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The best way to make changes to a base calendar is to change the working time. For example, let’s say that Monday, October 14is a company holiday and we need to make sure no work is scheduled on that day.
1. Click on the Project tab and select Project Information. Note that our project is scheduled to begin on Wednesday, October 9, 2013and end on Friday, November 29, 2013. Press OK to close window.
2. From the Project tab and the Properties group, select Change Working Time.
3. Select Monday, October 14, 2013, using the scrollbar. (Make sure you have the right year!)
4. On the bottom section in the EXCEPTIONS tab, under name, type “Day Offâ€. (Figure 2).
5. Press OK. This will assign the date as a non-working day.
6. Check your Project Information. This change did not have an effect on the finish date, but overall duration of the project was shortenedby one day to 36.25 days. Why? (Hint: critical path?)
Figure 2
7. When you close this dialog box and check your Gantt chart, you will notice that Monday, October 14 is shaded gray in the column.
8. Just reverse; let’s say that due to this holiday, we will be working on Saturday, October 19 from 8 AM to 12 PM and 1 PM to 5 PM (we have a one hour lunch break).
9. From the Project tab and the Properties group, select Change Working Time again.
10. Click on Saturday, October 19, 2013
11. Underneath the Day Off exception, type, “Make-up Dayâ€. Click in the Start box to the right and with “Make-up Day†selected, click the Details button. The Details for the “Make-up Day” window will pop-up.
Figure 3
12. Select the Working times radio button.Make sure thetimes from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM and from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM are entered. (Note: They may be automatically entered for you! Can you guess why?)
13. Click OK on this window and on the Change Working Time window. What happened to your project completion date and overall duration?
14. On your own: Let’s say that for this entire project we will be working on Saturdays, but only from 8 AM to 12 PM (Noon). Change all theSaturdays in October, November and December (2013) to the above working times, including October 19, 2013. How would you do this?
(Hint: To change all Saturdays, create a new rule selecting all Saturdays from October 5 to December 28 in the details tab, using the Weekly Recurrence pattern, and delete the rule for the Make-up Day.)
Figure 4
Figure 5
15. What is the completion date? (Check Project Information). Is it still November 29? But why is the total duration of the project now 39.75days? The problem here has to do with the recurring task, Project Meeting. When we originally set up this project, Project meetings were independent of any other tasks and, based upon the original calendar, there were to be eight meetings. However, if you notice, the final task, Test System, actually completes on November 21. It looks like we do not need eight project meetings. (How do you find the start and finish dates for each task on your entry table?)
16. Delete the Project Meeting 8 from the task list (but keep the project meetings 1-7).
17. Now what is your completion date and project duration? It should be November 22, 2013 and 34.25 days. This gives you an indication that when you change working time, you need to review recurring tasks for their appropriate parameters. Normally, if we had no recurring tasks, all the changes that we made to the working times would have immediately affected completion dates, but not total hours of work.
Note: It is good to have a final project meeting after the project completion to review the project and how it met the objectives. BUT when you include this in the MS Project plan, it could disrupt the critical path, so it is often better to leave this last review meeting task out of MS Project.
Changing a Resource Calendar
Resource calendars track the availability of individual resources. When you create or assign a resource, the resource is given the base (Standard) calendar by default. Each resource may be on a different work schedule or have vacations, training or other events, which may interfere with the availability of that resource during the course of a project. For example, a student working on a project at school may not be available during 8-5, Monday through Friday, but may be available evenings and weekends.
Note: a resource calendar may also be used for other types of resources to reflect maintenance time, down time, cleaning time, etc.
Resource calendars are edited in the same way base calendars are edited. Resource calendars are available in the Change Working Time dialog box or on the Working Time Tab in the Resource Information dialog box.
1. From the Task tab and the View group, click Resource Sheet.
2. Select the Project Manager resource.
3. Scroll across the row, until you find the Base Calendar column.
4. You will notice the calendar, Standard, is assigned to this resource. If you click on the arrow, a drop-down menu appears where you could assign another base calendar to this resource. Your choices are 24 hour and Night Shift. For now, leave this assignment as Standard.
5. Scroll back and select the Project Manager.
6. From the Resource tab and Properties group, click the Information button.
7. The Resource Information dialog box should now open.
8. From the General tab, Click the Change Working Timebutton..
9. Click on Monday, October 14, 2013.
10. Let’s say the Project Manager will be working the entire day on this date, from 8 AM to 12 PM and also working that afternoon from 1 PM to 5 PM.
11. Make an exception named “Work Dayâ€. In the details select the Working times radio and make sure that from 8 AM to 12 PM and 1 PM to 5 PM is defined.
12. Press OK on the Details window.
F
igure 6
13. Click OK on the other windows to get back to the Resource Sheet.
14. Select the FinancialOfficer.
15. Apparently, the Financial Officer will be away on vacation the week of October 28 – November 1, 2013.
16. Click the Resource Informationbutton (Note: While in the Resource Sheet you can also double click the resource name to open the Resource Information window.)
17. Click the Change Working Time button and create an Exception named “Vacationâ€. In the details window create a Nonworking rule (He will be unavailable) for the dates of Monday, October 28 through Friday, November 1, 2013 and click OK on the Details and Change Working Time windows.
18. At this point, you will receive a warning (not an error) indicating that the resource is assigned outside the original dates for task 9 Issue RFPs in project Maynard Furniture Company… If you do not receive the warning message, go back to verify the vacation’s end date and correct as necessary.
