How do I set up a calendar where the working day spans 2 dates?

[KarenF]

Hi,

A client of mine wishes to set up a nightshift calendar which starts at
18:00 one evening and ends at 06:00 the following morning for 7 days a week.

I'm having difficulty entering the end time of 06:00 as Project is telling
me that it is earlier than the start times. Do I need to add any further
information in my end box? I've also tried entering this information in the
Options box as default time (as most of the work is done to these times).
They'd rather use a nightshift calendar than change the standard calendar.
When we change the default times (and then say 11 working hours a day, 77
hours a week, 31 days a month - yes, I know about the variations on month
length etc), my client gets confused as these times do not appear in the
change working times box. I say that this is ok as we're using default time
but my client is not accepting that this is the case. Do I have this
incorrect, or am I just doubting myself?

Any help would be gratefully received.

Many thanks,

Karen

 

[Rod Gill]

Project can only handle that by splitting the shift into two. One that ends
at midnight and a second that starts at midnight the next day until 6 in the
morning.

--

Rod Gill
Project MVP

Project VBA Book, for details visit:
http://www.projectvbabook.com

NEW!! Web based VBA training course delivered by me. For details visit:
http://projectservertraining.com/learning/index.aspx

 

[JulieS]

Hi Karen,

Creating shifts that cross midnight is a bit tricky but can be done.
Taking your example, of a shift which begins at 18:00 and ends at 06:00
for 7 days per week:

1) Tools > Change Working time.
2) Click and drag across the column headings (S, M, T, W, TH, F, S) to
select all working days.
3) Click the option button which says non-default working time and enter
the following information

First row:
From: 12:00 AM To: 6:00 AM -- this is your midnight to 6:00 am
portion

Second Row:
From: 6:00 PM To: 9:00 PM - this is the start of the shift at
18:00 to the evening dinner break

Third Row:
From: 10:00 PM to: 12:00 AM - this is the return from the evening
dinner to midnight.

(Adjust the evening break as needed.)

4) Click the Options button to go to the Calendar tab in the Tools >
Options dialog box. I agree that you should set the definition of a day
to 11 hours, a week to 77 hours. I do not use the "month" duration
measurement personally because of the variation of some months having 31
days, some having 30 etc.

For further information about what the "default working times" means to
Project, see FAQ #5 at:
http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

To whether to change the Standard calendar versus using the night shift
calendar -- it doesn't really matter to Project, but the Night shift
calendar in Project doesn't match your shift definition (6:00 pm to 6:00
am), so you would still need to modify the Night Shift calendar as well
as the definition of hours per day and hours per week. The advantage of
using the modified Standard calendar is that it is by default set as the
display of the non-working time (gray banding) in all graphic views such
as the Gantt chart view, the Calendar view, etc.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional information
about Microsoft Project

 

[Steve House]

The working time calendar does not necessarily indicate continuous blocks of
time or even single shifts. Rather, it indicates during what hours on the
day in question work takes place. So for a shift that comes in at 6pm and
goes home at 6am, the first half of the work takes place on the day of the
week they arrive and the other half takes place on the following day, the
day they depart. If they worked 5 days a week with Monday as the first day,
Mon would show only 18:00-24:00, Tue thru Fri would show 00:00-06:00 and
18:00-24:00, and Sat would show only 00:00-06:00 (no one arrives on Sat
night or Sun night). For one of the midweek days with 2 blocks of time
listed, the first block of hours is for the group of people who came in the
night before while the second block of hours is that of the group of people
arriving that evening. Those may or may not be the same people, it doesn't
matter as far as the calendar is concerned. The only thing that matters is
on Wed, for example, somebody is doing work from the previous midnight until
06:00 and then work stops until some unknown person picks it up again at
18:00. That person in the evening may or may not be the same person who was
working on it in the wee hours of the morning the previous night.

Changing the "default times" on the calendar options page does not update
the working time calendars, as you have observed. In fact it has nothing to
do with the calendars except that they should be set to values consistent
with your calendar settings. All durations are stored and tracked in
minutes. Whenever you enter or display them in any other unit, Project has
to do a conversion. The hours per day, hours per week, and days per month
are the conversion factors Project applies. So if I enter a task's duration
as "3 days" and have left everything at the default, Project calculates "3d
* 8h * 60min" and stores the result "1440.0" internally as the task's real
duration to be used in any subsequent calculations, etc. The duration
displayed in for instance the Gantt chart task table is simple the same
process reversed using the same conversion factors.

