Distribute Global Calendar

[SpaceCamel]

Every year we need to distribule a new global calendar with the standard
company holidays to all MSP users.

What is the best process for doing this to ensure all projects of all users
are changed to the new calendar? Perferably with minimal user effort.

The current global calendar is kept in a template file on the server.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi SC,
I suppose you do not have Project server?
Can you open all projects from a central location? So you have a list of
addresses?
In that case you can write a VBA procedure opening them and using
OrganizerMoveItem method to copy the standard calendar.

An other option is to send a file with the new standard calendar, that runs
a macro at open copying the calendar.

HTH

 

[SpaceCamel]

Right, no Project Server yet.
Right, not all projects are in a central location.

Will have to send the file that runs a macro to copy the calendar to their
Global.mpt
and then I guess it is up to the user to copy the calendar to the individual
project files.

Will have to add a revision code the the calendar name to determine if a
project is using the most current calendar.
====================

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

One caution with that approach - if they have customized their standard
calendar rather than customizing a copy of it beyond the company holidays
with hours of work, regional variations, etc, copying your new calendar to
their projects from the Global will lose their changes. Likewise, if they
HAVE made a copy of the original to add additional cusomizations to it, just
copying the newly distributed calendar into the project file won't affect
the calendars they're actually using. Here in Canada we frequently have
that situation because we have multiple base calendars with different
holidays due to jurisdictional issues. The legally mandated holidays in
Ontario are different from those in Quebec, for example, and it's very
common for projects to have resources in both jurisdictions.

If it's just updating company holidays for the coming year, why not simply
distribute a memo and let them update their files by hand? Seems like that
would be a lot less bother both on your end and theirs than sending fresh
files and building the macros to copy them, etc. How much trouble could it
be for them to enter 10-15 holidays by hand as non-working days into the
calendars in their project files when they get the memo? I'm all in favour
of making things as simple as possible for people but there's a limit to how
much hand-holding is really necessary.

 

[SpaceCamel]

The problem is that the holidays in the calendars are not being updated.

We still need to distribute the global calendar so it will be used on new
projects.

It would be rare for a project to have custom workdays, but possible. For
existing projects I have written an Excel/MSP macro that compares a master
holiday list with the project's calendar and then only makes those selected
additions. This can be batch run on all the projects in a folder.

============

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Noty so rare actually - if you operate shifts, for example, you may well
have on calendar for day shift and another for swing shift. Your holiday
need to be updated in both

Steve House [MVP]