2. Now let's start to track our progress as the project actually starts and people actually start to do the work. Thus, you will enter progress for the tasks by changing the % Complete field. Make sure that the table in the left is Entry, which is the default one. Enlarge the left panel, so you can see more content of it. If you look closely, in the Entry table the rightmost column is called % Complete. Percent complete is an important aspect to updating and tracking project status. This lesson refers only to % complete of a task, which is in terms of task duration and relates to the schedule. More exactly, the % complete contains the current status of a task, expressed as the percentage of the task's duration that has been completed. But there also exists another field called % Work Complete, which is based on the work of a task, according to the resource assignments. So if you right-click on % Complete column, select Insert Column and specify % Work Complete in the Column Definition dialog, you will see it in the Entry table. Do not mix them up.

          3. % Complete is a task field, that you can enter in different ways in Project Plan 365. A simple and straightforward manner for indicating progress of a task is to directly type a percent complete value in the % Complete column. Let’s move this column by dragging and bring it in front of the Duration column, so you can see it more easily next to each task name. As you can see now, all the values in the % complete column are equal to 0%. A 0% percent value in the % Complete column means that the task has not started yet.

          5. There is also the option of entering values of percent complete for tasks in between 0 and 100%. For instance a 25% value means that the task is under half way, but started, 50% means that the task is half done, whilst a value of 75% means that the task is over half way, but not done, or you just can freely insert whatever value you want in the % Complete column. Now let’s assume that the recorded progress for task with id = 39, named "Install millwork and wood trim", is 50%. In the % Complete cell corresponding to this task, type 50.

       9. Now, since you’ve entered some percent complete values for tasks, you may see that these values are rolled up to the above summary tasks, which also get a % complete value, computed based on the subtasks they have. So up till now, the % complete of the "General Conditions" summary task is 32%, for "Building Finishes" is 9% and for the project summary task is 6%.

 

          10. You can also specify the progress for a summary task and indicate its % complete. This value will be distributed among its subtasks. In the % Complete field of the task called "Team meeting and discussion with partners", enter 100 and see what happens. First notice that all of its subtasks are now also marked as being completed and for all the team meeting tasks it is displayed the checked sign in the Indicators column.

          11. Another way of indicating progress for a task is to use the Task Information dialog. Let’s suppose that the "Drywall Contractor" resource allocated to "Install ceiling grid" task reports a 25% progress on it. For this, double-click on the task from row with ID = 43 to bring up the Task Information dialog for this task. In the General tab, you can use to control to indicate the percent complete you want. Let’s say 25%. Use the up arrow to increase the value of % complete.

        15. You can use reports to have a quick overview on the completed tasks from your project. This facility is especially useful in case of large projects, when its more difficult to spot the finished tasks. Go to Report menu and select Current Activities category, then choose Completed Tasks, and then you will see that a report is generated for you, which you can save or print later on if you want.

          This is what you should get: