Resource Calendar

[dee]

If I want to give my resources an hour of "off time" for them to do other
work during the day, what is the best approach?

I could change either their own individual calendar for individuals or
modify the Standard Calendar, or create a new base calendar for those
resources and make the break from noon - 2 instead of noon - 1. But what if
I don't care at what time they execute their duties, as long as it gets done
sometime that day.

Or should I just keep the calendar "as is" and make sure not to assign more
than, say, 6 hours of work per day.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Dave]

If I want to give my resources an hour of "off time" for them to do other
work during the day, what is the best approach?

I could change either their own individual calendar for individuals or
modify the Standard Calendar, or create a new base calendar for those
resources and make the break from noon - 2 instead of noon - 1. But what if
I don't care at what time they execute their duties, as long as it gets done
sometime that day.

Or should I just keep the calendar "as is" and make sure not to assign more
than, say, 6 hours of work per day.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

It really depends on your set up. I assume you aren't using Project
Server. I would then leave the resource calendar unchanged and allocate
my resource at a level of effort which did not exceed the 6 hour threshold.

By doing this, you allow him to be picked up for the remainder of his
effort by other projects if you wish and you use a resource pool.

You also don't say if this situation is unique for one employee or if it
applies to a number of employees. Generally speaking you don't want to
be making custom calendars for individual employees unless necessary.
It is better and more flexible to manage an individual's workload within
the constraints of their working day.

If you were to modify the calendar, then if on any one day he exceeded
your threshold, then he would show as being overallocated which would
probably not be an accurate reflection.

 

[dee]

Thank you for your time and response.

Actually, we will be using Project Server, but it isn't installed yet. Just
getting up to speed on how everything works.

What would be the difference when using Project Server?

Thanks again.

 

[Dave]

Thank you for your time and response.

Actually, we will be using Project Server, but it isn't installed yet. Just
getting up to speed on how everything works.

What would be the difference when using Project Server?

Thanks again.

In practical terms, it implies a more complex project management
environment in which an individual can be assigned to several projects
simultaneously. In that case, you may well want to assign the totality
of somebody's time across several projects and so you wouldn't want to
change their calendars (which in any case are likely to be administered
centrally so you may not have the luxury of being able to change them).

My advice of having the calendar represent the full working day and
limiting the amount of time somebody works on individual tasks still stands.