Scheduling by the hour

[Troy Lee]

Any ideas why Project is giving me difficulty defining a specific time
to start a task? I am trying to schedule a task for 8pm to 10pm. I
have changed the working time options to reflect the extended work
day. I also made a copy of the Standard calendar so as not to confuse
my other projects. When I schedule in a task for today, for instance,
to start at 8pm tonight, it re-schedules it to start tomorrow at 8 am.
The only way it will schedule the task for today is if I pull it back
to 5pm, which is not what I want.

Thanks.

Troy Lee

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

As long as 8pm is working time inputting 9/7/2007 20:00 (or the equivalent
in Amaerican notation) as start time or better,, in a constraint, will work

 

[Steve House]

Several issues are at work here. First, when you enter a start date and
time in the Start column you are NOT enetering a start date. What you are
entering is a Start No Earlier Than constraint. This is the earliest the
task is permitted to start, all other things being equal, but it is free to
start at any later time as well.

Remember, you DO NOT schedule tasks, MS Project does that job. You don't
tell it the schedule, it tells you.

Tasks can only take place when the resources required to do the task are at
work. The Project Calendar tells project what the general working times are
for each day and govern the tasks when resources have not been assigned.
Resource calendars govern the tasks afte resources are assigned.
Disregarding resources for the moment, if your Project Calendar says the
hours of work are 8am to 5pm, it is impossible for a task to start at 8pm.
Why? Because there's no one there to do it! While 8pm is the earliest it
could start if someone was there, it won't actually be scheduled to start
until it knows someone will show up to do it and the behavious of your
project clearly says that 8am is that time. I'll just bet that you really
have not set the working time options to reflect a work day that encompasses
8pm - either the Project Celanedar or the resource's calendar if a resource
is assigned says that work on this task can only take place between 8am and
5pm.