 

[KarenF]

Thanks Steve,

This is what I have been telling my client, so I'm pleased I've got that bit
of information correct! We tried a simple task on a new project (1 task, 1
day duration, no predecessors nor successors, no change to the calendar in
any way shape or form), and still the task started on 1 day and finished the
next day. I must be missing something or maybe having a blonde moment
(having just got back from holiday this could be the case). I'll take a look
at my working times again. I have been advising my client that the problem
will be related to working times so at least I'm kind of there.

Thanks again Steve.

Karen.

The working time calendar does not necessarily indicate continuous blocks of
time or even single shifts. Rather, it indicates during what hours on the
day in question work takes place. So for a shift that comes in at 6pm and
goes home at 6am, the first half of the work takes place on the day of the
week they arrive and the other half takes place on the following day, the
day they depart. If they worked 5 days a week with Monday as the first day,
Mon would show only 18:00-24:00, Tue thru Fri would show 00:00-06:00 and
18:00-24:00, and Sat would show only 00:00-06:00 (no one arrives on Sat
night or Sun night). For one of the midweek days with 2 blocks of time
listed, the first block of hours is for the group of people who came in the
night before while the second block of hours is that of the group of people
arriving that evening. Those may or may not be the same people, it doesn't
matter as far as the calendar is concerned. The only thing that matters is
on Wed, for example, somebody is doing work from the previous midnight until
06:00 and then work stops until some unknown person picks it up again at
18:00. That person in the evening may or may not be the same person who was
working on it in the wee hours of the morning the previous night.

Changing the "default times" on the calendar options page does not update
the working time calendars, as you have observed. In fact it has nothing to
do with the calendars except that they should be set to values consistent
with your calendar settings. All durations are stored and tracked in
minutes. Whenever you enter or display them in any other unit, Project has
to do a conversion. The hours per day, hours per week, and days per month
are the conversion factors Project applies. So if I enter a task's duration
as "3 days" and have left everything at the default, Project calculates "3d
* 8h * 60min" and stores the result "1440.0" internally as the task's real
duration to be used in any subsequent calculations, etc. The duration
displayed in for instance the Gantt chart task table is simple the same
process reversed using the same conversion factors.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi,

A client of mine wishes to set up a nightshift calendar which starts at
18:00 one evening and ends at 06:00 the following morning for 7 days a
week.

I'm having difficulty entering the end time of 06:00 as Project is telling
me that it is earlier than the start times. Do I need to add any further
information in my end box? I've also tried entering this information in
the
Options box as default time (as most of the work is done to these times).
They'd rather use a nightshift calendar than change the standard calendar.
When we change the default times (and then say 11 working hours a day, 77
hours a week, 31 days a month - yes, I know about the variations on month
length etc), my client gets confused as these times do not appear in the
change working times box. I say that this is ok as we're using default
time
but my client is not accepting that this is the case. Do I have this
incorrect, or am I just doubting myself?

Any help would be gratefully received.

Many thanks,

Karen

 

[KarenF]

Hi Julie,

Thanks again for your response. This is what I've been advising my client,
so at least I know I've got it correct.

Thansk again.

Take care

Karen

 

[KarenF]

Hi Rod,

Thanks for your help again. This is what I've asked my client to try. I'm
glad I got that right!

Take care,

Karen

 

[Steve House]

If the 1-day task is done by someone working from 6pm until 6am, that's
exactly what you would expect to happen. If the task is entered with a
duration of "1 day" and a "day" is defined as 12 hours on the Calendar
Options page, a 1-day task assigned to someone on the evening shift would
start Monday at 6pm and finish 12 hours later, Tuesday at 6am. Remember
that Project always tracks durations in minutes - it allows you to enter
durations as hours or days or weeks as a concession to convenience but
whatever unit you use, it's always converted to minutes for storage and
calculation. So if you say the task lasts 1 day, that means its duration is
12x60 minutes. Meanwhile, the working time calendar tells Project what
minutes out of the 24-hour calendar day running from midnight to midnight
actually count towards 'burning up' duration minutes. So in the extreme, if
you assign that 1 day task to someone who's calendar says they work 1 hour
per day, it will start when they come to work on the first day and finish an
hour after their shift starts 12 days later according to the date on the
calendar on the wall, taking almost 2 weeks to do 1 day of duration.

