Managing non-project time and availability

[Elrick]

Hi

I'm sure somebody must have had a similar request before.
Our company have implemented EPM with Project Server 2003. We need a
workable solution to do the following:

Our workforce share their project time with daily maintenance
activities. History has shown that on average our personnel are only
available for 75% of their day to do project work. The rest is spent on
day-to-day activities and maintenance requests.

We need to configure Project so that personnel can book time against
maintenance activities, and that all project schedule activities "know"
that they can only take up 75% of resources' time. We have played
around with administrative projects for booking time on the maintenance
activites, but we need to find the most effective way of implementing
our project schedules so that it takes into consideration that the
resources aren't available all of the time. Must we adjust the default
calendar (and what impact will that have on already existing projects
on the server)?

Another issue is the tracking of leave planning. When an employee plans
on taking leave, that period must somehow be blocked out so that
schedules know that the employee is unavailable.

Any pointers will be appreciated.

 

[Rod Gill]

What about setting the Max units for all resources to 75%? That's the
simplest answer.

 

[Elrick]

Thanks for the reply.

Where would one set that option? Must it be set at resource level once,
or for each resource in each project?

 

[Eleanor, MCSE/MCT]

Have you considered an add-on such as EPK, a third party utility that allows
you to have more flexibility in managing project and labor time? They have
three modules, actually four, as they just added a collaboration module, with
one being an emphisis around time management.

-Eleanor

 

[Elrick]

Not really. I will look it up, but our company might be looking at
getting a solution from using only Project Server.

 

[Rod Gill]

Once for each resource