End on Start Date

[JohnV]

I have some tasks which should end on their start dates. This would be for
Training courses that do not cross over days. There may be predecessors that
are required to happen, but a 1 day training course must start and finish on
the same day.

How can I accomplish this?

Regards,
JohnV

 

[Jim Aksel]

You can just set the duration to 1 day.
However, keep in mind the finish time of any predecessors... if they finish
at 1PM, this implies your class will start at 1 PM for 8 hours. Probably
what you want to do is have the class start the following day for one full
day.

Create a new calendar (Tools/Change Working Time, then select new). Change
the work hours for this calandar to be 4:59PM to 5:00PM on your regular
business days. The calendar can respect all the holidays desired, weekends,
etc. The only change here is that the calendar allows only 1 minute of work
per day --- the last minute of the day.

Create a milestone task such as "Class Preparations Complete" and have all
the predecessors for the class become predecessors to the milestone. Assign
the "1 minute" calandar to the milestone and give the milestone a duration of
1 minute.

Your class becomes a successor to the milestone and will start at the open
of normal business hours the following day.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim
It''s software; it''s not allowed to win.

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for FAQs and more information
about Microsoft Project

 

[JohnV]

I take it from the answer that there is no easy way to specify that a task
must start and finish on the same day. The example I used with training is a
clear case where 1 day of training is alway on 1 specific day. There are
also other cases where I would not want the task to flow across days.

JohnV

 

[Jim Aksel]

Let's say we have a task "Primp Hairdo." Primping can be of two types:

(1) It takes a fixed duration of 8 hours and must start/finish on the same
day (otherwise you get the bedhead thing going). Doing it the way I
suggested above is about the only way to make it happen starting and stopping
the same day.

(2) Primp Hairdo can take a variable amount of time and is used to fill in
the remainder of a day. So, if all the predecessors finish at 11AM, I primp
until 5PM (6 hours), if all the predecessors finish at 4PM, I can only primp
for 1 hour. To do this will require some special coding to dyanamically
determine the amount of time to assign to Primping. Welcome to the world of
VBA; the solution is not readily presented here -- it would take some work.

It depends on how soon after all the predecessors complete that I must start
my successor activity. For us, we have a rule that our customer must be
notified in advance of any test. So, we only conduct tests on Tueday,
Wednesday or Thursday allowing the customer to travel on Monday or Friday.
(The tests take 1 day). So, we have to notify them on Thurday of our intent
to test on Tuesday. We combine this will a lag time and the procedure
outlined above to get the desired start dates.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim
It''s software; it''s not allowed to win.

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for FAQs and more information
about Microsoft Project

 

[JohnV]

I like the concept in Type 2 below. I have quite extensive programming
knowledge with VBA in Access and Excel. I am new to MS Project VBA.

Can you point me in the right direction on how to program this in VBA.
Would it be possible to create a custom dependency to allow me to specific:
* Start and End on Same Day
* Start and End in Same Week + specific start day
* Allow the start date of the 2 above to move as the predecessors move so
that I see the effect on my project target dates.

If you know a good resource, whether web site or book, that discusses these
types of concepts I would appreciate knowing.

Regards,
JohnV

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi John,

Try posting on the developer newsgroup. Please see FAQ Item: 24. Project
Newsgroups. FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information
can be seen at this web address: http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Mike Glen
Project MVP