 In this training video, we're going to look at controlling the critical path in Microsoft Project. So if we were to turn on the critical path right now, anything that's critical will turn red. When we look at the bars, the task bars, anything that's critical, these bars will become red. So we can do this by going to the Format tab, Bar Styles section of the ribbon, and clicking on Critical Tasks. So we can see the entire project now is critical as far as Microsoft Project is concerned. And this is the way, the reason for this is because this is the way it's been linked together. It's a finish to start, relationship start, start. So every task is dependent on the next one and they have to happen immediately afterwards. But if we look at the example, Task 10. Even though we've linked them together and Project is telling us that job shortlist then needs to start immediately after the closing date when the job part has been sent out. That's not going to be the case because you're going to need to, in effect, give a bit of time to allow the job parts to come back in before you can start job shortlisting. So it might take, for example, could take 14 days, could take 21 days for all the job parts to be sent back in to allow us to shortlist it. So we're going to say there's a delay here in this example of 21 days. So this task is due to start on the 29th of May this year, 2020. And that's a Friday. We're going to delay it by three weeks to say, well, we can actually give this task a three week delay because we know it can't just be done straight away the minute the closing date happens. So I'm going to double click and add a constraint starting earlier than. And I always when I'm doing this kind of work, set the date of the task. So this task is the 29th of May, which is there. And then I tend to work out three working weeks from there. So here's the 29th of May here. Now if I go forward a couple of weeks. So the 29th was a Friday. That tells me that year. So week one would be the 5th, week two would be the 12th, week three would be the 19th. So we're going to say we can't start any earlier than the 19th. And there's a delay. And we could put in a note to say. Task Delayed Awaiting Job Pack Returns. And then OK. Now the critical part looks very different. Because everything that's red is critical. And everything now, which is prior to the job's old glistening is blue. Because we've built in a 10 day, or a 15 day in this example, a delayed by three weeks, a 15 day buffer for task 10. And that's affected all the rest of the task. So that means anything prior to task 10 is non critical because there's now a 15 day buffer for this. That's why they're blue. And we can tell this by changing tables. Because if we go to the view tab and go to the tables and choose schedule, you can then see what's critical and what's non critical by looking at slack. So we can see 15 days. Here we go. 15 days for all of these tasks down to the job short list in which we've just delayed. And everything then from that point then is critical. Because there's one after another. So this is how you can actually set the critical part in reality. So what we're saying here is the first nine in this case and non critical. Because in reality we can take a bit longer to do these in effect because we've built in the days for the job short listing. This now shows how project works with critical. The minute you delay something, you'll then see some kind of change within the critical path. Now we're going to do another one. I'm going to just change the tables. Back to entries, the default. We're going to say here in this example that the HR induction is not going to happen immediately after the inform applicant. So we think we're going to set a date for the HR induction six weeks after we've informed the applicant. So we're going to go from Tuesday the 28th of July. I'm going to delay it by six weeks because that's how long it'll take to arrange the induction and make sure everything's okay after we've informed the applicant. So I'm going to double click. I'm starting over the event. Again, I'm going to be careful with these dates. So it's the 28th of July. Here we go. And I know when it's here Tuesday and it's going to be delayed by six weeks in this example. So here's the 28th. So week one at the fourth, two, three, four, five will be the first of September. So that means week six will be the 8th of September. So I'm going to go to the 8th of September. I'm always at a note. And so HR induction has been scheduled September. Two zero, two zero. Okay. And then because of the amount of time you put into the HR induction that now means everything is non-critical. According to the way we've built this up except the HR induction. And we can again review this through tables and can now see what projects to end. So it's the initial 15 days plus the 30. That's where it's 45. And then it comes to the 30 down here at this period and then it becomes zero. So if we knew we had a bit of leeway in the HR induction to say we thought actually it's going to be a week early it's going to happen. We could use those five days elsewhere in a project. So you could leave that little bit of buffer there and say we'll leave. We'll leave it. We'll work on that and we'll use the duration elsewhere in the project. But this is the way and kind of ideas that can be used to manipulate and control the critical path for business needs by adding constraints to tasks and then looking at how much slack is available within the project. And I'll just change the table back to finish to entry. And this now completes critical path control and how this can be achieved within Microsoft Project.