Need calendar days not work days duration for summary tasks?

[JulieS]

Okay, to summarize:

You are using Project 2007 with SP-1 installed.
You have no resources assigned to any tasks.

You've created a calendar with 8:00 to 17:00 as working time, 7 days
per week and have used that calendar to create the formula:

ProjDateDiff([Start],[Finish],"Nameof yourcalendar")

The above formula is in one of the spare Duration field (Duration1
for example). The summary tasks are set to "use formula" in the
customize dialog box.

Is the odd (non-full day) duration showing for summary tasks? Do
you have any kind of relationship between the subtasks other than
Finish to Start? Any lag or lead added to the task relationships?

Julie

Hi Julie:
Thanks for your feedback. Please check my replies below.

Hello PRibeiro,

My comments are inline below.

Jeff:
I got the same exact problem. My "Calendar Days" duration also
showed
up with partial days' durations, even if I have a calendar with
a
normal
7 days calendar 8.00-17.00 with 1 hour lunch and all tasks have
full
working days.

[Julie] Do you have resources assigned to the tasks? Are the
resource(s) calendars also set as 7 days per week, 8 hours per
day?


[PRibeiro] No, I didn't assign any resources assigned in order to
reduce the number of fileds where the problem might be

In another thread started by me regarding the partial days'
durations,
I found out that if you have constraints like "start no earlier
than"
the duration sometimes comes with partial days. I am not sure
if
this
helps in your case.
But in this case, when I tried to replicate the method
suggested
by
JulieS it showed up partial days, even if I don't have any
constraint in
my tasks.

[Julie] Did you change the display of dates to show times as
well
as dates? Again, as was true with Jeff, he had tasks which did
not
span the full "day" on Sunday, causing start and finish times
which
did not correspond to 08:00 nor 17:00.


[Pribeiro] In my original calendar, Sunday is a day-off, so no
tasks
there. What I wanted is the same as Jeff. Since hte duration is
calculated in actual work days and my Sundays are day-off, this
means
that in the end the calendar days are more than the actual
working
days.Furthermore, all my tasks are full working days

Also, I noticed that when I added this customized field,
Microsoft
Project changed the duration of my tasks, what is a little bit
strange,
since the calendar didn't change and the only thing that I did
was
to
add the customized filed, which shouldn't have impact in the
other
"duration field".

[Julie] A custom field should not be changing the calculated
duration if all you did was add the field. Did you change
calendars
on the task?

[Pribeiro] No. My calendar remains with Sundays off.

Any clues?

[Julie] What release (2003? 2007?) of Project and what service
pack
do you have applied?


[Pribeiro] Project 2007 SP1

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

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[PRibeiro]

Julie:

Thanks again for your help.
Replying to your questions:
a) yes, the odd duration appears in the summary tasks as well as som
subtasks;
b) all predecessors are FS
c) No lag added

I will try to upload the two project files. I'm not sure if it works
it is the first time I am trying this.
The first one is without the "duration1" field that was the base. Th
second one is after I added and customized the "duration 1" field.

Again, thanks for your help.
PRibeir

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[JulieS]

Hi Priberio,

Sorry, I can't read the attachment. Zip the file and email to me
at:
PRJNG [at] Maine[dot]rr[dot]com.

Replace the [at] and [dot] with the appropriate symbols.

I'll take a look when I can.
Julie

 

[JulieS]

For those of you following the conversation, the problems were
caused by a mismatch between the working time in the calendar (9
hours per day) and the definition of "day" - 8 hours. The calendar
was set to 09:00 to 18:00 with no lunch break.

FAQ 5 at http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm addresses this nicely.

Julie