So to summarize, two factors control the situation you describe. The
Calendar, Options, Hours per Day tells Project how many minutes you mean
when you type "1 day" and the Working Time Calendar tells Project which
minutes out of the 24 hour day count. Add to that that the fact that a 1
day task that has a predecessor doesn't necessarily start at the start of
the workday - rather, it starts at whatever time during the day its link
says it's allowed to start - if the predecessor ends at 2pm, the task in
question will start at 2pm and "1 day's" worth of minutes will spill over
into the next day before it's used 'em up (but to see that in action you
have to turn on a View options date format that shows both date and time).
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Thanks Steve,

This is what I have been telling my client, so I'm pleased I've got that
bit
of information correct! We tried a simple task on a new project (1 task,
1
day duration, no predecessors nor successors, no change to the calendar in
any way shape or form), and still the task started on 1 day and finished
the
next day. I must be missing something or maybe having a blonde moment
(having just got back from holiday this could be the case). I'll take a
look
at my working times again. I have been advising my client that the
problem
will be related to working times so at least I'm kind of there.

Thanks again Steve.

Karen.

The working time calendar does not necessarily indicate continuous blocks
of
time or even single shifts. Rather, it indicates during what hours on
the
day in question work takes place. So for a shift that comes in at 6pm
and
goes home at 6am, the first half of the work takes place on the day of
the
week they arrive and the other half takes place on the following day, the
day they depart. If they worked 5 days a week with Monday as the first
day,
Mon would show only 18:00-24:00, Tue thru Fri would show 00:00-06:00 and
18:00-24:00, and Sat would show only 00:00-06:00 (no one arrives on Sat
night or Sun night). For one of the midweek days with 2 blocks of time
listed, the first block of hours is for the group of people who came in
the
night before while the second block of hours is that of the group of
people
arriving that evening. Those may or may not be the same people, it
doesn't
matter as far as the calendar is concerned. The only thing that matters
is
on Wed, for example, somebody is doing work from the previous midnight
until
06:00 and then work stops until some unknown person picks it up again at
18:00. That person in the evening may or may not be the same person who
was
working on it in the wee hours of the morning the previous night.

Changing the "default times" on the calendar options page does not update
the working time calendars, as you have observed. In fact it has nothing
to
do with the calendars except that they should be set to values consistent
with your calendar settings. All durations are stored and tracked in
minutes. Whenever you enter or display them in any other unit, Project
has
to do a conversion. The hours per day, hours per week, and days per
month
are the conversion factors Project applies. So if I enter a task's
duration
as "3 days" and have left everything at the default, Project calculates
"3d
* 8h * 60min" and stores the result "1440.0" internally as the task's
real
duration to be used in any subsequent calculations, etc. The duration
displayed in for instance the Gantt chart task table is simple the same
process reversed using the same conversion factors.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi,

A client of mine wishes to set up a nightshift calendar which starts at
18:00 one evening and ends at 06:00 the following morning for 7 days a
week.

I'm having difficulty entering the end time of 06:00 as Project is
telling
me that it is earlier than the start times. Do I need to add any
further
information in my end box? I've also tried entering this information
in
the
Options box as default time (as most of the work is done to these
times).
They'd rather use a nightshift calendar than change the standard
calendar.
When we change the default times (and then say 11 working hours a day,
77
hours a week, 31 days a month - yes, I know about the variations on
month
length etc), my client gets confused as these times do not appear in
the
change working times box. I say that this is ok as we're using default
time
but my client is not accepting that this is the case. Do I have this
incorrect, or am I just doubting myself?

Any help would be gratefully received.

Many thanks,

Karen

 

[JulieS]

You're welcome Karen. Good luck with the client
Julie
Project MVP

 

[KarenF]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for that. The test task we entered was using the standard default
calendar. We entered it as task 1 with no predecessors (so that couldn't
push the task along a bit) and no successors. I even made the dates display
with times to illustrate this point.

