How to use calendars in Project?
Published Jul 17 2020 04:46 PM 8,019 Views

As a project manager, your job is to schedule tasks accurately to ensure everything happens at the right time.  However, before you begin to schedule, you need to determine the number of the working hours and days it will take to complete these tasks.

 

Project for the web comes with a default work template that can be automatically applied to all projects. This template is based on the average work schedule: it specifies work hours of 9AM through 5PM from Monday through Friday. If your work does not follow this schedule, you can create a new work template to suit your project’s needs. This blog post will walk you through the steps of changing the working hours and days of a project in Microsoft Project.

Project for the web is built on the Microsoft Power Platform. Because of this, some aspects of calendar and assignment setup needs to be done in Power Apps.

 

To access Dynamics 365:

  1. While signed in to Office 365, open a browser window and go to https://web.powerapps.com
  2. On the PowerApps page, select Apps.
  3. On the Apps page, in the Org Apps tab, select Project.

Power Apps - 1st image.png

From here, you can make changes to your projects and resources, implementing behind-the-scenes capabilities that can help you with project planning. 

 

Note: For the purposes of this article, we will refer to assignees as resources. This is the term used by Dynamics 365 to refer to people assigned to complete tasks, but this term is not generally used in Project for the web.

 

Creating a work hours template

A work hour template (WHT) is a template that defines working days and hours and can later be applied to a project or resource. For example, a user might have a “Night Shift” WHT defined as Monday-Sunday 8PM-7AM, or a “Weekend Shift” WHT defined as Thursday-Sunday, 8AM-5PM.

There are several ways you can create a work hours template; however, all work templates are based off the calendars of bookable resources. A bookable resource is anything that can be scheduled. You can create a bookable resource in Dynamics 365 and configure its working hours. These working hours will define when the resource can be assigned work.

 

Note: You will not be able to create new bookable resources or work hours templates if you are not an Dynamics  admin. If you follow these steps and do NOT see the buttons discussed here, talk to your Office 365 admin to help you with this work.

 

To create a bookable resource:

  1. From the Project Power Apps page, select Resources.
  2. Select New.
  3. Add a resource type, user, and a name to your bookable resource, then select Save and Close. This will bring you back to the resources page     Note: To learn more about bookable resources, check out the Set up bookable resources article. In summary, “Resource type” indicates who and what the resource is, “User” indicates who owns the bookable resource, and “Name” is the name of the bookable resource. 
  4. Select the name of your newly created resource.
  5. On the top ribbon, select Show Work Hours Work calendar.png

     

  6. Select one of the working days. This should open a new view with options to ‘Edit’ and ‘Delete’ the working hours 
  7. Select ‘Edit’ and ‘All events in the series’
  8. From this pane, select your desired working days and working hours 4th image.png

     

  9. Select ‘Save’ on the Hours pane 
  10. Select Save and Close until you get back to your resource page.

Once you’ve configured a Bookable Resource’s calendar, you can create a work hours template based on this resource. You can do this in one of the following two ways.

To create a work template from the Active Work Hour Templates page:

  1. From the Project Power Apps page, select the Projects menu on the bottom of the left pane, and then select Settings.
  2. On the Project Settings Parameters page, select Calendar Templates.
  3. On the Active Work Hour Templates page, select New.
  4. Name your work template and (optionally) add a description
  5. Use the drop-down menu to select the Template Resource that you would like to base the work hours on.
  6. Select Save and Close. Your new work hours template will display on the Active Work Hour Templates page. 3rd work image.png

To create a work template from the Resources page:

  1. On the Resources page, select the resource you want to base your work hours on.
  2. Select Save Calendar As, enter a name for the work hours template, and then select Save.
  3. When you’re done changing options, select Save and Close.

 

Applying a calendar to a project

Once you’ve created a work hours template, you can apply that template directly to a project.

To apply a work hours template to a project:

  1. In your project, open the Project Settings pane.
  2. Select the Calendar drop-down menu and select the work hours template you want to apply to the project.

If you do not see the Calendar field in Project details, this means you only have one available work hours template.

Once you have configured the calendar field to the right WHT, your work should only be scheduled during the working hours defined on the template.

 

FAQ

Q: Where can I find out more?

A: Check out our article: Create and apply work calendars in Project for the web

 

Q: Can I configure a resource calendar?

A: You can apply a calendar to a resource from the Resources page on PowerApps. From the Resources page, select the resources that you want to apply a calendar for and select Set Calendar. In the Work Template window, select the work template that you want to apply to your resource.

You can learn more about applying a calendar to a resource.

 

Q: Who has access to this functionality?

A: Dynamics 365 admins have the ability to create and apply calendars. If you follow these steps and do not see the mentioned buttons, then you do not have admin access to Project. You should contact your admin for help with calendar issues.

6 Comments
Copper Contributor

IMO, eventually these kind of setting should be accessible from project site itself. 

If I change work hours to something different from 8h/day, start and finish dates get confused.

Copper Contributor

This does not work straight away for me. When I follow this procedure, it will take several hours, maybe days before I have this right. I also have projects with the same calendar template with different start and finish time. To change this to 8-16 seems very difficult. When I make a new template, I also must change the time zone two-three times. I am trying to find out where all this information is hidden. Is there a default time zone somewhere in the system? Please, is there anybody out there that can try to explain to me what is happening? Where is more guides to Project for the web?

Copper Contributor

You do not have to change the timezone for calendar events (like leave / non working time), you only have to set the resources timezone. The calendar is always in GMT (look at the bottom of the work hours screen of a resource: GMT with a lock) as well as the specific events (standard in GMT, no need to change). Events will show up in the right timezone per resource as set.  

Copper Contributor

It would be great if a work hours template could be copied into a new one, so to only change work hours for example, while keeping all the standard leave and non-working time events for the coming years as-is. 

Copper Contributor

Hi, how can I bring the holidays for a specific resource by using power automate, what table holds that information that I can use?

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‎Jul 17 2020 04:46 PM