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:
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.
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:
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:
To create a work template from the Resources page:
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:
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.
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.
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