Resource availability conflict - "Scheduling ignores resourcecalendars"

T

Thomas Bräutigam

Hi all,

we are facing a big problem regarding "scheduling ignores resource
calendars"...!!!

When someone schedules a task to start on monday with a duration of 6
days (Mo-Sat) and work 48 hours, assigns a resource with standard work
week Mo-Fr. a 8 hours, sets "scheduling ignores resource calendars"
and uses a server calender with a 6 days week, the task and work
package is scheduled as desired.
Closing this project, opening a new project and taking a look at
resource:usage view the usage is scheduled from Mo-Mo and not Mo-
Sat!!!
This also applies to PWA availability view as on OLAP cube.
Taking a look at the assignment view "resource assignments" in PWA
2003, it looks correct (Mo-Sat.)

As we are using a lot of these "individual" scheduled tasks, ignoring
resource calendars, we are facing a big problem in our resource
planning reports!

Any ideas?

Best Regards
Thomas

PS: We're using Project Server 2003 SP3 ... this error also occurs on
our Testsystem Project Server 2007 SP1
 
T

Thomas Bräutigam

Hi,

we used an enterprise calendar for this task and set the option to
"Scheduling ignores resource calendars".
The calendar defines a work week from Mo-Sat, each day work 8h.

Regards
Thomas
 
G

Gary Chefetz

Thomas:

The only way you can see accurate data for other projects in the resource
usage or task usage is to open the other projects. Do not rely on this data,
or perform leveling based on this data unless you have the projects open.
 
T

Thomas Bräutigam

Gary,

thanks for your reply.
To be honest, I have also read some other newsgroup discussions on
this issue before and this was always the "last" answer.
Just to make sure: This is a bug and has to be fixed or the function
to ignore task calendars has to be deactivated.
What do you think?
Is no hotfix available or is this at last fixed in Project Server
2010?

My problem is ....
For example when you use this function in 3 projects....while this
resource is also planned maybe in 8 other projects the resource
managers goes crazy because of wrong data...and I do not think it is a
good option for him to open all 11 projects to analyze this one
particular resource...even this would be a performance issue in a
global company like ours. This was supposed to be performed by PWA
reports etc...

Correct my thoughts if I am wrong but I do not know what to tell my
users (customers)!

Regards
Thomas :_(
 
G

Gary Chefetz

Thomas:

I think that teaching the users to mine the OLAP cube is one way to begin to
tackle this problem, also using the views accessible from the Resource
Center is a good choice as well. Unfortunately, the type and variety of
cross tab reporting that resource managers want isn't easily created without
using SSRS in Project Server 2007. Project Server 2010 overcomes this
limitation in a very big way and makes the reporting very accessible,
particularly to those who are familiar with working in Excel and even more
robust if the user is tech savvy enough to write some SQL.

Beyond the tool's inherent shortcomings in addressing the resource manager
role, few companies have a good process for handling resourcing and tracking
demand and fewer still are able to handle a toolset when given one. Both the
tool and organizational practices have to mature to get us there. The bug is
that the other project commitments data is not displayed correctly in the
usage views if the projects aren't open. This has nothing to do with task
calendars.

In order to actually level a resource across projects you must open the
projects, so this shouldn't be a performance issue. Do your users simply
want to see data or do they want to act on it? If the latter is the case,
you're going to be opening projects.
 
T

Thomas Bräutigam

Gary,

the intention of our resource managers is to open their capacity
planning project schedule where they schedule fix tasks for the
department etc. and of course when they go to the usage view in their
project plan, they want to see correct data.
OLAP and PWA view availability is also wrong.
The one and only correct report is view resource assignments...

Or maybe we have to think of a RepServices Report for this issue...of
course all these options may help us out, but to keep it short: This
is a bug and there is no hotfix etc. available?

Regards
Thomas
 
G

Gary Chefetz

There's no correction for this available. An SSRS report would be ideal, I
would think. You should be able to get valid data from the OLAP cube, so I
suggest working on that issue.
 
T

Thomas Bräutigam

Renke has reported this issue to Microsoft.
--> Feedback: Should be fixed in MSP 2010, maybe a hotfix for MSP 2007

"Unlucky" for MSP 2003 users ... but another argument for migration
planning!

Thanks 2 Renke!
Thomas
 
X

Xavier HOVASSE

Hi,
Did you tried to use elapse duration rather than calendar on this kind
of tasks. Have you the same behavior ?
Could be a workaround ?
for exemple :
Task 1 : 6 ed ( 6 elapse days of duration) start on monday will
finish Saturday.

Just be aware that allocated resources on this task will work 24h/24h
so assign manually unit to fit reality. (use fix work type)
Hope this help you.
Regards,
Xavier HOVASSE
www.ixila.com
take control of your projects
 
T

Thomas Bräutigam

Xavier,

good idea, but it does not work out as desired. Still wrong summary
resource assignments.

Thomas
 

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