New Templates in Project 2007

There is a vast number projects being managed in the world and many Project Managers may not be aware of how they could use Project to help them manage these projects. Templates are a way to help Project Managers get started with Project. The goal of the templates is to give you an idea of how you may want to structure your project. Each template suggests milestones, dependencies, and generic resources to give you a starting point. Obviously, you may change the proposed work breakdown structure to fit your needs.

In Project 2007, we have added about 25 new templates to cover additional project scenarios. To give you an idea, these are some of the new templates that will available in Project 2007:

• Annual Report Preparation
• Develop Skills Needs - Hiring Plan - Hiring Forecast
• Finance and Accounting System Implementation
• Human Resources Information System Implementation
• Marketing Campaign Planning
• Marketing Event Planning and Execution
• Performance Reviews
• Product Development Planning
• Product Evaluation Post Launch
• Six Sigma DMAIC Cycle
• SOX Compliance and Technology Options
• Strategic Merger or Acquisition Evaluation
• Vendor Evaluation and Consolidation
• Customer Feedback Monitoring
• Financial Service Offering Launch
• Internal Readiness Training
• ISO 9001 Management Review
• Managing Incoming Request For Quotes (RFQs)
• Vendor Request For Proposal (RFP) Solicitation

These templates are well structured to help you understand what tasks can occur concurrently and see what the critical path of the project is. We have also made sure that the generic resources match a skill that will help you define what type of resources you will need for the project. In addition, we added a number of notes to tasks to help you understand why a that task is needed or important related information.

Here is a sneak peak at the Vendor RFP Solution template:

(Click to enlarge)

Note that the durations for all tasks are marked as estimates (have a question mark). We did not attempt to estimate task durations as they will widely vary for each project.

If anyone has template suggestions, it would be great to hear (though new ideas would not likely make it into Project 2007).

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 27, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 28, 2006
  From the Microsoft Office Project 2007 blog, we have a listing of the templates that will be available...

• Anonymous
  May 04, 2006
  I think it looks very good and I really like the additions with the templates that will be a huge help. Is there going to be a beta version out I could try?
  
  Thank you,
  
  Paul Green
  Project Manager
  Informations System
  Silver Cross Hospital
  [815].740.1234 xt. 7513

• Anonymous
  June 15, 2006
  Hi Paul,
  
  Please see the post about getting access to Beta 2. You will get all of the templates I listed there.
  
  Thanks!
  Lidiane

• Anonymous
  August 13, 2006
  Hi,
  
  my name is Markus. i'm german (sorry for my bad english ;-) ) and i'm working in an very new company as a project manager.
  We plan to use MS Project as a central planning and ressource management tool for the whole organisation (about 200 employees so far).
  For this case i'm very engaged on Project 2007 since a few weeks and found your reat blog, wich gives me a lot of usefull information so far.
  
  I have to questions now:
  1. Will there be a EIF Tool Set (including a template for Implementing EPM 2007) for the 2007 Version? I only found a EIF für the 2002 Version.
  A new Version of an EIF would be a great help for my project.
  
  2. Do you know about Project Blogs in german language.  havn't found some so far?
  May be there is no goog german blog ... so possibly i will do one by my self! :-)
  
  Thank you for your great work und go on!
  
  Markus

• Anonymous
  August 22, 2006
  Hi Markus,
  
  We don't know yet if we'll have any tool set for Project 2007. We will definitely have a lot of documentation that will help you plan, deploy and run a large Enterprise with Project Management. There will be a good set of our documentation available for Beta 2 Technical Refresh. If you sign up for Beta 2, you will get that update.
  
  Unfortunately we don't have a blog in German. I hope we can help you find what you need here and that you can understand it okay.
  
  Thank you,
  Lidiane

• Anonymous
  September 12, 2006
  I am new to this type of software.  I am currently a project manager for a building and development company, and I think this is an excellent tool for us.  How can I get in on beta testing your new version 2007?

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  Will Project 2007 accomodate critical chain program management methodology?

• Anonymous
  November 16, 2006
  Lidiane- There is a template that I'm very interested in - Finance and Accounting System Implementation.  Is there any way that I can get this converted to Project 2003 version. Any help very much appreciated. Thanks. eg

• Anonymous
  July 11, 2007
  The new templates sound great but will you have more examples for using formulas to customise fields in Project 2007? As a novice programmer I am really struggling with the syntax and I can find few examples to work from. The project help files which are often very good seem to be very sketchy in this area. I specifically want to create a custom start field to display start time in another time zone eg start1 = start-3hrs - Is there anywhere I can find out how to do this?

• Anonymous
  July 17, 2008
  The new templates sound good, however, until we get our templates to where we want them, I would like to know if it makes any sense to insert an existing project into a newly designed template. There are not a ton of differences between the two, but I am curious to see if anyone else has done this. Thanks

• Anonymous
  July 17, 2008
  Also, what are the correct steps to insert/import an existing project plan into a new template? MS Project Professional 2007 MS Project Server 2007

• Anonymous
  February 03, 2009
  Maybe the same question as Lily: How do you load an enterprise template into an existing project in MS Project Professional 2007, MS Project Server 2007?

• Anonymous
  February 06, 2009
  To do this, open Project connected to the server you want to add the template to. Open the project you want to upload as a template. Go to File - Save As. In the Type dropdown, select Template. The file will now be saved as a template. Users will then be able to create a file from this template by going to New on the File dropdown. Thanks.

• Anonymous
  May 29, 2009
  PingBack from http://paidsurveyshub.info/story.php?title=microsoft-office-project-2007-new-templates-in-project-2007

• Anonymous
  February 28, 2010
  Does anyone have a template on migration to active directory server for email migration consolidating Lotus Notes and a previous version of Outlook. morrisonhhi@aol.com

• Anonymous
  July 09, 2010
  I'm looking to get a milestone report that looks like a timeline.  The report I'm finding is a list of the milestones with the dates, and I'm looking for more of a picture.  

• Anonymous
  July 18, 2011
  Good morning, have was wondering if somebody knows why every time I open my project template, it also opens a second file called filename-1.mpt?

• Anonymous
  August 24, 2011
  I've just installed Project 2010 via SMS packaging but do not appear to have any MS default templates installed nor can I find the location path of where they should be?  Should all the above mentioned templates be installed by default and if so where? Thanks

• Anonymous
  August 24, 2011
  Templates don't get installed with Project 2010 but you should be able to access them through Office.com. To do this go to File - New - Office.com section. If templates aren't showing up there, you can also view them here - office.microsoft.com/.../results.aspx

• Anonymous
  August 24, 2011
  Thanks Heather.  Could that information be made clearer in the above blog as it implies they are available as in v2003 which we still use for the majority of users.  Thanks again.  Headache over!