I've just tried this again. The default working times set on the pc I used
for the test task are set to:

09:00 start
18:00 end

8 hours per day

40 hours per week

20 days per month

The project start date is Wed 02 May 2007 09:00

LIke when I tested this earlier, I did not change the working time but left
it to use the default settings. Trying this again now, task 1 with no other
tasks in the Project plan, I get the following task start and finish times:

Start Wed 02/05/2007 09:00
Finish Thur 03/05/2007 09:00

Is this something to do with the timings adding up to 9 hours, but working
times set as 8 hours per day? I have a feeling this could be possible as you
said, Project calculates in minutes.

I have not allocated a resource to this task, so it is not influenced by an
individual's working hours, and I don't have a separate task calendar for
this task. Please forgive me if I still seem to be missing something.

So, can you tell me please if I have this correct then, as using the example
above, and re-reading your notes, I think I've got it.

If I leave the Working Time options alone, and it uses the default times, my
working day runs 09:00 - 18:00. However, my number of hours per day is 8 not
9. I have gone into Tools, Change Working Time, selected my M-F along the
top of the date range as normal and typed in the non-default working hours of
09:00 12:00 and on line two, 13:00 18:00, thus adding up to 8 hours.

Does this make sense? I thought I had tried this with my client already,
but I suspect, looking at the scope of his project that he has tried so many
things already, his hours may not add up. I know he has been overwriting
things. What threw me was the setting up of default working hours and then
changing the working days to be non-default working hours to account for the
lunch break.

Sorry to ask Steve. I think I have it now. It is coming back to me. Could
you please confirm that I have this correct? I would be grateful.

Thanks very much for all your help. It is much appreciated.

Take care,

Kind regards,

Karen.

If the 1-day task is done by someone working from 6pm until 6am, that's
exactly what you would expect to happen. If the task is entered with a
duration of "1 day" and a "day" is defined as 12 hours on the Calendar
Options page, a 1-day task assigned to someone on the evening shift would
start Monday at 6pm and finish 12 hours later, Tuesday at 6am. Remember
that Project always tracks durations in minutes - it allows you to enter
durations as hours or days or weeks as a concession to convenience but
whatever unit you use, it's always converted to minutes for storage and
calculation. So if you say the task lasts 1 day, that means its duration is
12x60 minutes. Meanwhile, the working time calendar tells Project what
minutes out of the 24-hour calendar day running from midnight to midnight
actually count towards 'burning up' duration minutes. So in the extreme, if
you assign that 1 day task to someone who's calendar says they work 1 hour
per day, it will start when they come to work on the first day and finish an
hour after their shift starts 12 days later according to the date on the
calendar on the wall, taking almost 2 weeks to do 1 day of duration.

So to summarize, two factors control the situation you describe. The
Calendar, Options, Hours per Day tells Project how many minutes you mean
when you type "1 day" and the Working Time Calendar tells Project which
minutes out of the 24 hour day count. Add to that that the fact that a 1
day task that has a predecessor doesn't necessarily start at the start of
the workday - rather, it starts at whatever time during the day its link
says it's allowed to start - if the predecessor ends at 2pm, the task in
question will start at 2pm and "1 day's" worth of minutes will spill over
into the next day before it's used 'em up (but to see that in action you
have to turn on a View options date format that shows both date and time).
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Thanks Steve,

This is what I have been telling my client, so I'm pleased I've got that
bit
of information correct! We tried a simple task on a new project (1 task,
1
day duration, no predecessors nor successors, no change to the calendar in
any way shape or form), and still the task started on 1 day and finished
the
next day. I must be missing something or maybe having a blonde moment
(having just got back from holiday this could be the case). I'll take a
look
at my working times again. I have been advising my client that the
problem
will be related to working times so at least I'm kind of there.

Thanks again Steve.

Karen.

