Properties dialog - Properties tab

You use the Properties tab of the Properties dialog to view and edit information relating to the current project, such as the total project duration, progress, cost and the number of users currently working on the project. For projects that are within a group project, the information in the Properties tab relates to the group project, not the individual project within the group project.

Depending on your access rights, you may not be able to edit the date-related fields on this tab.

Explanation of the fields on the dialog

Field	Description
Name	Enter a descriptive name for the project or group project.
Short name	Enter a short name for the project or group project.
Status	Indicates whether the project is a destination project that has been booked out from a master project.
For	Enter the name of the organisation or individual for whom the project or group project has been planned.
By	Enter the name of the person who has planned the project or group project.
Default tab colour	Select a colour to apply to the tabs that appear at the top of each view by default. Selecting a different colour for each of your projects makes it easier to identify which views belong to which project when you have more than one project open at the same time. Configuring how views are displayed in tabs
Start date	The start date of the first task in the project or group project.
Finish date	The finish date of the last task in the project or group project.
Duration	The period of time taken by the project or group project.
Duration unit	Select the time unit in which you want the duration to be displayed.
Imposed start	The date at which the project or group project is constrained to start. You might set an imposed start date if you do not want the project or group project to start on the date shown as the Start date on this tab. You cannot impose both a start date and a finish date. Note that if you change the imposed start date to a date that is later than the report date of one or more existing progress periods, a warning appears. If this warning appears, click OK to amend the report dates of your progress periods so that they start on or after the new imposed start date, click Close to set the new imposed start date but leave the report dates of the progress periods unaffected, or click Cancel to abandon your change to the imposed start date. If you click Close, you will need to edit the report dates of the progress periods manually. Specifying a start or finish date for a project
Imposed finish	The date at which the project or group project is constrained to finish. You might set an imposed finish date if you do not want the project or group project to finish on the date shown as the Finish date on this tab. You cannot impose both a start date and a finish date. Specifying a start or finish date for a project
Date zero	The date at which you want unit numbering in any "elapsed units" or "working units" line that you display in the date zone to begin in the date zone. Setting a "date zero" is useful if, for example, you want to set up a line in the date zone showing elapsed days and have it start numbering from a specific date. If you specify a project-wide "date zero" in this field, it is applied to all new views that you create. However, each view can have its own individual "date zero" - specified in the Date zero field on the Dates/Scales tab of the Date Zone Properties dialog. If a "date zero" has previously been specified for any individual views and you want them to use the project-wide "date zero", clear the check box in the Date zero field on the Dates/Scales tab of the Date Zone Properties dialog. If you choose not to specify a "date zero", the start date of the first task in the project - or the imposed project start date, if one has been specified - is used to define the point at which unit numbering in any "elapsed units" or "working units" line should start. You can configure spreadsheet cells that display "Date/Time"-type fields to display the time period between the "date zero" that you specify and the date or time that the field represents, measured in elapsed days, elapsed weeks or elapsed months. Numbering in the date zone
Delivery date	The date on which a project must be delivered. You can specify a delivery date for the programme of projects, and a delivery date for each chart or summary group that has been identified as being a project. You can use a project's delivery date as a deadline when rescheduling. If you do this, rather than using the finish date of the last task in the project, the project's late and free finish dates are set to the delivery date when rescheduling and float is calculated out to the project's delivery date. A delivery date provides a deadline for all tasks in the project, so any tasks that exceed the delivery date have negative float (ie they become super-critical) following a reschedule. The delivery date is also used when checking the quality of a schedule to calculate the project's maximum duration, which is the difference between the project's start date and its delivery date. Specifying a delivery date for a project
Progress method	Choose whether progress on expanded, summary and hammock tasks is calculated according to the child tasks' cost percent complete, duration percent complete, effort percent complete or overall percent complete. In very large projects, you may find that progress calculations take a long time. You can speed things up by selecting an 'approximate' method; you can speed things up even further by selecting 'None' in this field to disable progress calculations for parent tasks. If you do this, parent tasks do not display progress at all. Progress on expanded tasks, summary tasks and hammocks
Progress date	The average date up to which the whole project or group project has been progressed. This is the date up to which progress is shaded on the expanded task of the project's or group project's programme chart - click the globe icon in the project view to see this expanded task.
Report date	The report date of the progress period used most recently in the project or group project.
% complete	The total duration percent complete of the project or group project.
Use calculated overall % weights	Select this check box to calculate the overall percentage complete weighting of expanded and summary tasks automatically based on the weightings of the tasks they contain, or clear the check box if you want to enter your own weightings for expanded and summary tasks manually. Calculating progress on parent tasks according to overall percentage complete
Effort (demand)	The total amount of scheduled effort in the project or group project. The total amount of demand effort is shown in brackets.
Work	The total amount of work undertaken by permanent resources in the project or group project.
Cost	The total cost of the project or group project.
Income	The total income to the project or group project.
Ignore satisfied costs in roll-ups	Select this check box to ignore costs of satisfied demand allocations in cost totals on parent tasks, or clear the check box to include them.
Number of tasks	The number of tasks in the project or group project.
Number of links	The number of links in the project or group project.
Number of logged on users	The number of users currently logged into the project, or into the group project and any of its subprojects (Asta Enterprise only).
Default view	Select the view that you want to display initially when the project is opened, provided that Project default view has been selected in the Restore on project open field on the View tab of the Options dialog. Specifying the views to restore when a project is reopened

Properties dialog - Properties tab

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