You can use the project calendar (project calendar: The base calendar used by a project.) to reflect the general working days and hours of your project, as well as regular nonworking times (nonworking time: Hours or days designated in a resource or project calendar when Project should not schedule tasks because work is not done. Nonworking time can include lunch breaks, weekends, and holidays, for example.) (such as weekends and evenings) and special days off (such as holidays).
Note If you are using Project Professional 2010 with Project Web App, you can only change project and resource calendars with specific permissions granted to you by an administrator.
In this article
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Add a vacation day for a resource
- Click the Project tab, and in the Properties group, click Change Working Time.
- In the Change Working Time dialog box, click the resource whose calendar you want to change in the For calendar list.
- Click the Exceptions tab.
- Type a descriptive name for the exception, such as Vacation day, and the start and finish times for the time during which the exception will occur.
- If the exception will be repeated throughout a portion of the schedule, click Details.
- Under Recurrence pattern, select the frequency from Daily to Yearly, and then select additional details about the recurrence pattern.
Note The details of the recurrence pattern change, depending on whether you want to create a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly pattern.
- Under Range of recurrence, choose the starting time for the exception by using the Start box, and then select either End after or End by.
- Type or select the appropriate information, based on your ending time selection.
- If you selected End after, type or select the number of occurrences for the task.
- If you selected End by, type or select the date when you want the recurring task to end.
Any tasks that this resource is assigned to will now be scheduled around the vacation day by, typically, lengthening the number of days that will be needed to complete the task.
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Add a holiday to the project calendar
Note Project does not include a preset holiday calendar. To add your organization's holidays to a project, you must specify them one at a time on the project calendar. If you plan to use this holiday schedule for multiple projects, consider making the project a template or adding the calendar to the global file. If you are using Project Professional, consider asking your server administrator to add the calendar to the enterprise global template.
- Click the Project tab, and in the Properties group, click Change Working Time.
- In the For calendar list, click the calendar that you want to change. The project calendar for the current project is followed by (Project Calendar). The default is Standard (Project Calendar). You can also choose 24 Hours or Night Shift.
- In the Change Working Time dialog box, click the Exceptions tab.
- Type a descriptive name for the exception, such as Company Holiday, and the start and finish times for the time during which the exception will occur.
- If the exception will be repeated throughout a portion of the schedule, click Details.
- Under Recurrence pattern, select the frequency from Daily to Yearly, and then select additional details about the recurrence pattern . The details of the recurrence pattern change, depending on whether you want to create a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly pattern.
Note The details of the recurrence pattern change, depending on whether you want to create a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly pattern.
- Under Range of recurrence, choose the starting time for the exception by using the Start box, and then select either End after or End by.
- Type or select the appropriate information, based on your ending time selection.
- If you selected End after, type or select the number of occurrences for the task.
- If you selected End by, type or select the date when you want the recurring task to end.
Any tasks scheduled around the holiday will automatically be rescheduled to take into account the nonworking time of the holiday.
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Set the working times for resources or tasks on the project
The following procedure applies to changing any calendar in your project, including the default standard project, a specific resources calendar, or a task calendar.
Note Project does not include a preset holiday calendar. To add your organization's holidays to a project, you must specify them one at a time on the project calendar. If you plan to use this holiday schedule for multiple projects, consider making the project a template or adding the calendar to the global file. If you are using Project Professional, ask your server administrator to add them to the enterprise global template.
- Click the Project tab, and in the Properties group, click Change Working Time.
- In the For calendar list, click the calendar that you want to change. The project calendar for the current project is followed by (Project Calendar). The default is Standard (Project Calendar). You can also choose 24 Hours or Night Shift.
Note If you want to create a new calendar instead of changing the default calendar, click Create New Calendar, type a name for the calendar, and then choose whether you want to create a new base calendar or make a calendar that is based on a copy of another calendar.
You can use this feature to customize your project calendar to your organization's needs (such as by creating a work week that includes weekend days).
- To change the default work week for either the project calendar, resource calendar or for a new one you created, click the Work Weeks tab.
- On the Work Weeks tab, you can choose or create an additional work week schedule for a range of days that differ from the default work day, such as a summer schedule for road work or a work week that includes weekend days. In the Working times table, type a descriptive name in the Name column for the new work week schedule, such as Road Work, and then enter the start times and the finish times for the time during which the additional scheduling will occur.
- Click Details.
- In the Details for dialog box, select in turn each day you want to change from a working day to non-working day, or vice versa, and then select one of the following:
- Use Default working times for these days Choose the days that should use the default working times, which are 8:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. and 1:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M., Monday through Friday, and nonworking time on weekends.
- Set days to nonworking time Choose the days on which no work can be scheduled. For example, if no one in your organization works on a Friday, select Friday, and then select Set days to nonworking time.
- Set days to these specific working times To set the working times for the selected days throughout the schedule, type the times that you want work to start in the From boxes and the times you want work to end in the To boxes. For example, if people in your organization work on Saturdays, select Saturday, and then select Set day(s) to these specific working times.
Notes
- If you are using Project Professional to make changes to schedule (schedule: The timing and sequence of tasks within a project. A schedule consists mainly of tasks, task dependencies, durations, constraints, and time-oriented project information.) information for an enterprise resource (enterprise resources: Resources that are part of an organization's entire list of resources. Enterprise resources can be shared across projects.), you must first check out the resource. You can also update the changes to the resource calendars by using Project Server (Project Server: A Project companion product that enables collaborative planning and status reporting among workgroup members, project managers, and other stakeholders by working with and exchanging project information on a Web site.).
