Christmas Freeze in MS Project 2003

Alexandre,

I got it, thanks again, I was expecting for something better on part of MSP, it is funny indeed.

"it is possible with MSP to schedule work on a task when the resource is available after the task is finished! "- that I understood after after your previous clarification, that the activity bars and the resource assignment bars are not matching is the new surprise. Perhaps it can be a theme for a discussion on a new thread as for me to understand MSP reasoning.

Alicia,

I hope the discussion have been of much help to you, perhaps you was expecting from MSP the behavior I was. I would like to know if you solved your issue and how. Even when I am not a MSP user I frequently transfer un-statused subcontractor files directly into or baselines. I look for a better understanding on the basics of MSP that will help me interpret the different ways of MSP. I also transfer files from other software I do not use, some of our subcontractors are still using old versions of P3 and SureTrak and I have the same need with these also.

Best regards,

Rafael

Rafael,

unfortunately you are wrong!

it is possible with MSP to schedule work on a task when the resource is available after the task is finished!

I mean, let's say the task is 2 day long from Mon to Tue, the resource is not available before Wed, MSP will display the task bar Mon - Tue and say in the End Date field the task goes thru' Wed night!

Funny, isn't it?

Alexandre

Alexandre,

I do not have MSP any longer, but accept your clarification, it works different to Spider Project. For me it is unsuspecting and hard to believe that a software will schedule work on an activity when unlimited/limited resources are not available (task calendar to take priority), that an activity will be scheduled when it is not available ( priority by default to the resource calendar) by virtue of its own calendar is even more of a surprise. Thanks for the clarification as I still must struggle with the interpretation of some schedules submitted by our subcontractors in MSP, now I have a better view on the awkward results by MSP.

I have seen worst, there is software out there where you can schedule resources at different times the activity is scheduled I believe they call it "Bucket Planning", a worst violation of resource assignment logic, at least in MSP activity bars agree with resource assignment bars.

Best regards,

Rafael

Raphaël,

"If activity calendar have the Christmas exception then the activity will not be scheduled within this period no matter what the calendar of your resources is."

No, Sir! MS Project gives priority by default to the resource calendar; i.e. if the project calendar and a possible task calendar have days off for Xmas and the assigned resource calendar has not, by default the task will be scheduled at Xmas time; the user has to specify he/she wants the task calendar to take priority.

Your explanation is as usual very good on a theoritical point of view, but it misses a good look at the software.

Cheers

Try checking all your calendars, start with the activity calendar to make sure the exceptions were applied. Even if you changed global calendar or whatever name MSP uses there is a possibility calendars previously defined based on this calendar will not the automatically adjusted, and even if so, maybe calendar exceptions are not transferred.

If activity calendar have the Christmas exception then the activity will not be scheduled within this period no matter what the calendar of your resources is. Work on an activity is scheduled when all resources within any individual team are available at the same time the activity is available for work. This means resource calendars must be compatible with activity calendar, that is that they shall share some common work time. An activity calendar with 24hr work time is compatible with a resource calendar to work at night as well with a resource calendar to work during the day. 

In order to schedule work on different shifts on the same activity the software must allow for modeling of teams, therefore in MSP as well as in many other software without this functionality this imposes a limitation on their models, the workaround is splitting the activity into two which makes a poor model.

Hope the shift work issue does not create confusion but a clue on how to handle work on shift resources and their calendars.

Alicia,

do you have resources assigned to those tasks? if yes, have you changed the resource calendars in some way, that would make MS Project use these calendars instead of the project's Standard calendar?

when you assign a resource to a task, MSP uses the resource calendar by default; to use the project's calendar, open the Task Information dialog box, go to Advanced, select any calendar in the dropdown list and check the "Scheduling ignores resource calendars" check box

other reason not to have the desired Xmas freeze could be that all the tasks occuring during the period have a date constraint, that you will find in the same dialog box, same tab

Hope it helps,

Alexandre

Alicia,

in the "change working time" bit, check which calendar you have ammened -you'll see this listed in the top left.

Then insert the column "task calendar" into your sheet and make sure the tasks you want to be pushed out are using the same calendar

(NB: If you have made the change to the calendar which has been made the "Project calendar" in" Project>Project Information", this should be used as default for all tasks without you having to specify.)

If this isn't solving your problem ,the only other thing I can think of is to check you made the changes to the christmas period for the correct year(s)!