Forum Discussion
Length of days!
I am wanting to use Project to help me plan the courses that I teach in college. I started to play around and have watched various help videos and it looks like a powerful, easy to use piece of software. I have various tasks which students need to complete and I have figured out the time it will take to do these tasks (eg- 1 day or 3 days etc). I have run into a problem though. The way my current timetable works is this- Monday and Thursday are full days. Tues and Weds are half days. Fridays alternate each week between a half day or a quarter day!!
So when I write in that a task takes 3 days starting on Monday, Project then writes in that it will take Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday when in reality it would need Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to complete the 3 day task. (Sorry if this is not making sense, I hope you can see what I am getting at here!!)
Is there a way to set up Project so that it knows the length of each day so that it would map the correct amount of days correctly? Even it know the different lengths of the alternating Fridays? Or is this not the software to use for this kind of job?
Many many thanks for any help and guidance with this issue.
Entering task durations in hours is the ONLY way you will be able to set up your class scheduling. And you will also need to create the custom project calendar I outlined.
John
Well you can scrub the idea that Project is an "easy to use piece of software". It isn't, and you've found that out.
Project only allows one definition for a "day" so the first thing I suggest is that you use hours instead of days. The next thing you need to do is to create a custom project calendar with Monday and Thursday as full days, Tuesday and Wednesdays as half days. That's easy enough via, Project > Properties group > Change working time. And do not simply edit the Standard calendar but create a separate custom calendar based on the Standard. Setting up the alternate half and quarter Fridays is more challenging. First, set up every Friday as a 4 hour day. Then do a recurring exception for every other Friday as a 2 hour day. This is what the 4 hour Friday's will look like,
And this is what alternate Friday's will look like
Hope this helps.
John
- Hello John. Thanks so much for this. Really appreciate your help. Although it sounds like Project is not as easy to use as I thought. My work has got it so it looks like the only option for this kind of work so I will try stick with it. So with what you have shown me do I take it that I should then be able to say for each task the length of time in hours rather than days? Would this then make it simpler to enter the length of each task?
Entering task durations in hours is the ONLY way you will be able to set up your class scheduling. And you will also need to create the custom project calendar I outlined.
John
