Forum Discussion
Action Planning with MS Project Pro
Hi,
I want to make an action plan for technical service for 2 members of staff for whole a year. The services last 2 to 5 days each in different countries. The services should not take place when there is a weekend or a holiday in the home country, the country of service on at least one of the planned service days, or when at least one of the staff has vaccation. At best, MS Project makes a proposal when a service with persons in a certain country should take place or it shows what prevents the planning of a service. How can I do that with MS Project?
Regards, mainze
The first thing to do is to create a custom calendar for each country. Each of those calendars should identify the working days, working hours, and holiday exceptions.
Next, create a calendar for each resource with exceptions for their vacation periods.
As you lay out each service task, use the Task Calendar field to identify the country calendar. Which calendar to use for the overall Project calendar depends on a couple factors. If there are other tasks not subject to specific countries, then the Project calendar should be a calendar that reflects the normal working days and times in your company. This might be the default Standard calendar or a custom calendar created with work days, hours and holiday exceptions, but do NOT directly modify the Standard calendar, instead, create a copy of the Standard and modify it as necessary.
You might also have an issue with entering task duration values. Project only has one definition for a "day" and that is by default 8 hours. If you have several different spans for a "day", (i.e. USA works an 8 hour day but country A works a 7.5 hour day, country B works a 9 hour day, etc.), then I suggest you enter duration values in hours.
Those are some starting pointers, if you have further questions, please let us know.
John
- Hi John,
thanks John. How would the scheduling planning work ? How can I realize that the intended service period comes to a restriction and with which calendar ? Normally there are two service visits per year in the same company.
Regards, mainzeHere's a simple example that includes many of the elements I noted in my initial response. In this example, resource "Joe" works a normal 8h shift on the Standard calendar (Project calendar). Joe has scheduled vacation on 8/1/24 and 8/2/24 just before he heads out to country A for a 40h service task. Country A has a normal 5 day workweek but work days are 7 hours and there is a country national holiday on 8/4/24 and 8/5/24. When Joe returns from the service task there is a 3h lag so he returns to "normal duties" at his company's normal start at 8:00 am.
The Task Usage view shows a few things. First, it shows Joe's vacation days and Country A's two day holiday. It also shows the work hours per day, normal 8 hour days at "home" and 7 hour days while working at Country A.
How this helps to clarify.
John