The working time calendar does not necessarily indicate continuous blocks
of
time or even single shifts. Rather, it indicates during what hours on
the
day in question work takes place. So for a shift that comes in at 6pm
and
goes home at 6am, the first half of the work takes place on the day of
the
week they arrive and the other half takes place on the following day, the
day they depart. If they worked 5 days a week with Monday as the first
day,
Mon would show only 18:00-24:00, Tue thru Fri would show 00:00-06:00 and
18:00-24:00, and Sat would show only 00:00-06:00 (no one arrives on Sat
night or Sun night). For one of the midweek days with 2 blocks of time
listed, the first block of hours is for the group of people who came in
the
night before while the second block of hours is that of the group of
people
arriving that evening. Those may or may not be the same people, it
doesn't
matter as far as the calendar is concerned. The only thing that matters
is
on Wed, for example, somebody is doing work from the previous midnight
until
06:00 and then work stops until some unknown person picks it up again at
18:00. That person in the evening may or may not be the same person who
was
working on it in the wee hours of the morning the previous night.

Changing the "default times" on the calendar options page does not update
the working time calendars, as you have observed. In fact it has nothing
to
do with the calendars except that they should be set to values consistent
with your calendar settings. All durations are stored and tracked in
minutes. Whenever you enter or display them in any other unit, Project
has
to do a conversion. The hours per day, hours per week, and days per
month
are the conversion factors Project applies. So if I enter a task's
duration
as "3 days" and have left everything at the default, Project calculates
"3d
* 8h * 60min" and stores the result "1440.0" internally as the task's
real
duration to be used in any subsequent calculations, etc. The duration
displayed in for instance the Gantt chart task table is simple the same
process reversed using the same conversion factors.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs



Hi,

A client of mine wishes to set up a nightshift calendar which starts at
18:00 one evening and ends at 06:00 the following morning for 7 days a
week.

I'm having difficulty entering the end time of 06:00 as Project is
telling
me that it is earlier than the start times. Do I need to add any
further
information in my end box? I've also tried entering this information
in
the
Options box as default time (as most of the work is done to these
times).
They'd rather use a nightshift calendar than change the standard
calendar.
When we change the default times (and then say 11 working hours a day,
77
hours a week, 31 days a month - yes, I know about the variations on
month
length etc), my client gets confused as these times do not appear in
the
change working times box. I say that this is ok as we're using default
time
but my client is not accepting that this is the case. Do I have this
incorrect, or am I just doubting myself?

Any help would be gratefully received.

Many thanks,

Karen

 

[Steve House]

You're close to the answer. One thing I need to mention is changing the
"default start and end" times on the Tools, Options, Calendar page DOES
NOT influence the working times in any way, shape, or manner. Changing
these settings does not effect the calendar in any way. While those
times should normally agree with the calendar, changing them does not
change the defaults in the calendar itself - those cannot be changed at
all. What they do is tell Project what time to assume when you manually
type a date into a field but do not include the time in your entry. So
if your working time calendar is 8-12 & 1-5 but you set the default
start to 9am and then type "02/05/07" into the start date column while
entering a task, it sets a SNET constraint of 02 May at 9am and thats
when the task will start unless something else pushes it later. But 9am
is already an hour into the workday according to the calendar and
there's only 7 hours left before everyone leaves at 5pm. So at the end
of the day, there'll still be an hour left to do on that one day task
and that additional hour of work will take place the next day between
8am and 9am,
--
Steve House
MS Project MVP
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi Steve,

Thanks for that. The test task we entered was using the standard default
calendar. We entered it as task 1 with no predecessors (so that couldn't
push the task along a bit) and no successors. I even made the dates display
with times to illustrate this point.

I've just tried this again. The default working times set on the pc I used
for the test task are set to:

09:00 start
18:00 end

8 hours per day

40 hours per week

20 days per month

The project start date is Wed 02 May 2007 09:00

LIke when I tested this earlier, I did not change the working time but left
it to use the default settings. Trying this again now, task 1 with no other
tasks in the Project plan, I get the following task start and finish times:

Start Wed 02/05/2007 09:00
Finish Thur 03/05/2007 09:00

Is this something to do with the timings adding up to 9 hours, but working
times set as 8 hours per day? I have a feeling this could be possible as you
said, Project calculates in minutes.

I have not allocated a resource to this task, so it is not influenced by an
individual's working hours, and I don't have a separate task calendar for
this task. Please forgive me if I still seem to be missing something.

So, can you tell me please if I have this correct then, as using the example
above, and re-reading your notes, I think I've got it.

