How to enter a meeting task?

[LAM]

I need to enter a task that is actually a meeting. I anticipate that,
arranging the various schedules for the meeting is going to take from 1-5
days.

I want to assign all the people involved in the meeting as resources, the
problem is that I do not want to appear in MS Project as they worked 8 hours
a day for 5 days, when the meeting is only going to be a 2 hours meeting in
only one day.

How should I enter this task?

Thanks.

 

[John]

I need to enter a task that is actually a meeting. I anticipate that,
arranging the various schedules for the meeting is going to take from 1-5
days.

I want to assign all the people involved in the meeting as resources, the
problem is that I do not want to appear in MS Project as they worked 8 hours
a day for 5 days, when the meeting is only going to be a 2 hours meeting in
only one day.

How should I enter this task?

Thanks.

LAM,
Well, it depends on how much time you expect the 5 resources to take
preparing for and attending the meeting. For a simple status meeting,
maybe each person will only spend an hour a day getting ready. However,
if the meeting is something like a design review, it is likely the
participants will be spending full time preparing their presentations
for the review.

So what's in your wallet? Sorry, wrong commercial, so what kind of
meeting do you have?

John
Project MVP

 

[LAM]

Hi John, and thanks for answering.

You could say is a status meeting that will only go for like an hour or two.
Let’s add one or two extra hours for preparation.

The problem here is that lots of things (tasks) depend on the result of the
meeting, and those tasks cannot start before the meeting is over. Now,
although the meeting will go for about two hours, it might take a week in
order to organize it. When I say a week, I do not mean 40 working hours, but
going back and forth with everybody’s schedules.

I hope I explained it better now!

Thanks again.

 

[John]

Hi John, and thanks for answering.

You could say is a status meeting that will only go for like an hour or two.
Let’s add one or two extra hours for preparation.

The problem here is that lots of things (tasks) depend on the result of the
meeting, and those tasks cannot start before the meeting is over. Now,
although the meeting will go for about two hours, it might take a week in
order to organize it. When I say a week, I do not mean 40 working hours, but
going back and forth with everybody’s schedules.

I hope I explained it better now!

Thanks again.

LAM,
You're welcome and thanks for the feedback.

I kind of assumed it was a status meeting. It sounds like fixed duration
tasks (duration 1 to 5 days) might be appropriate for meeting prep
tasks. Then actual effort for prep should be entered in the Work field.
Project will automatically spread those hours in "peanut butter" fashion
over the duration period, unless you manually contour the work effort on
one of the Usage views. As far as the follow-on tasks, they should be
linked as finish-to-start with the meeting itself.

John
Project MVP