This month we’ll have a closer look at setting up working patterns.

Calendar Options

In Lesson 7, I touched on the importance of setting up the project calendars before entering any task data. This is because the settings in Tools/Options…/Calendar tab work for the future and not the past. So, if you’d like to open up that little Garden project with a Make Terraces task we’ve been playing with, we’ll set up some different calendar times. It would also help if we could see the times of day, so in Tools/Options…/View tab select a Date Format: 28 Jan 12:33.

Incidentally, I’m using clips from Project 2003, but earlier versions are very similar.

Split the screen via Window/Split, noting that the Make Terraces task has a 10 day Duration with a resource called Gardeners entered to give 100% Units and 80 hours of Work. Now reset the Start Date to 3 May 04. The easiest way to do this is to use the Adjust_Dates macro in the Analysis toolbar (or Tools/Macro/macros… in earlier versions), or you can reset the project Start Date in Project/Project Information… dialog.

Fiscal Year

Now, as we learned in Lesson 7, the settings in Tools/Options…/Calendar tab tell project how to represent calendar data. So, the Week starts on: and the Fiscal year starts in: settings tell Project to start from the day/year you choose.

Please note that the Fiscal year can be misleading, particularly in earlier versions of Project. If you change it to, say April, then the fiscal year for 2004/5 will start in April 2004, but it does not finish until the end of May 2005. The Gantt chart timescale thus does not change the year on 1 January but waits until 1 April as can be seen in this clip:

Try it out and see the result. My advice is therefore; if you need a fiscal report, change the setting to what you want and when you’ve finished, change the fiscal year setting back to January as this will avoid confusion.

Standard (Project Calendar) Working Hours

So, let’s suppose we want our Garden project to work form 09:00 to 16:00, this will give us a 6 hour working day and a 30 hour working week. This might be done to allow a couple of hours per day for resources to do other things. Enter these details:

There is a Set as Default button which will tell Project to always use these settings on all future projects.

Have a look at the Duration of the Make Terraces task: it is now 13.33 days. This because the 80 hours of work at 6 hours per day takes 80/6 = 13.33 days, but still starts at 0800 and finishes at 1700.

Try entering new task “Swimming Pool” for 10 days. You will see it still starts at 08:00 because new tasks are starting at the project start date of 3 May 04 08:00. This setting can be changed to Start on Current Date by selecting from the pick list for New tasks: in the Tools/Options…/Schedule tab.

Change the project Start Date to 09:00 (Project/Project Information...) and you will see both tasks now start at 09:00 - we’re getting there! Meanwhile, assign Gardeners to the Swimming Pool task at 100% (click in the Resource Name cell and use the drop-down arrow to select from the pick list – better than typing in the name in case you get the spelling wrong). You will see the assignment is 60 hours, which is based on our new working week. Now observe the Gantt bars for each task, they don’t seem to tie in with the number of days the Duration requires.

Ah but it does! You see, Project is still using the default calendar of 8 to 5, 40 hour week. So we need to change that too – Tools/Change Working Time… Click and drag across the weekday letters (M, T, W, Th, F) so that the whole of the weekday part is highlighted in black, and change the start time to 09:00 and the Finish to 16:00 and click OK.

You should now see that the Swimming Pool task is correctly showing on the Gantt chart as 10 working days as that task was entered after we changed the Tools/Options…/Calendar times: ie that was in the future.

Whereas, the Make Terraces task is still showing 13.33 days, as Project does not change what you entered in the past – hence the importance of getting the working times and calendars set up correctly before entering data. You will now have to make the decision: was the Make Terraces task an estimate of 10 days Duration or 80 hours of Work? If the 80 hours was correct, you can leave well alone at 13.33 days, but if the original estimate was 10 days, then you need to retype the Duration of 10 days giving 60 hours of work – let’s do that.

Note that, if you zoom in to the maximum (15 minute intervals) you can see the tasks begin at 9 or 09:00 and finish at 16 or 16:00 as we demanded.

Shifts

Let’s have a look at setting up shift patterns. Firstly, enter a new task for the Flower Beds, give it a 7 day duration and assign a resource Fred who should be working 42 hours. Let’s say that Fred only works afternoons, say 13:00 to 19:30 with half an hour for tea at 16:00, ie a 6 hour working day. If we want a resource to work different shifts, then we must set up a new calendar specifically for that resource. In Tools/Change Working Time… (if it is greyed out, you are still in the bottom pane – click in the top pane to make it active), select the Resource name Fred from the pick list in the For: box.

Again, select the weekdays and enter the times 13:00 to 16:00 and then 16:30 to 19:30. Make sure the radio button for Nondefault working time is set and then click OK. If you are still zoomed in to 15 minutes, then you can see Fred’s task now starts at 13:00 and finishes at 19:30, as we directed.

Resource Gantt Chart

Supposing we wanted to show a Gantt chart for Fred, then we can show Fred’s calendar. Format/Timescale…/Non-working time tab; in Calendar: select Fred, and select a Colour and Pattern, OK.

You can see the selected pattern in the Preview panel as you change the style. The resulting Gantt chart is now based on Fred’s working pattern.

Whilst we are here, we could make quite a powerful report by filtering for Fred’s tasks (Project/Filtered For: All Tasks/Using Resource… and select Fred from the pick list) and giving Fred a print out of his tasks with his calendar applied.

Night Shift

Finally, if you want a night shift, there is a little trick you need to know. Project’s calendars start and end at midnight. So, to set up a shift working from 20:00 to 08:00, we have to do it in 2 stages: 00:00 to 08:00 and 20:00 to 00:00 (insert any breaks similarly).

Summary

To summarize: the values in Tools/Options…/Calendar tab for the working week or day affect the way project presents your entries in the Duration field. If, in the task Duration field, you type in 1 week, Project looks to the setting you've made to define the number of hours (and thus man-hours) that a week contains, and similarly for the working day. Equally, if you don't specify a time, a task starts at the default setting of 08:00, and if you schedule from the finish, tasks will end at the default of 17:00, both leaving the Duration to determine the other date. So, set these default times first. Remember that it is best to do this before entering any data as changes to Tools > Options generally apply to the future entry of data and not what has already been entered.

Next Month 

Next month we’ll have a more detailed look at costs.