Using Tasks to Force MSP to Consider Vacation Time

[Simon Shutter]

I just read Jan De Messemaeker's article on Entering nonworking time as a
Project task :

http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/assistance/HA011556831033.aspx

I am wondering what the point of specifying non-Available dates is in the
general tab of a resource if MS Project does not identity conflicts with
vacation, for example, as an overallocation.

Can Jan or someone else here pls clarify best techniques for identifying
scheduling conflicts due to vacation.

tx

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Simon,

As the article says, there are different awys to identify nonworking time.
Of course the most direct and most wodely used is to enter nonworking tiome
in Tools, Change Working time.
Project will immediately reschedule all task of the resource such that it
opdes not work during nonworking time, and that's fine.
There are however a few problems associated with that:
- You cannot visualise nonworking time in any of the MS project views
- When 2 resources have to work TOGETHER on a task, you assign them to the
task, one of them has some nonworking time during the task, Project will
schedule the other one to work alone..

These issues can be avoided by giving everyone a full time calendar and
introducing nonworking time as tasks... see the article;

Now you bring up a THIRD way, that is to define availability of the resource
through the general tab of resource information. I do not remember that my
article talks about that one. Anyway, it reacts differently from the
nonworking time definition in that it does not immediately affect teh
schedule but contrary to what you seem to imply it does create an
overallocation indication, and this overallocation affects for instance
resource leveling.
HTH

 

[Simon Shutter]

Thanks, Jan for the response. It's great to be able to get additional
advice from an article author.

Can you suggest why I'm not seeing resources as being overallocated when I
make them 0% available under the resource info | general tab? Is it to do
with other fields such as Fixed Duration and Effort Driven?

Tx again

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Honestly, I can't because for me they ARE shown as overallocated
I even tried/verified this before posting!
Which version do you use?

 

[Simon Shutter]

2003 - I will look into this further

BTW, I wasn't sure what you meant about "giving everyone a full-time
Calendar". Also, what I was finding is that if someone goes on a long
vacation which initially conflicts with a work task, MS Project forces the
task into the vacation and splits the vacation, which will surely upset the
employee! The only way around this I found was to set the priority of the
vacation to be 1000 so it took precedence. Is this the right approach? How
will levelling resolve it (as your article suggests)?

tx

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Leveling leaves 1000 priority tasks alone, doesn't move them whatever.
HTH