Microsoft Project Released, Certification Announced

In April, Microsoft announced the availability of Microsoft Project 2000 and Microsoft Project Central. Microsoft designed Project 2000, a project-management tool, to be accessible to the casual or intermittent user, yet scalable to needs of a sophisticated project manager working in a complex organization. Project Central adds Web capabilities to Project 2000. According to Todd Warren, Microsoft Project's general manager, “Microsoft Project 2000 and Microsoft Project Central represent the culmination of an extensive customer-driven design process that included input from customers of all sizes. These customers told us that we needed to make the product more usable for entire organizations, allowing everyone from individual contributors to the president of the company to get involved in project management—we have delivered on that.”Microsoft also announced a 60-day trial version that you can order from the company's Web site. The trial version is based on the full shipping product and includes Project Central and deployment templates for Windows 2000, Office 2000, and Project 2000. The trial version is available for the cost of shipping and handling: $6.75 (US) for US mail, $9.75 (US) for Priority Mail, and $9.25 (US) for international shipping. Microsoft will waive shipping and handling costs for the first 5000 Web site visitors who order the CD-ROM. Project 2000 and Project Central are available together for an estimated retail price of $499 (US) for new customers; current Project users can upgrade for an estimated retail price of $199 (US). You can buy additional Project Central client licenses separately. For more information, visit the Project Web site.On April 24, Nivo International, the company that administers the Microsoft Office User Specialist (MOUS) program, announced that it has released a certification exam for Project 2000. The MOUS program provides certification for Microsoft Office desktop applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. MOUS certifications validate training and objective skill on Office applications at both the specialist level, covering basic application features, and the expert level, covering basic and advanced application features. MOUS certification exams for Project 2000 and Project Central will be available at both the specialist and expert levels.To provide a real-world examination experience, MOUS exams take place using live versions of Office 2000 applications. For Project 2000, each examination question presents a series of tasks that correspond to the way you use Project 2000 in the workplace to plan, structure, and reorganize projects. Since July 1998, Nivo has issued more than 125,000 MOUS certifications. For more information, visit the MOUS Web site.