If I leave the Working Time options alone, and it uses the default times, my
working day runs 09:00 - 18:00. However, my number of hours per day is 8 not
9. I have gone into Tools, Change Working Time, selected my M-F along the
top of the date range as normal and typed in the non-default working hours of
09:00 12:00 and on line two, 13:00 18:00, thus adding up to 8 hours.

Does this make sense? I thought I had tried this with my client already,
but I suspect, looking at the scope of his project that he has tried so many
things already, his hours may not add up. I know he has been overwriting
things. What threw me was the setting up of default working hours and then
changing the working days to be non-default working hours to account for the
lunch break.

Sorry to ask Steve. I think I have it now. It is coming back to me. Could
you please confirm that I have this correct? I would be grateful.

Thanks very much for all your help. It is much appreciated.

Take care,

Kind regards,

Karen.

If the 1-day task is done by someone working from 6pm until 6am, that's
exactly what you would expect to happen. If the task is entered with a
duration of "1 day" and a "day" is defined as 12 hours on the Calendar
Options page, a 1-day task assigned to someone on the evening shift would
start Monday at 6pm and finish 12 hours later, Tuesday at 6am. Remember
that Project always tracks durations in minutes - it allows you to enter
durations as hours or days or weeks as a concession to convenience but
whatever unit you use, it's always converted to minutes for storage and
calculation. So if you say the task lasts 1 day, that means its duration is
12x60 minutes. Meanwhile, the working time calendar tells Project what
minutes out of the 24-hour calendar day running from midnight to midnight
actually count towards 'burning up' duration minutes. So in the extreme, if
you assign that 1 day task to someone who's calendar says they work 1 hour
per day, it will start when they come to work on the first day and finish an
hour after their shift starts 12 days later according to the date on the
calendar on the wall, taking almost 2 weeks to do 1 day of duration.

So to summarize, two factors control the situation you describe. The
Calendar, Options, Hours per Day tells Project how many minutes you mean
when you type "1 day" and the Working Time Calendar tells Project which
minutes out of the 24 hour day count. Add to that that the fact that a 1
day task that has a predecessor doesn't necessarily start at the start of
the workday - rather, it starts at whatever time during the day its link
says it's allowed to start - if the predecessor ends at 2pm, the task in
question will start at 2pm and "1 day's" worth of minutes will spill over
into the next day before it's used 'em up (but to see that in action you
have to turn on a View options date format that shows both date and time).
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Thanks Steve,

This is what I have been telling my client, so I'm pleased I've got that
bit
of information correct! We tried a simple task on a new project (1 task,
1
day duration, no predecessors nor successors, no change to the calendar in
any way shape or form), and still the task started on 1 day and finished
the
next day. I must be missing something or maybe having a blonde moment
(having just got back from holiday this could be the case). I'll take a
look
at my working times again. I have been advising my client that the
problem
will be related to working times so at least I'm kind of there.

Thanks again Steve.

Karen.

:

The working time calendar does not necessarily indicate continuous blocks
of
time or even single shifts. Rather, it indicates during what hours on
the
day in question work takes place. So for a shift that comes in at 6pm
and
goes home at 6am, the first half of the work takes place on the day of
the
week they arrive and the other half takes place on the following day, the
day they depart. If they worked 5 days a week with Monday as the first
day,
Mon would show only 18:00-24:00, Tue thru Fri would show 00:00-06:00 and
18:00-24:00, and Sat would show only 00:00-06:00 (no one arrives on Sat
night or Sun night). For one of the midweek days with 2 blocks of time
listed, the first block of hours is for the group of people who came in
the
night before while the second block of hours is that of the group of
people
arriving that evening. Those may or may not be the same people, it
doesn't
matter as far as the calendar is concerned. The only thing that matters
is
on Wed, for example, somebody is doing work from the previous midnight
until
06:00 and then work stops until some unknown person picks it up again at
18:00. That person in the evening may or may not be the same person who
was
working on it in the wee hours of the morning the previous night.