19. What do you think this message is telling you??? Press OK to accept.
20. Change to the Gantt View, Table: Entry. What happened to task #9, Issue RFPs? Why is the completion date of the task November 11? Why is the duration now 10 days rather than 7 days? It is always important to remember availability of resources can affect the completion of a task or project. (Your project’s duration is now 37 days).
21. The above is fine for individual resources and individual dates or times, but what about a situation like a student working on a project where the standard, 24 hour or night shift calendars do not apply?
Creating a New Base Calendar
New base calendars can be created when none of the default calendars apply to your project needs or to a group of resources. (A new base calendar should not be created for just one resource). In this lab, we know that all managers do not work standard 8-5 hours, so let’s create a calendar called Managers.
1. Making sure that you are in the Gantt Chart View, from the Project tab and Properties group, click Change Working Time. Scroll toOctober 2013. The dialog box should look as figure 7:
Figure 7
2. While we have seen this dialog box before, notice in the top left corner is a pull down menu. Click on the down arrow for this menu, and you will see the calendars being used in this project:
Figure 8
3. Here you could change the working time, not only for the three base calendars, but also for each individual resource. Again, it is best to create a new base calendar.
4. Click the Create New Calendar … button at the Top Right of the Change Working Time dialog box and the following dialog box opens:
Figure 9
5. Type Managers as the name of our new base calendar.
6. Be sure the Make A Copy of Standard Calendar is selected and press OK.
Figure 10
7. Make sure your calendar reflects October, 2013.
8. Since we will be creating a special calendar for the managers assigned to this project, we can change the default hours worked by the managers.
9. On the Work Weeks tab, select the Default line, then click on the Details button.
10. This opens a details dialog. (Figure 11).
Figure 11
11. Hold the Control Key and select the days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday
12. Select the “Set day(s) to these specific working times:†radio button
Figure 13
13. Select the text in the first From box (8:00 AM) and change it to 6:00 AM. (If you have difficulty getting into edit mode, highlight the box and hit F2)
14. Change the 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM. Make sure you click out of the 8:00 PM box for it to stick.(See Figure 14).
15. Click OK to accept the changes and then OK again to close the Change Working Time window.
Figure 14
16. To assign a resource to this new calendar, change to Resource Sheet view.
17. Double click on the name, Systems Manager. The Resource Information Dialog box appears.
18. Select the Change Working Time button. In the left hand corner, you should see a drop-down menu for Base Calendar. Change thebase calendar for this resource to Managers and press OK.
19. On your own, change the Project Manager to the Managers calendar. Use the Base Calendar dropdown in the Resource Sheet to change this. You will receive another warning message concerning task 9…press OK to accept it. After the change, what hours is the Project Manager working on October 14, 2013? Why is it still 8-5?
20. Finally, create another calendar based upon the 24-hour calendar. Call this calendar Contractor and set the Non-default working hours 6 AM to 10 PM (no breaks) for all seven (7) days of the week. (Again, change the default hours on the new calendar.) Assign this new calendar to the Wiring Contractor. (Note: when you make this change, the duration of the Install Wiring task is still 3 days, but the finish date has been moved up one day. Why would the duration still be 3 days, when the start and finish date shows only two days?)
21. Your project should now be at 37 days. If not, check to make sure that the Manager’s calendar and the Contractor calendar reflect the correct working times.
Check your work with the provided project information statistics below. If all is right with the world, save your file and print out the following reports: (use proper header information)
1. Project Summary Report.
2. Task Entry Table and Gantt Chartview that includes ONLY the following column up to and including the Finish Date column and the Gantt chart. (Print this only 2 pages wide)
3. Who Does What When report (Under Assignments). (Print this on 3 pages)
4. Click on Project then select Reports. Select Workload and then click on Task Usage report, but press Edit. Under the Definition tab, select Days for column one. Then press OK. (We have now edited this report to show each task’s information by days rather than weeks. Please note that once you edit a report, it will retainthose settings on the report until you change it!).
5. Press Select and view this report – 14 pages worth – wow!! DO NOT PRINT THIS REPORT!!
6. Change the setting back to weeks and THEN print the Task Usage report.
 When submitting required printouts, if you are not bringing them to class, from the Print Preview Page, take a screen shot (in Windows <ALT><Prt Scr>) of the report and paste the screen shot to a MS Word Document. Make sure to crop the screen to show only the report. After cropping, resize the image appropriately. If the printout is on more than 1 page, paste each page individually. Save the Word document containing printouts as Week_4_Printouts_XXX.docx (where XXX are your initials) and submit this file to the Weekly iLab Dropbox.
Check Point for End of Lesson 4
When you have completed this lesson please save it as MyLab4_xxx.mpp and submit the file to the Weekly iLab Dropbox.
Also complete the Review Questions page at the end of this document and submit the completed Review Question sheet to the Weekly iLab Dropbox.
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Addendum
Task Information for the Beginning of Lesson 4
Project Information Statistics at the Beginning of Lesson 4
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Review Questions
Name ____________________________
Answer the following questions (you may use MS Project Help):
1) What are the three base calendars included in MS Project and what are the default values of each?
2) What is the difference between a base calendar and a resource calendar?
3) Why schedule one project meeting after completion of the last task, Test System?
4) Give an example of when you would assign a 24-hour calendar to a resource.
5) If you were doing a senior project, what would be the base calendar you would use for students working on the project and what adjustments would you make to it?
Turn in this sheet with your MS Project file to the Weekly iLab Dropbox.