SharePoint 2013 – Project Sites

SharePoint 2013 preview comes with a couple of pre-defined templates for common ‘teamsite’ scenarios like community sites and project sites. I created a project site and took some time to explore the features that you get right away.
First, when creating new sites you see the different types of site templates that come with SharePoint 2013 preview. Amongst these are the new “Community site”  and “Project site“.

NOTE:If you do not see them, go the “page layouts and site templates” section to make these site templates available for subsites.

Create Site using Project Site template: Once you create site using Project Site template, your site would look like below screen.

Project Summary: Assume that, you have few tasks added in Task lists.

You can see a Web Part called “Project summary” with different rotating views. It shows the tasks from the central task list in the project site. One view shows the tasks in a time line. The other view shows the tasks that are overdue.The first thing that notices is the top webpart called “Project summary”. This is a web part with different rotating views. It shows the tasks from the central task list in the project site.

One view shows the tasks in a time line.

The other view shows the tasks that are overdue

People Invitation: The project site is basically used for collaboration like and team site. In the metro styled ‘Get started with your site’ section, there is the option “Share your site”. This shows a popup screen where you can add people to the site and directly put these people in the members group of the site. Autocomplete for names is directly available when inviting people.

Task List:

Note:  The concept of a task list goes back to the early days of SharePoint.

The task list in the SharePoint 2013 preview project site has some new features especially for managing projects, Like in MS Project. The tasks can visually be displayed as subtasks by using the indent / outdent functionality. Also the move up and move down options for tasks come in handy when managing project tasks.

This shows how we can use new OOTB Project Site template in SharePoint Server 2013. I will post something related to project server 2013 integration with task list very soon.