Changing the "default times" on the calendar options page does not update
the working time calendars, as you have observed. In fact it has nothing
to
do with the calendars except that they should be set to values consistent
with your calendar settings. All durations are stored and tracked in
minutes. Whenever you enter or display them in any other unit, Project
has
to do a conversion. The hours per day, hours per week, and days per
month
are the conversion factors Project applies. So if I enter a task's
duration
as "3 days" and have left everything at the default, Project calculates
"3d
* 8h * 60min" and stores the result "1440.0" internally as the task's
real
duration to be used in any subsequent calculations, etc. The duration
displayed in for instance the Gantt chart task table is simple the same
process reversed using the same conversion factors.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs



Hi,

A client of mine wishes to set up a nightshift calendar which starts at
18:00 one evening and ends at 06:00 the following morning for 7 days a
week.

I'm having difficulty entering the end time of 06:00 as Project is
telling
me that it is earlier than the start times. Do I need to add any
further
information in my end box? I've also tried entering this information
in
the
Options box as default time (as most of the work is done to these
times).
They'd rather use a nightshift calendar than change the standard
calendar.
When we change the default times (and then say 11 working hours a day,
77
hours a week, 31 days a month - yes, I know about the variations on
month
length etc), my client gets confused as these times do not appear in
the
change working times box. I say that this is ok as we're using default
time
but my client is not accepting that this is the case. Do I have this
incorrect, or am I just doubting myself?

Any help would be gratefully received.

Many thanks,

Karen

 

[KarenF]

Hi Steve,

Now that makes sense! Thanks for that. Sorry for the delay in replying,
I've been away for a few days.

Thanks for your help Steve.

Take care,

Karen

You're close to the answer. One thing I need to mention is changing the
"default start and end" times on the Tools, Options, Calendar page DOES
NOT influence the working times in any way, shape, or manner. Changing
these settings does not effect the calendar in any way. While those
times should normally agree with the calendar, changing them does not
change the defaults in the calendar itself - those cannot be changed at
all. What they do is tell Project what time to assume when you manually
type a date into a field but do not include the time in your entry. So
if your working time calendar is 8-12 & 1-5 but you set the default
start to 9am and then type "02/05/07" into the start date column while
entering a task, it sets a SNET constraint of 02 May at 9am and thats
when the task will start unless something else pushes it later. But 9am
is already an hour into the workday according to the calendar and
there's only 7 hours left before everyone leaves at 5pm. So at the end
of the day, there'll still be an hour left to do on that one day task
and that additional hour of work will take place the next day between
8am and 9am,
--
Steve House
MS Project MVP
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi Steve,

Thanks for that. The test task we entered was using the standard default
calendar. We entered it as task 1 with no predecessors (so that couldn't
push the task along a bit) and no successors. I even made the dates display
with times to illustrate this point.

I've just tried this again. The default working times set on the pc I used
for the test task are set to:

09:00 start
18:00 end

8 hours per day

40 hours per week

20 days per month

The project start date is Wed 02 May 2007 09:00

LIke when I tested this earlier, I did not change the working time but left
it to use the default settings. Trying this again now, task 1 with no other
tasks in the Project plan, I get the following task start and finish times:

Start Wed 02/05/2007 09:00
Finish Thur 03/05/2007 09:00

Is this something to do with the timings adding up to 9 hours, but working
times set as 8 hours per day? I have a feeling this could be possible as you
said, Project calculates in minutes.

I have not allocated a resource to this task, so it is not influenced by an
individual's working hours, and I don't have a separate task calendar for
this task. Please forgive me if I still seem to be missing something.

So, can you tell me please if I have this correct then, as using the example
above, and re-reading your notes, I think I've got it.

If I leave the Working Time options alone, and it uses the default times, my
working day runs 09:00 - 18:00. However, my number of hours per day is 8 not
9. I have gone into Tools, Change Working Time, selected my M-F along the
top of the date range as normal and typed in the non-default working hours of
09:00 12:00 and on line two, 13:00 18:00, thus adding up to 8 hours.

Does this make sense? I thought I had tried this with my client already,
but I suspect, looking at the scope of his project that he has tried so many
things already, his hours may not add up. I know he has been overwriting
things. What threw me was the setting up of default working hours and then
changing the working days to be non-default working hours to account for the
lunch break.

Sorry to ask Steve. I think I have it now. It is coming back to me. Could
you please confirm that I have this correct? I would be grateful.

