories for costs and labor. Validate budgets against bottom-up estimates built by using labor, material, and cost resources. Control project costs by comparing budgets to completed tasks and forecasted totals. Use built-in earned-value metrics for predictive analysis and integrated performance management

Evaluate Possibilities
Often you'll need to evaluate scenarios and consider options when planning new projects or monitoring ongoing work. Using inactive tasks, new in Project Professional 2010, you can easily experiment with your project plan and perform what-if analysis. A simple toggle removes or inserts one or more tasks, along with their effect on the project schedule. Project 2010 also offers more built-in tools to help support what-if analysis and scenario comparison, including multiple-level undo and change highlighting

Collaborate with Others
Connect your teams by synchronizing with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010. Using Project Professional 2010, you can synchronize SharePoint Foundation 2010 and Project Professional 2010 project task status updates for you and your team members. You can also save your project files to SharePoint Foundation 2010 team sites to communicate plans and collaborate on progress

Grow Capabilities
Realize the power of unified project and portfolio management by combining Project Professional 2010 with Microsoft Project Server 2010. Together, Project Professional 2010 and Project Server 2010 create the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution, and deliver end-to-end capabilities to help organizations prioritize investments and optimize resources, gain control of all types of work, and visualize performance by using powerful dashboards

Enhance Performance
Use the 64-bit options of Project 2010 to enhance performance and support very large projects and programs. Project Standard 2010 and Project Professional 2010 are offered in 32-bit and 64-bit options to support a diverse range of project types and sizes. 64-bit options take advantage of the expanded memory and optimized capabilities of the latest processors and of the 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows Vista. 64-bit Project Professional 2010 also offers enhanced performance and handles extremely large project files with ease when connected to Project Server 2010

System requirements:

• Processor Required
  700 MHz or faster processor
• Memory Required
  512 MB RAM or more
• Hard disk
  2 GB available disk space
• Display required
  1024 x 768 or higher resolution monitor
• Operating system
  Windows 7, Vista with SP1, XP (must have SP3) (32-bit), Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 R2 with MSXML 6.0, or later 32- or 64-bit OS
• Browser required
  Windows Internet Explorer 7 or later, 32-bit browser only
• Connectivity required
  Internet functionality requires an Internet connection
• Other
  Certain advanced collaboration functionality requires Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and connectivity to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise.

The Import Outlook Tasks feature requires Outlook 2003 SP2 or later.

Visual Reports require Excel 2003 SP2 or later and Visio Professional 2007 or later.

Enterprise project, portfolio, and resource management capabilities require Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and Microsoft Project Server 2010.

Importing tasks to an Outlook calendar or tasks list requires Microsoft Project Web App and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1 or later.

Synchronizing Project Tasks Lists requires Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Publishing projects and Windows Workflow Foundation require Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise (installed with Microsoft Project Server 2010).

The Resource Substitution Wizard requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.

Certain online functionality requires a Windows Live ID.

Product functionality and graphics may vary based on your system configuration. Some features may require additional or advanced hardware or server connectivity.

This product includes both 32- and 64-bit versions for a single computer. We recommend the 32-bit version, which runs great on both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows. People who routinely use very large documents or spreadsheets that need more than 2 GB of memory may want to run the 64-bit version, but many common add-ins for Office don't run correctly in the 64-bit edition.