Temporary Resources

[MartinR]

Hi,

I'm using MSPS 2003 and have come across the following issue.
We have a number of individual's who are temporary resources, i.e. short
term contract employees. Is there a way to set these resources up in the
enterprise resource pool such that they are only available within the fixed
period of their contract?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

MartinR --

Yes, you can could do this for these temporary resources in the Enterprise
Resource Pool using the Available From and Available To fields. However,
even if you do this, it would not stop your PM's from assigning these
resources to tasks before or after the fixed period of the contract. An
alternate approach would be to make them local resources in the projects in
which they are assigned, and to require the PM's not to assign the resources
beyond the fixed period of the contract. Hope this helps.

 

[MartinR]

Dale,

Thanks for the quick response. The crux of my problem is when the PM comes
to (automatically) level his resources work is assigned outwith the period
the resource is available. If I understand your suggestion, it will not
prevent the server from levelling outwith the period the resources are
available. Is there any solution to automate this?

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Martin:

Regardless of where these people live in the system, you can set all but
their window of opportunity with the company to non-working time in their
calendars. This will prevent the system from leveling them out of range.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Martin R --

This is a limitation of the built-in leveling tool in Microsoft Project. If
your PM's use this tool, the system will delay tasks with overallocated
resources to resolve the overallocation. In the process, the leveling tool
may push those contractors' tasks past the end of their contract dates.

An alternate approach with these contractors might be to set a Finish No
Later Than contraint on any task to which the contractors are assigned and
to set the FNLT date as the finish date of their contract. This will
prevent the system from allowing those tasks to slip past that date. Just a
thought. Hope this helps.

--
Dale A. Howard [MVP]
Enterprise Project Trainer/Consultant
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
http://www.projectserverexperts.com
"We wrote the books on Project Server"

 

[MartinR]

Thanks both for your helpful suggestions. Much appreciated.

Martin