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Only a small number of users have MS Project (we use the 2010 version). The vast majority don't but still need to view the projects and particularly their steps in it.

I have looked at a couple of "Project viewers" (LiveProject Viewer & MOOS Project Viewer) but they don't let you filter down the steps to just your own steps.

So I am looking for some viewing system. Preferably it would be a desktop "viewer" that directly opens the .mpp file, however I'll consider anything (e.g. publishing to a website / Exchange) so long as it does the following:

  • Provides read-only viewing of the whole project
  • Allows a user to filter down the steps to just their own

Any suggestions?

Laurence
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  • Thanks for the writeup and even more importantly the caveats. We created our IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2010 to address the following: http://www.teamdirection.com/mspaddin Resource Name to SharePoint Member mapping Automatic Scheduling support All task dependencies supported Any special character in task name handled Finally, we have an IntelliGantt Web Part to presents a full hierarchy in SharePoint and also has a bevy of features. http://www.teamdirection/igwebpart/sharepoint_index.html Finally, we added to our MS Project 2010 Add In with the following ‘most requested’ features: Aut –  Feb 15 '12 at 19:19
  • This is asking for software recommendation, which is off-topic in SuperUser. – Vylix Jul 21 '17 at 16:04

4 Answers4

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With MS Project 2010 Professional, you can synchronize a project to an MS SharePoint site. On that site, you could configure different views for these "task lists" to help users to only see tasks relevant to themselves. This should work fine with the freely available SharePoint Foundation.

There seem to be a couple of MS Project "viewers" out there, but I haven't looked into any of those.

Update: Please make note of these limitations of MS Project to MS SharePoint synchronization.

You must have Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Server or Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 to use this feature of Project 2010. In addition, syncing with SharePoint works only in Manually Scheduled task mode (Automatically Scheduled tasks will be changed to Manually Scheduled task mode) and with links that are finish-to-start, with no lag time. Also, if you have resource assignments associated with tasks, for them to be accepted into the SharePoint task list, the resources must be set up in SharePoint as users with the exact same name.

Update: There's actually a great demo (SharePoint 2010 and Project Professional 2010) on the subject available from Microsoft.

Oliver Salzburg
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Is it possible to detail what you mean by:

Allows a user to filter down the steps to just their own

If you just want to filter tasks by a given resource (the user) then MOOS Project Viewer can do that. Just select the filter "Tasks for resource..." while in Gantt View. Not sure in which version this filter was added but current version (2.7) supports it.

Community
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tiberiug
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What about Seavus Project Viewer? If there are people in the team who only need to view/read .mpp files, then a viewer such as Seavus Project Viewer or Moos could do the job. Also to mention that they have free online viewer app for small files.

Mike Rod
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Get a spare machine, or a few.  (These could be virtual machines; i.e., VMs).  Install Project on them.  Have users connect to those machines with Remote Desktop (or equivalent, if any) and just use Project itself to look at the files.

This assumes that it is sufficient for a user to take a quick look at a file, maybe once a day, and that they don’t need to have it open for a long time.

G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica'
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