Defining the Project Guide

All or part of the Project Guide can be customized on a per-project basis in Microsoft® Office Project 2003. Each project can have its own Project Guide with different layout, functionality, and content. Potentially, a company or solution provider could create one Project Guide for finance projects, another for engineering projects, and so on. There could also be different Project Guides based on the role of the user. This would involve checking a user's role when he or she opens a project, and dynamically changing the properties that define the Project Guide for that project.

The Project 2003 object model offers several options for setting the file name to use for the Project Guide main page and XML content schema. You can control each of the file name settings separately through four properties of the Project object, or use the Application.OptionsInterface method to change the settings all at once. You can also manually change the settings within Project; see Tips for Defining a Custom Project Guide.

Properties

A Microsoft Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) macro typically reads or sets the properties by using the ActiveProject object, for example:

Sub SetProjectGuide()
    With ActiveProject
        .ProjectGuideUseDefaultFunctionalLayoutPage = False
        .ProjectGuideFunctionalLayoutPage = "[path]\myMainPage.htm"
    End With
End Sub

The following table lists properties of the Project object that manage the Project Guide. You can also set these properties on the Interface tab in the Options dialog box (Tools menu).

Method

For information about the parameter types and descriptions for the OptionsInterface method, see the Microsoft Visual Basic Help in Project.

Application.OptionsInterface( _
   [ShowResourceAssignmentIndicators], _
   [ShowEditToStartFinishDates], _ 
   [ShowEditsToWorkUnitsDurationIndicators], _ 
   [ShowDeletionInNameColumn], _ 
   [DisplayProjectGuide], _ 
   [ProjectGuideUseDefaultFunctionalLayoutPage], _ 
   [ProjectGuideFunctionalLayoutPage], _ 
   [ProjectGuideUseDefaultContent], _ 
   [ProjectGuideContent], _ 
   [SetAsDefaults]  _
)

OptionsInterface can update any of the settings found on the Interface tab in the Options dialog box, including the Project Guide properties. The Boolean DisplayProjectGuide parameter is also useful because it toggles the Project Guide on and off.

Note  Project refreshes the Project Guide toolbar and the HTML pages that are displayed in that project when the properties defining the Project Guide are changed, so that the new Project Guide is displayed immediately. You do not have to close and open the project again for the changes to take effect.

Tips for Defining a Custom Project Guide

It is likely that most organizations need only customize the content properties of the Project Guide; that is, ProjectGuideUseDefaultContent and ProjectGuideContent. The default functionality and layout page, defined by the properties ProjectGuideUseDefaultFunctionalLayoutPage and ProjectGuideFunctionalLayoutPage, should work for most custom Project Guides.

To change the default layout or behavior of the Project Guide, you only need to change the functionality and layout page. For example, you can make the side pane appear on the right side of the view area instead of on the left, or tile the side pane horizontally within the Project window instead of vertically. You can also customize some of the default behaviors of the Project Guide, such as the way it responds to view changes. The default functionality and layout page (gbui://mainpage.htm) is generic, so the default page should work for most custom scenarios.

To set the properties defining the Project Guide in Project 2003, on the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Interface tab in the Options dialog box. The following figure shows the default property settings.

Options dialog box, showing the default properties of the Project Guide

By default, a Project user can use the Interface tab to change the Project Guide for one project, or to set the default Project Guide for all projects (by using the Set as Default button). Instead of allowing individual users to change Project Guide settings, many organizations prefer to determine the Project Guide settings at an organization or group level, so that these changes apply to all users. There are several ways to specify the options for Project Guide settings. For more information, see Deploying a Custom Project Guide.