Using Microsoft Project to Manage Projects

A Microsoft Project plan contains information from the model regarding the stages, gates, deliverables, and activities. Download the template to populate it with project-specific information such as document owners and project dates from Accolade. You can add team members, deliverable and activity start, finish, and deadline dates, and other details in Microsoft Project and update the Accolade project with those details, and vice versa.

Note:  The following procedure assumes you are familiar with basic Microsoft Project functionality, and that you have ownership rights to modify a deliverable or activity that has a Microsoft Project plan as its template.

To use the Microsoft Project plan from a project:

1. Display the project and select the Stages page to display all deliverables and activities in the stage.

You can also access all deliverables assigned to you across multiple projects using the All My Work page available on the Workspace menu.

2. Identify the deliverable or activity that contains the Microsoft Project plan and ensure the current status is set appropriately in the Status column.
3. Click the document name to display the details.
4. Do one of the following:

• To create the initial version of the plan - In the Contents tree, expand the Versions section and click Template.
• To create a new version of the plan based on the latest version - In the Contents tree, expand the Versions section and click Latest Version.
• To create a new version of the plan based on another version - In the Contents tree, click Versions. In the Versions table, click the name of the version to download. When you edit and save an existing version of a document back to Accolade, a new version is created.

5. Open the plan in Microsoft Project and make any changes, such as assigning owners to tasks, adjusting dates, entering deadlines, and so forth.

For information about working on the template in Microsoft Project, refer to the online Help in the Accolade menu in Microsoft Project or to Microsoft Project's own online Help.

6. When you are ready, save a published or unpublished version of the document using the Save to Accolade option on the Microsoft Project File menu.

Important! To update the project with the assignments and other data in the plan, ensure the Publish option is selected when saving from Microsoft Project. To save a version of the plan without updating any project data, leave the Publish option cleared.

Notes:    If you delete deliverables or activities in a Microsoft Project they are re-created in Microsoft Project when you refresh the plan. However, if you delete a stage, it and its documents are not recreated on refresh. Conditional deliverables or activities that are hidden in the project are not visible in the Microsoft Project plan, unless the deliverable or activity has a non Accolade task below it. Updates to the status notes for a deliverable or activity that you make in the Microsoft Project document are not integrated to Accolade. Accolade's integration with Microsoft Project is an optional Accolade component that you may not have access to. To implement this solution, contact Sopheon Customer Support.