Microsoft Project (MSP, MSOP or WinProj) is a project management software program, developed and sold by Microsoft, which is designed

to assist a project manager in developing a plan, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing the budget and analyzing workloads. The application creates critical path schedules, and critical chain and event chain methodology third-party add-ons also are available. Schedules can be resource leveled, and chains are visualized in a Gantt chart. Additionally, MS Project can recognize different classes of users. These different classes of users can have differing access levels to projects, views, and other data. Custom objects such as calendars, views, tables, filters, and fields are stored in an enterprise global which is shared by all users. MS Project was the company's third Microsoft Windows-based application, and within a couple of years of its introduction it became the dominant PC-based project management software. Although branded as a member of the Microsoft Office family, it never has been included in any of the Office suites (like Visio). This also was the case with Office 2010. It is available currently in two editions, Standard and Professional. MS Project's proprietary file format is .mpp. Microsoft Project and Microsoft Project Server are the cornerstones of the Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) product. Microsoft Project 2010 features the Ribbon user interface.[1]

Work more efficiently with the simple and intuitive Microsoft Fluent user interfacenew 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.

Whats NewTop Features

Microsoft Project Professional 2010 is a project managers software that gives project managers a new and easier way to manage wide range of projects and programs. With all of the new updates and visual enhancements of Project Standard 2010, Project Professional 2010 delivers more with at-a-glance resource management and team collaboration tools using Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, to successfully complete all types of projects. And, utilizing Project Professional 2010, you and your organization can realize the results of unified project and portfolio management by adding Microsoft Project Server 2010. Download Whats New.

Microsoft Fluent User Interface

Work more efficiently with the simple and intuitive Microsoft Fluent user interfacenew 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 schedulingmanually 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 earlysolving 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 activetasks 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 sharedrill 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 email, 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 efficientlysimply 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 statusautomatically synchronize to receive updates directly into your project plans. Save, share and managesimply 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.

op 10 Benefits
Microsoft Project Professional 2010 delivers a project management system with powerful, visually enhanced ways to effectively manage a wide range of projects and programs. From meeting crucial deadlines to selecting the right resources and empowering your teams, Project Professional 2010 helps project management professionals by offering easier and more intuitive experiences to be more productive and realize amazing results. Download the Top Benefits.

1. 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.

2. 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 flydata 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.

3. 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 thats right for your project. Work with summary data initially or shift to a more detailed approach when its convenient. Place notes as reminders of where additional schedule information is needed, or simply add information as it becomes available.

4. Easier to see and share.

With a completely new and visually enhanced timeline view, youll 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 bestand help you to swiftly see and share important dates and deliverables.

5. At-a-glance.
(Team Planner Pro only) 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 tasks attributes and assigned resources, which you can choose to act upon or not.

6. 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.

7. Evaluate possibilities.
(Inactive Tasks Pro only) 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.

8. Collaborate with others.

(Task Status Updates Pro only) 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.

9. Grow capabilities.
(Connect to Project Server 2010 Pro only) 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.

10. 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

Features

Microsoft Project 2007 showing a simple Gantt chart

Project creates budgets based on assignment work and resource rates. As resources are assigned to tasks and assignment work estimated, the program calculates the cost, equal to the work times the rate, which rolls up to the task level and then to any summary tasks and finally to the project level. Resource definitions (people, equipment and materials) can be shared between projects using a shared resource pool. Each resource can have its own calendar, which defines what days and shifts a resource is available. Resource rates are used to calculate resource assignment costs which are rolled up and summarized at the resource level. Each resource can be assigned to multiple tasks in multiple plans and each task can be assigned multiple resources, and the application schedules task work based on the resource availability as defined in the resource calendars. All resources can be defined in label without limit. Therefore it cannot determine how many finished products can be produced with a given amount of raw materials. This makes MS Project unsuitable for solving problems of available materials constrained production. Additional software is necessary to manage a complex facility that produces physical goods