My name is Daniel Bell, and today I am briefly going to discuss a new Project 2010 feature called Sync to SharePoint. This is a very useful feature for those organizations that have SharePoint 2010, but not Project Server 2010. Or for those that have both, however, the Project Manager wishes to use a simple SharePoint Task list rather than publish their project to Project Server 2010.
Setup is very simple. First you would setup the SharePoint list. In SharePoint 2010, the icon to do so looks like this:
In my case I created a Task list named Sync To SharePoint Training Deployment. Earlier I actually created the same named task list, however, I ended the name with an exclamation point. Although the Task list name may generally contain special characters, for the purposes of Sync to SharePoint with your project plan they cannot.
Next I created a very simple project, which is based on the Microsoft template for a Training Deployment. For the purposes of this exercise I deleted many of the tasks to simplify the demonstration (see below screenshot).
In order to synchronize this project to my SharePoint list, I navigate File à Save & Send à Sync with Tasks List. Now the first thing I do is type In the site collection name of the SharePoint site I want to access. After that I click the Validate URL button. In my case, because the Project Name was similar to the SharePoint Task list name, the correct Task list was selected for me in the Select an existing tasks list, or enter a new name drop down list box. Note that I could have chose to create the SharePoint Task list during the sync process, however, the most common scenario based on your organizations security will probably be the latter.
Now you can go ahead click the Sync button. You may receive a confirmation message during the sync, therefore, just click OK when you do. Upon completion you will have hopefully successfully synchronized your project to the SharePoint Task list. Please note that summary tasks will show up as folders, that when clicked upon will yield the subtasks (see below).
And that’s it folks! Of course there is more functionality to be had, however, we’ll let you have fun on your own before going into more depth.
