The Power of a Project Management Database

Microsoft Project is known to be able to calculate schedules, budgets and resource requirement projections. It can also help with monitoring and tracking progress and producing useful reports in this context. But what MSP isn't able to do is help to define our project. For example, there is no place to develop our scope, objectives and deliverables, or do the all-important risk assessment.

We are able to work our way around this by taking advantage of the excellent way Microsoft products ‘talk' to each other. For instance, you can create a simple template in MS Word that holds all text content from MS Project. Then you can embed the document in MS Project itself, which can be opened with a double-click. This can also be done with other file formats. For example, you might have a Powerpoint presentation or an Excel spreadsheet that has important information on a task. A short cut to all of these documents can be placed for easy opening from inside MS Project.

There is another way to show your project management information inside MS Project - by saving your data to an external database. Although MS Access would be the most convenient choice, you can use OBDC to send this data to almost any database!

The beauty in choosing MS Access is that the tables are already set up for you within the database. All you have to do is design the forms, queries and reports around them. Of course you can add tables and use the information to generate invoices, timesheets, and a million other data types. This means that you can build a project information database without too much fuss, one that uses information straight from MS Project, saving you from worrying about double entry and all the trouble that comes along with it.

Here at Numerix, we want to make your life easier by developing such databases. We spend the time on it so you can save time. Having a good store of Project Management historical data is an investment that will ensure that your future projects can benefit from what is learnt from past projects.