Recurring Task Problem

[IHI]

I've set up a recurring Task in Project to reflect our daily sync meeting, 1
hour a day for 4 months. The pertinent details are below:

Duration: 1hr
Recurrence Pattern: Daily, Every 1 workday
Range of Recurrence: Start: Thu 1/7/10, End by: Fri 5/7/10
Calendar: Standard, Scheduling ignores resource calendars

The problem is that each person invited to this morning meeting is now
assigned 689h of Work time from this task alone. On the advice of another
person on this board, I set each meeting to Fixed Duration of 1hr each, but
this had no effect on the 689 hours. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

 

[Rod Gill]

Nothing is "wrong" here. Setting a Task to Fixed Duration does absolutely
nothing, by design and intent! Until, that is, you edit Work or Units when
Fixed Duration means the duration will remain unchanged and the remaining
value (work or units) will get re-calculated.

Question: Do you want to include the hours of work for this meeting in your
work budget for your project? If you have resource rates, should the cost
for the meetings be included?

If yes, then keep these hours. If no then remove the resources from the
meetings, but reduce the Max units (resource sheet) to account for the fact
the resources have 1h less per day to work on the project.

--

Rod Gill
Microsoft MVP for Project - http://www.project-systems.co.nz

Author of the only book on Project VBA, see: http://www.projectvbabook.com

I've set up a recurring Task in Project to reflect our daily sync meeting,
1
hour a day for 4 months. The pertinent details are below:

Duration: 1hr
Recurrence Pattern: Daily, Every 1 workday
Range of Recurrence: Start: Thu 1/7/10, End by: Fri 5/7/10
Calendar: Standard, Scheduling ignores resource calendars

The problem is that each person invited to this morning meeting is now
assigned 689h of Work time from this task alone. On the advice of another
person on this board, I set each meeting to Fixed Duration of 1hr each,
but
this had no effect on the 689 hours. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing
wrong?

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[Dale Howard [MVP]]

IHI --

Double-click the recurring task in your project to display the Recurring
Task Information dialog. In the dialog, select the Calendar pick list and
select the None value, and click the OK button. You do not need to select a
Calendar value for this Recurring Task since Microsoft Project automatically
scheduled the task using the Project Calendar (specified in Project -
Project Information). If you apply the Resource Usage view, you should now
see that there are only 87 hours of Work assigned to each resource for this
Recurring Task. Do you? Let us know.

 

[IHI]

Unfortunately, it didn't. Each resource still has 689 hours assigned to them
from this task.

 

[IHI]

I do want to include the hours of work for the meeting in my work budget for
the project. I'm not tracking resource rates, but I would still like the
hour per day reflected in the resource charts.

The problem is not the fact that hours for the meeting are shown, it's that
there are far too many. 1 hour per day for four months should be roughly 90
hours. Project is assigning eight hours per day, every work day, for four
months to each resource based off of this one recurring task. I could reduce
the Max Units by one hour per day, but wouldn't that throw off the work units
of every other Task these resources are assigned to?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

IHI --

Precisely where in Microsoft Project do you see this number of hours
assigned to each resource? Let us know and we will try to help.

 

[IHI]

I'm not sure the exact name of this screen, but when you select Window >
Split from the top menu with this recurring task highlighted, each resource
has 689h assigned to them. The 689h also appears associated with this Task
in the Resource Usage screen, as well as the Task Usage screen, showing 8h
per day of work associated with this Task.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

What if you invite the people to EACH individual meeting instead of the
recurring task?

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availabliy check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[Steve House]

You are confusing Hours of Work and Hours of Duration. The rolled-up
recurring task for a 1 hour per day daily meeting extending over 4 months
does indeed have a summary duration of ~680 hours, the total potential
working time in the calendar between the start of the first meeting and the
end of the last meeting. But the work of a resource assigned to it is only
~80 man-hours, the time actually in the meetings. You should see about 80
hours per resource in the Work tabel in the REsource sheet, the task usage
vew, or the resource usage view.

 

[IHI]

All due respect, but that's not the case. Each individual resource is
showing 689h assigned to them from this one task. It shows up under their
names in the resource sheet, the task usage
vew and the resource usage view. If there's a way to send you a screenshot,
let me know and I'll show you.

 

[IHI]

That does seem to solve the problem of having 689 hours assigned to each
resource, but now there are 87 individual tasks showing up in my Resources
Usage sheet (Daily Meeting 1, Daily Meeting 2, Daily Meeting 3, etc., etc.)
It's messy, to say the least. There's really no way to aggregate these
meetings?

 

[Steve House]

I believe you, but I did a little test in Project 2007. Created new
project, starting 01 Feb. All setting on the defaults, Project Calendar is
the default 8-5, M-F Standard calendar. The only task in the project is a
recurring task of a 1-hour meeting on each workday, ending 31 May. Resource
Joe, assigned to the rolled up task, assignment propagates to the individual
meetings. Rolled up task shows a duration of 85.13 days. Reformatting the
duration to hours yields a duration of 681 hours. Switching to either
resource or task usage view shows a work value of 86 hours. Where does what
you did and what I did differ? (When you created the meeting task in your
project, did you change the duration in the recurring task dialog box to
"1H" or did you accidently leave it at the default "1D"? Leaving it at 1D
would give you the work value you report you're getting.)
--
Steve House
MS Project Trainer & Consultant

All due respect, but that's not the case. Each individual resource is
showing 689h assigned to them from this one task. It shows up under their
names in the resource sheet, the task usage
vew and the resource usage view. If there's a way to send you a
screenshot,
let me know and I'll show you.

 

[Rod Gill]

Expand the Recurring Task to see all sub-tasks. Each of these needs a 1h
duration with Resources at 100%.

--

Rod Gill
Microsoft MVP for Project - http://www.project-systems.co.nz

Author of the only book on Project VBA, see: http://www.projectvbabook.com

I do want to include the hours of work for the meeting in my work budget
for
the project. I'm not tracking resource rates, but I would still like the
hour per day reflected in the resource charts.

The problem is not the fact that hours for the meeting are shown, it's
that
there are far too many. 1 hour per day for four months should be roughly
90
hours. Project is assigning eight hours per day, every work day, for four
months to each resource based off of this one recurring task. I could
reduce
the Max Units by one hour per day, but wouldn't that throw off the work
units
of every other Task these resources are assigned to?





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signature database 4829 (20100202) __________

The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.

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The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.

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