- Working time calendars do not apply to material resources.
- Task and resource calendars override the project calendar. Therefore, you can choose vacation time for different resources whose calendars are based on the same project calendar. At the same time, if you need to make the same change to everyone's calendar, such as a holiday, you can apply the project calendar rather than make changes to each resource calendar.
- You can use the working hours in the project calendar to help accommodate work on nonproject tasks. If team members realistically can spend only six hours per day on project tasks, with the other two hours spent on meetings and administrative tasks, you can reflect this by indicating resource availability of six hours per day in the project calendar.
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Change the resource availability without using a calendar
If you are working with automatically scheduled tasks, you can change a resource's availability without changing that resource's calendar. Aside from the effects of the project calendar, availability is also reflected by a resource's working time (working time: Hours designated in a resource or project calendar during which work can occur.), starting and ending availability (availability: Indicates when and how much of a resource's time can be scheduled for assigned work. Availability is determined by project and resource calendars, resource start and finish dates, or the level at which the resource is available for work.) dates, and any varying unit (units: The quantity of a resource assigned to a task. The maximum units is the maximum number of units available for the resource. For example, if you have three plumbers, the maximum units is 300 percent or three plumbers working full-time.) availability at different time periods. Project uses this information to determine whether a resource is overallocated. This is useful if you know that a resource will be available to work for a certain amount of time on a specific task, but you don't want to change the resource's availability for other tasks in the project.
If you are using Project Professional to change schedule information for an enterprise resource (enterprise resources: Resources that are part of an organization's entire list of resources. Enterprise resources can be shared across projects.), you must first check out the resource. You can also update the changes to the resource calendars by using Project Server (Project Server: A Project companion product that enables collaborative planning and status reporting among workgroup members, project managers, and other stakeholders by working with and exchanging project information on a Web site.).
- Click the View tab, and in the Resource Views group, click Resource sheet.
- Right-click the resource name, and then click Resource Information.
- In the Resource Information dialog box, click the General tab.
- In the Available From field, enter the resource's start date on the project.
- In the Available To field, enter the resource's finish date on the project.
- In the Units field, type the number of maximum units (maximum units: The maximum percentage or number of units that a resource is available to be scheduled for any tasks. The maximum units value indicates the highest capacity at which the resource is available for work; the default value is 100 percent.) that this resource is available during this period of time.
You can enter maximum units as a percentage (for example, 50%, 100%, or 300%), or as a decimal (for example, 0.5, 1, or 3).
- To adjust the assignment of a single resource to full-time effort, in the Units field (field: A location in a sheet, form, or chart that contains a specific kind of information about a task, resource, or assignment. For example, in a sheet, each column is a field. In a form, a field is a named box or a place in a column.) for the resource you want, type or select 100%.
- To adjust the assignment of a single resource to part-time effort, type or select a percentage less than 100 to reflect the level of part-time effort that this resource will be working. For example, if the resource will be working on this task half-time, type 50%.
- To adjust the unit assignment of a group of multiple resources, type a percentage that represents the level of effort for this group of resources. For example, if the resource group is Operators, there are three resources in this group, and you want to assign all of them full-time, type 300%.
Notes
- Although the Resource Availability table in the Resource Information dialog box changes a resource's maximum units over the life of the project, it does not change the resource rates over time. You can enter different rates for a resource in a cost rate table.
- The Resource Availability table adjusts the maximum unit availability throughout a project, and work contours adjust the varying levels of work throughout a specific assignment.
- You can enter a date in the Available To field without entering a date in the Available From field.
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Overview of Project calendars
Project uses several calendars (calendar: The scheduling mechanism that determines working time for resources and tasks. Project uses four types of calendars: the base calendar, project calendar, resource calendar, and task calendar.) to determine resource availability (availability: Indicates when and how much of a resource's time can be scheduled for assigned work. Availability is determined by project and resource calendars, resource start and finish dates, or the level at which the resource is available for work.) and the way that tasks (task: An activity that has a beginning and an end. Project plans are made up of tasks.) are scheduled.
Note If you are using Project Professional, you must first check out the resource.
Note If you are using Project Professional with Project Server (Project Server: A Project companion product that enables collaborative planning and status reporting among workgroup members, project managers, and other stakeholders by working with and exchanging project information on a Web site.), you cannot directly edit the project calendar, nor can you set any nonworking times, such as vacation times. In this case, the project calendar is defined by the enterprise global template (enterprise global template: A collection of default settings, such as views, tables, and fields, that are used by all projects across the organization. These settings exist within a special project in Project Server.). Only someone with administrative permissions (privileges: These specify the items in a project that a user can either see or modify. For example, only someone with administrative privileges can modify outline codes to be used by all project managers within an organization.) (for example, your server administrator) can check out and change items in the enterprise global template.
Keep in mind that working time calendars and resource availability do not apply to material resources (material resource: The supplies or other consumable items that are used to complete tasks in a project.).
Tip If you set up the same calendar each time that you create a new project, consider saving a completed project as a template (template: A Project file format [*.mpt] that lets you reuse existing schedules as the starting point for creating new schedules. Task and resource information, formatting, macros, and project-specific settings can all become part of a template.) or adding the calendar to the global file (global file: A Project file [Global.mpt] that contains information you can use for different projects. Information in a global file can include views, calendars, forms, reports, tables, filters, toolbars, menu bars, macros, and options settings.).
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