Sharepoint 2013 : Understanding project sites (part 1)

The Project Site template is new in SharePoint 2013. A project site is essentially a standard team site, but it adds the Project Summary Web Part to the home page of the site, and apps for managing projects (such as calendar, tasks, forms, and team mailboxes) are included by default. It is ideal for collaborative projects that have a team of people sharing tasks, documents, and other resources. The project site is one of the most powerful out-of-the-box project management tools ever to be in SharePoint. That said, however, it is certainly not intended to replace Microsoft Project Server for those who need all the features included with an enterprise project management system.

When you select the Project Site template, the description of the template says, “A site for managing and collaborating on a project. This site template brings all status, communication, and artifacts relevant to the project into one place.” To add a new project site or subsite, choose Project Site within the Collaboration tab in the New SharePoint Site page, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Select a Project Site template from within Site Contents.

After you have created a project site, you are likely to first notice that the Project Summary Web Part is displayed prominently at the top of the page, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. A Project Summary Web Part is used to communicate project status visually within a project site.

The project summary easily communicates to team members and visitors of the site how the project is going. In addition, it calls out the next upcoming milestone on the left so that someone can see “what’s next” at a glance. If you have appropriate permissions, you can add a new team task directly from the Project Summary Web Part by clicking Add Task. When you add a new task, SharePoint keeps the interface simple, so the only questions that you really need to answer are the following:

• Name of the task

• Start date

• End date

• Whom the task is assigned to

By clicking anywhere on the Project Summary Web Part itself, the Timeline tab on the ribbon becomes active, as shown in Figure 3. This allows you to customize the details of the manner in which you are viewing the project summary.

Figure 3. The Timeline ribbon as seen from within the Project Summary Web Part.

If you click an actual task list, you will be presented with a Timeline view. The timeline is a new way to represent the status of team tasks visually. Adding tasks to the timeline is easy: choose the ellipsis icon next to a task and choose Add To Timeline.

Once again, as with the Project Summary Web Part, clicking an item in the timeline activates the ribbon presenting you with multiple options, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The Timeline ribbon as it appears from the Timeline Web Part.