Levelling resources

[Eirik H]

I have two partially overlapping activities with the same resources assigned.
What I'd like to do is to make activity start date have priority over
resource allocation so that when I level resources the activities still start
on the same date, but a resource's time is divided by the two activities.
I.e. Act. 1 sept. 1. - oct. 1. and act. 2 sept. 15 - oct. 15., resource X
assigned to both. The result I want is that X is assigned 100% to act. 1 from
sept. 1. to sept 14., then 50% on each activity from sept. 15. to oct. 1.,
and then 100% to act. 2 from oct. 2. to oct. 15.
Is this possible to achieve?

 

[Dave]

No, you cannot have this automatically. The reason for that is that
there is some reason that the dates have to be how they are. Project
cannot know what that reason and you haven't told us here. Project
cannot therefore make decisions on the basis of what it doesn't know.

This is not actually a levelling problem (within the way that the word
is used by Project).

If the activities absolutely have to start on the days you identify,
then you can add "Must Start On" constraints (note that Must Start On is
different to you wanting it to be that way). If there is some other
relationshiop between the tasks (such as Task 2 must start 2 weeks after
Task 1 starts, then you can use a milstone linked start-to-start to task
1 and use copy paste/special to paste a link to the required start date
into the start date of task 2) - but I'm guessing here as to why these
tasks must have this relationship in time.

 

[Dave]

Oh yes and then the resource optimisation becomes a manual exercise.