Hi,

again one question from my Blog Reader:

“When looking at the Gantt chart with all my tasks it is hard to tell the difference between the tasks. Some as you described are for writing a document, some are for “doing” and others are workshops. It would be nice if I can highlight or categories the tasks.
For now I have highlighted all document creation tasks with a yellow background and the “doing” tasks with Green background, workshop tasks have a blue background. This is only visible in the Gantt chart but not in Task usage and Task sheet and Team planner and Tracking Gantt.
I could also just add a prefix to each task name such as: “Document – Quality checklist” and “Workshop – Accounts Payable Requirements gathering”
Is there a standard MS Project way of categorizing the tasks? The categories I need are: Document, configuration, Meeting and Workshop.”

This can be done with Custom field in MS PROJECT 2013! I will not complicate, I’ll just show you the easiest way to do it.

I will create one Custom field with four lookup values: Document, Configuration, Meeting, and Workshop!

and then:

I want to have lookup Values:

and then:

I do not want to enter new Values directly so I’ll leave the Last option on the screen unchecked!

Now I will add few Tasks to my Project:

For each Task I want to assign Task Type:

and then choose:

and I’ll get:

I’ll choose Task Type for each Task:

and after I’m done I’ll get:

I will add some Resource to the Project:

and I’ll assign them to Tasks:

Now I’ll use, for example, Task Usage View, and I will add Task Type column to it:

Finally, I’ll group my Tasks by Task Type:

and then:

and I’ll get:

Finally I’ll get:

Be careful. If you want that for all your new Project you must copy this custom filed to the Global Template. If you don’t do that, that Custom field will be only visible for the current Project, and for other Project you should recreate it, and that is annoying.

So you should go to the Organizer:

and after that I’ll have this field in all new Projects.

Regards!