 In this training video, we're going to look at the use of manually scheduling tasks within Microsoft Project. So for this example, we've now got three training courses, which are IT training courses, which we're going to join them. We're going to now put them all under one summary for IT courses shortly. What you'll notice is there's a little blue pin next to manual schedule. It tells you at the top on the task tab. It tells you it's manual scheduled. If you also wanted to see the drop-down arrow, it also tells you manually scheduled. Now what manual schedule is ideally used for is if you want to control tasks yourself in a part of a project or a small process whereby you want to fully control it yourself without Microsoft taking over and automating it for you. So in this example, we don't want Microsoft to automate it. We want us to be able to physically control the tasks ourselves in this example. So we've got two-day task, one-day task and another two-day task for Excel training two days, Word training one day and visual training two days. And they're all taking place on different days. So I want them to... I now want to know what the total is for the IT training course duration and when the start and finish is. So with the manual tasks, I'm now going to join them together as a summary. Now you might say, well, what is the manual summary task with a question mark next to it? Well, we can see there's no start or finish date and no duration. That's when that feature comes in, when you've got no information, whereas the manual schedule pins below don't have a question mark. So I'm going to highlight two, three and four and under the task tab is a green arrow pointing to the right. I'm going to indent tasks and this will give me a summary of all three. Now I know all three are now taken 12 days in total from the first date to the last date of the visual training. But we also can see that there's only five days of training. You can see they spread out. So we might want to manually change things around. But what you'll notice is one of the indicators has changed to what's called auto scheduling. So even though we we want everything to be manual, the auto takes over when you put a summary task together unless the summary goes wrong. We make changes where this will go wrong and you'll see a red line up here with that word to be the case. So say now the Excel training which is due to start on Monday the 6th could only start on the following Monday. We would have to physically update it ourselves. Now in auto scheduling if I right click the task or double click the task I'll use in this case under advanced there's a feature called constraints where we can control the delay ourselves and use Microsoft to show us all kinds of indicators of why there's a problem. This is now removed from manual scheduling. So in this example we cannot let Microsoft help us. We've got to physically make the change ourselves. So that's what we're about to do. So I'm going to cancel that and I'm now going to change the start date from the 6th and I'm going to go a week later the 13th. Now we can see the manual effect and we can now see the duration has decreased because it was one day before the word training. Now it's gone in the middle but if I were to delay the Excel training for say three weeks let's see what happens. So one, two and we'll go to the 2nd of August and we can see it stretching and doing things as we see fit. Now I'm going to put it back to its original date which was the 6th of August. Now if you ever manually update a summary task, so for example you might want to say for whatever reason that these three courses can be covered within a 30, within a say 21 day period. So for the 6th I could actually physically change the finished date to a date that I want to give these three courses. So if I say 21 days at the moment we can see it's 12. So I'm going to now look at the 6th of August and I'm going to see okay I want this to delay by three weeks so one, two, three, 27th. Now all of a sudden you'll see the pin has changed to manually scheduling for the summary task. Now the reason for that is because we have physically updated the summary date. So if you ever change the summary date yourself for whatever reason it automatically turns to manual. Now let's see what happens if we start changing some dates around now. Now we've got it in manual scheduling. So if I wanted to delay the Visio course by say two weeks so it's now finished on the 21st I'm going to delay that by to the 4th and now you'll see red because it's now gone past the manual summary task that we changed. So Microsoft itself is thinking what are you doing now? Do you really know what you're doing? So when you start using manual project doesn't really like it's way of use because we can see now there's reds going on, there's it's underlining dates so the minute you go into change things manually yourself you might see some indicators come on and this would be the reason why. But it also gives you flexibility into making changes yourself to your way of working where you don't want Microsoft project to govern everything. Now if we ungrouped and if we now took the summary away from this, so if I go 2, 3 and 4 take the summary away it's now back to a 16 day so you've got 12 days of Visio training. So sometimes you've got to be pretty careful what you're doing with summary tasks to make sure that things work out correctly for you. So in this case we know Visio training isn't 12 days we'd have to readjust it and think okay well what should it be? It should be a 2 day task 2 day and we've now got a manual summary we might want to change that back to auto now it starts working for us again if that's what we want so let's group it again now under an auto summary and we're now back to project giving us a little bit of help because it's now in an automated control for the 3 manual tasks. So you've got choices with manuals you can either take full control yourself you might see some red symbols you might see date changes you might see some indicators a little bit of auto scheduling like we have in this case with the 3 manual tasks or you don't even have to use summary tasks so this gives you an idea of the use of manual schedule tasks within Microsoft project it gives you flexibility but it does take away a lot of projects automated features hope to see you for the next tutorial and thanks for watching