Displaying only available resources

[Lisa Graham]

I have a project in which I want to assign resources. I have set up working
times for all my resources so I will know when each is available to work.
When I go to a task to assign a resource, I want to be presented with a list
of only those resources who are available during the duration of that task.
For example, I have task during the first week of March and only 3 of my 4
resources can work during that week. Can Project show me just those 3? Is
this possible?

Thanks,
Lisa

 

[Rod Gill]

Hi,

Yes: Project Professional 2003 with Project Server does this. In earlier
versions:
Select Window, Split
Make the lower pane active
Select View, Resource Usage
Right click the yellow area and select Remaining availability

Now you can see what resources are available when, but only for the
availability set up for this project. The Project Server solution lets you
know what availability there is across all projects in the server database.

--
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Rod Gill
Project MVP
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development services
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[John]

Lisa,
The answer is yes but you will need a VBA macro to do it. I would
envision either an input box that pops up or more likely a UserForm that
pops up when the Assign Resources icon is clicked. The UserForm would
list only those resources that are available for the selected task. It
wouldn't be a real complex macro but it would require some VBA expertise
to code it up.

If you are not up to writing a custom macro (or having someone write it
for you), you might try a less straightforward but perhaps adequate
approach. From the Resource Usage view, run the "Analyze timescaled data
in Excel" add-in. Export Work and Work Availability. Once the data is in
Excel you should be able to apply some formulas to extract resource
availability per timeframe. Unfortunately as the available resources are
assigned you will either need to do another export or provide some means
of keeping track of resource assignments on the Excel Worksheet. As I
said, it is less than perfect but will probably get you there.

I also looked at some of the various views and reports to see it
anything was remotely feasible using those but I came up with nothing.

Hope this helps.
John

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Lisa --

If you are using Microsoft Project Professional with either Project Server
2002 or 2003, you already have the capability to determine available
resources for task work. To do this, complete the following steps:

1. Open the project in question from the Project Server database
2. Select the task for which you want to find available resources
3. Click the Assign Resources button on the Standard toolbar
4. Apply a Filter, if necessary, to show only resources with the proper
skills for that task
5. Click the Available to work option and set the number of hours required
for that task

The list of resources displayed in the dialog will be those with both the
proper skill AND the availability to work on the task. The beauty of this
tool in the enterprise environment is that the Available to work filter
determines the availability of your resources across ALL projects in the
Project Server database. If no names appear on the filtered list, then
nobody is available to work on your project, based on their assignments in
other projects. Hope this helps.