Enterprise Calendars Tasks or Resources

[Michelle]

In planning our implementation, the PM's want to assign each task a calendar
since we have an international operation and some tasks are performed in
different countries. I think because we haven't talked much about resources
yet this may not be the best plan.

If eventually we want to have Resource managers assign time and use
administrative projects to show time off then won't resource calendars be
more important?

Would we assign calendars to the generic resources we are setting up before
we deal with specific resource assignments? What cautions would you give?
What concerns should we have?

Thanks in advance for your help,

Michelle

 

[Manmeet Chaudhari]

Hi Michelle
I have following suggestions

1. Assign task to resources.
2. For a particular resource you will know in advance when is he working and
for how long
3. Update the calendar accordingly e.g Resource 'a' has a calendar in which
september has timing abiding to country'a' october has timing abiding to
country'b'.so on so forth
4. To which ever task this resource will be assigned timings will be taken
care of.
Hope this helps

Manmeet Chaudhari
EPM Trainer

 

[Michelle]

Hi Manmeet,

I appreciate you reply but I'm not sure I understand. I probably didn't
phrase my question very well either. What we have right now are different
calendars assigned to each and every task. We don't have resource calendars
because we are only using generic resources.

Once we implement an RBS, and start matching the generic resources to
specific ones, I'm assuming we will have to assign the resources to calendars
in order to use the functionality for allocation, leveling, etc. In that
case, which calendar "wins out?"

Would it be best just to use resource calendars and not task calendars at
all? Do some people use both and if so, how do you have it structured?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Michelle --

I don't understand the purpose of assigning calendars to every task. I
think you folks are going to way more work than you need to do. Here's the
approach I would use in your situation:

1. In the Enterprise Global file, create one calendar for each country in
which you have resources. Set the calendar to include each country's
nonworking times, such as national and company holidays.

2. In the Enterprise Resource Pool, create Generic resources representing
the types of resources in each country. For example, you might have an
India Software Developer and a China Software Developer. For each Generic
resource, set the Base Calendar value to the appropriate country calendar.
For example, for the India Software Developer resource, set the Base
Calendar to the India calendar.

When you assign Generic resources to tasks, the schedule for each task will
be governed by the country calendar(s) for the assigned resources and there
will be no need for setting a calendar on each task. Later, when you create
human resources in your Enterprise Resource Pool, make sure you set the Base
Calendar value to the calendar of the country in which they work. Just a
couple thoughts. Hope this helps.