Managers are not the only ones who can benefit from project status reports. Your employees also benefit from receiving regular status reports from you. But creating and sending these reports using Microsoft Project can be time-consuming.

Fortunately, TechRepublic’s Brian Kennemer has the answer. Kennemer has created a Microsoft Project status report template designed to ease the process of making and sending reports to an entire team using Microsoft Project 98.

In this download, “Create e-mail status reports in MS Project 98,” Kennemer has redesigned the original Project 2000 status report template for the many TechRepublic members who are using MS Project 98. If you are using Project 2000, download “Create cool e-mail status reports in Microsoft Project.”

What the template does
The template contains a macro that provides project team members with an efficient way to move reports to other members via e-mail. (Keep in mind that in MS Project, each member is called a resource.) The e-mail will show the following information for each unfinished assignment: the start date, finish date, percentage of work completed, and the remaining work to be done. (See Figure A.)

Figure A

The macro looks at each resource in the project and then moves through each assignment and task. Then, the macro gathers data on the task name, assignment start, finish, percentage complete, and remaining work to be done.

This information is formatted into an e-mail and sent through Outlook to the address of each resource.

The download also contains instructions about using this macro in existing projects. Download “Create e-mail status reports in MS Project 98” and see if this macro turns a dreaded task into something you look forward to completing.
Tell us about your experiences using this macro. Post a comment below or send us an e-mail.