Non working days in project schedules and availibility

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• Wednesday, 7 July 2010 6:44 AM

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  Hi Yves,

  I can see three possibilities (there may be some more):

  Enter exceptions for resource: Resource Center – check mark resources – click on Open…
  Within ProjProf double click on resource – Change Working time – mark vacation / sickness period – click on empty line in Name column – enter name for absence – mark start. Your period will be filled in with Start and End. Note: you will need to have at least SP2 and CU December 2009 applied. If you have this not applied, existing actual work will be moved in some cases. For this CU it is necessary to have client and server CU installed.

  Create a project plan (one for each department if required) - your second suggestion.
  If your users are allowed to create new tasks, it is sufficient if you add your users to project plan as team member. They can create a task for each absence. Make sure that they enter a Finish Date or Total Work or correct Remaining Work after entering actual for this task.
  If they are not allowed to create new tasks, enter a task and assign all resources to this task (e.g. duration 300 days, work 1 hour).

  Let them use My Timesheet – Plan Administrative Time. If you select "No prepopulation" in Timesheet Settings and Defaults, you should be fine. Of course you will need to create timesheet periods for that. Since days off are reflected as resource calendar exceptions you will also need to have at least SP2 and CU December 2010 applied.

  Perhaps someone else has additional ideas?

  Regards
  Barbara

  • Marked As Answer by Christophe FiessingerMicrosoft Employee, Owner Monday, 12 July 2010 11:24 PM
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• Wednesday, 7 July 2010 10:40 AM

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  Yves,

  In addition...

  As Barbara mentioned above, planned holiday time for team members can easily be planned for by adding those holidays to the relevant resource calendar via the resource center. Similarly public holidays can also be planned for and added to the enterprise calendar for the server.

  Finally on how to plan for the unexpected, like when someone is going to be sick, there are a couple of ways to cater for this in your schedules. I wrote a blog post on this back in January http://epmsource.com/2010/01/14/effective-project-management-with-ms-project-planning-for-the-unexpected/ which may have some ideas.

  Hope this is of use,

   

  ---

  Alex Burton
  www.epmsource.com | Twitter
  Project Server TechCenter | Project Developer Center | Project Server Help | Project Product Page
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• Monday, 12 July 2010 10:12 PM

   

   
  

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  Hi Barbara, Alexander,

  Thanks a lot for your answers.

  The information you gave me fits perfectly with my needs. I think I'll use 2 of your suggestions:

  - the calendar's exceptions for each resource (and these exceptions will be filled in or updated directly by the resources)

  - and the "Unit Max" setting to take into account that some resources are not 100% dedicated to projects.

  Barbara, I have a last question: your 3rd suggestion is about using "My timesheet". At the moment we don't use timesheet functionalities to update tasks with actual data. Do you think it's possible to use My timesheet just to put resources' non working days? And my question is not just about Project technical aspects but also in terms of business process.

  Best regards

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