Plan a training schedule in Project

[scarlet]

I have been tasked to organise training for my company and they have
asked me to use MS Project, which has totally blown my mind. I am
really trying hard to figure a way of schedulign training for 200
individuals, with 20 different modules and take into account holidays.
So for instance Joe Bloggs needs to attend Module A, B & D over the
next 3 months, but he also has 2 weeks holiday booked. There are four
other people in his department but I can only allow two people at any
one time to attend. It sounds like one of those Logic Problems, and
thats where I fall seriously short. I am drawing a balnk. I was
hoping someon on this group could give me some pointers on what to do
or know where I can download a template which may help me out here? I
know what I want as an end result but not sure which order I need to
imput it into Project, please help?

Scarlet

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

First question that comes to mind -- are the dates the modules will run
fixed and you need to slot people in when they're free or are they scheduled
on demand whenever you have a full-class number of people who need them and
are available?

 

[scarlet]

I have fixed dates and I need to slot them in when they are free, but
take into account those constraints of holidays and the fact that I
cannot take out more than two people in the same department

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Project is going to be on limited help I'm afraid. You could enter the
training sessions as tasks and the students as resources, using the resource
calendar to enter the studetns work days, shifts, and holidays and assign
studetns to classes. Unfortunately, project won't always alert you when you
assign a student is unavailable due to vacation to a class and what it does
when you try depends on a lot of factors. Project's basic design is to
schedule the classes when the students are available - if I assign Joe to
task next week and Joe is already scheduled for vacation, Project will
normally accept the assignment and move the task so it starts when Joe get's
back to work - tasks are scheduled around the resource's availability.

Second problem is the no more than two from a department at a time. Project
doesn't have any features that would let you track that and so you'd have to
do it by hand.

This is a classic example of trying to force a square peg into a round
holeand I'd suggest you look for some other way of doing it if you can
vconvince your employer. Project does nice schedule charts but I think it's
going to be a real headache to use in this application.

 

[davegb]

I agree with Steve. This is a gross misapplicaction. I know both
Project and Excel very well and would much prefer to do what you're
being asked in Excel, if I couldn't find something even better.
If you can convince your boss to change, do so!

 

[scarlet]

Well if you could help me out with Excel that would be great. Once I
am up and running I should be ok, but again I am no way an expert in
Excel can you help here?

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

There's probably as many ways to do it in Excel as there are people who use
it and Excel doesn't have any pre-defined way to model a scenario such as
yours. We'll be happy to help with answering specific but you'll need to
kick it off since only you know your exact needs. Also, there are
discussion groups specific to Excel where you can find even better advice.