Thanks very much for all your help. It is much appreciated.

Take care,

Kind regards,

Karen.

If the 1-day task is done by someone working from 6pm until 6am, that's
exactly what you would expect to happen. If the task is entered with a
duration of "1 day" and a "day" is defined as 12 hours on the Calendar
Options page, a 1-day task assigned to someone on the evening shift would
start Monday at 6pm and finish 12 hours later, Tuesday at 6am. Remember
that Project always tracks durations in minutes - it allows you to enter
durations as hours or days or weeks as a concession to convenience but
whatever unit you use, it's always converted to minutes for storage and
calculation. So if you say the task lasts 1 day, that means its duration is
12x60 minutes. Meanwhile, the working time calendar tells Project what
minutes out of the 24-hour calendar day running from midnight to midnight
actually count towards 'burning up' duration minutes. So in the extreme, if
you assign that 1 day task to someone who's calendar says they work 1 hour
per day, it will start when they come to work on the first day and finish an
hour after their shift starts 12 days later according to the date on the
calendar on the wall, taking almost 2 weeks to do 1 day of duration.

So to summarize, two factors control the situation you describe. The
Calendar, Options, Hours per Day tells Project how many minutes you mean
when you type "1 day" and the Working Time Calendar tells Project which
minutes out of the 24 hour day count. Add to that that the fact that a 1
day task that has a predecessor doesn't necessarily start at the start of
the workday - rather, it starts at whatever time during the day its link
says it's allowed to start - if the predecessor ends at 2pm, the task in
question will start at 2pm and "1 day's" worth of minutes will spill over
into the next day before it's used 'em up (but to see that in action you
have to turn on a View options date format that shows both date and time).
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


Thanks Steve,

This is what I have been telling my client, so I'm pleased I've got that
bit
of information correct! We tried a simple task on a new project (1 task,
1
day duration, no predecessors nor successors, no change to the calendar in
any way shape or form), and still the task started on 1 day and finished
the
next day. I must be missing something or maybe having a blonde moment
(having just got back from holiday this could be the case). I'll take a
look
at my working times again. I have been advising my client that the
problem
will be related to working times so at least I'm kind of there.

Thanks again Steve.

Karen.

:

The working time calendar does not necessarily indicate continuous blocks
of
time or even single shifts. Rather, it indicates during what hours on
the
day in question work takes place. So for a shift that comes in at 6pm
and
goes home at 6am, the first half of the work takes place on the day of
the
week they arrive and the other half takes place on the following day, the
day they depart. If they worked 5 days a week with Monday as the first
day,
Mon would show only 18:00-24:00, Tue thru Fri would show 00:00-06:00 and
18:00-24:00, and Sat would show only 00:00-06:00 (no one arrives on Sat
night or Sun night). For one of the midweek days with 2 blocks of time
listed, the first block of hours is for the group of people who came in
the
night before while the second block of hours is that of the group of
people
arriving that evening. Those may or may not be the same people, it
doesn't
matter as far as the calendar is concerned. The only thing that matters
is
on Wed, for example, somebody is doing work from the previous midnight
until
06:00 and then work stops until some unknown person picks it up again at
18:00. That person in the evening may or may not be the same person who
was
working on it in the wee hours of the morning the previous night.

Changing the "default times" on the calendar options page does not update
the working time calendars, as you have observed. In fact it has nothing
to
do with the calendars except that they should be set to values consistent
with your calendar settings. All durations are stored and tracked in
minutes. Whenever you enter or display them in any other unit, Project
has
to do a conversion. The hours per day, hours per week, and days per
month
are the conversion factors Project applies. So if I enter a task's
duration
as "3 days" and have left everything at the default, Project calculates
"3d
* 8h * 60min" and stores the result "1440.0" internally as the task's
real
duration to be used in any subsequent calculations, etc. The duration
displayed in for instance the Gantt chart task table is simple the same
process reversed using the same conversion factors.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs



Hi,

A client of mine wishes to set up a nightshift calendar which starts at
18:00 one evening and ends at 06:00 the following morning for 7 days a
week.

I'm having difficulty entering the end time of 06:00 as Project is
telling
me that it is earlier than the start times. Do I need to add any
further
information in my end box? I've also tried entering this