Weekly plans -- are they possible?

[Michael David Pedersen]

Hello all,

I am currently using Project 2007 Pro for the long-term (3 years) planning
involving just one resource, namely myself. On the short term, I plan one
week at a time by entering tasks from my Project plan into specific time
slots in an external calendar (the google calendar, to be specific). I then
manually update the task usage in Project accordingly by the end of the week.

My question: is it possible to create weekly plans and assign tasks to the
plan on an hour-by-hour basis _inside_ Project itself? This would save me the
redundancy I am currently experiencing. As far as I can tell, it is only
possible to update tasks by entering task usage per day, which is not quite
what I want. I am new to Project though, so may have overlooked something
obvious...

Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Best regards,
Michael.

 

[JulieS]

Hi Michael,

Project can work with durations as small as 1 minute, so it certainly is
possible. You'll most likely want to change a few things:

Change the date format to show time as well as date through Tools > Options,
View tab.

Zoom your Task Usage view to show Days on the middle tier and hours on the
bottom tier. See Format > Timescale or use the Zoom in button on the
Standard toolbar. (Magnifying glass with a plus mark.)

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie

 

[Michael David Pedersen]

Hello Julie,

Thank you for the prompt reply! That certainly did solve part of the
problem, and at least in theory lets me do what I want.

However, the resulting view is not very convenient. I rather like the
features from the google calendar which allow me to occupy a time slot simply
by "dragging over" it with the mouse. This results in a very intuitive
overview of the week. In the Project solution, I still have to enter
durations manually, so if I assign a 3-hour slot to a task and I have a time
resolution of 30 minutes, I would have to enter "0.5" six times to get the
same effect.

But thanks anyway -- I'm probably just being picky about this (-:

Best,
Michael.

 

[JulieS]

You're welcome Michael and thanks for the feedback.

I agree -- not quite as nice an interface as a calendar with dragging but at
least you arent' having to enter data twice. Experiment around with the zoom
to get what you need to show for a specific task. I certainly wouldn't work
at 1/2 hour increments for a task with a two week duration.

Julie

 

[Michael David Pedersen]

Hello again

I agree -- not quite as nice an interface as a calendar with dragging but at
least you arent' having to enter data twice. Experiment around with the zoom
to get what you need to show for a specific task. I certainly wouldn't work
at 1/2 hour increments for a task with a two week duration.

Well, I do plan my days down to half-hour intervals: I work on 2-3 tasks
during a day, and this work is often interleaved with meetings etc. The
bottom line probably is that Project is not a calendar and should not be used
as such. Although it would have been nice...

Thanks,
Michael.

 

[JulieS]

You're welcome Michael. Let us know if you have any further questions.

Julie
Project MVP

"Michael David Pedersen"

 

[Steve House]

You hit the nail on the head - MSP isn't a calendaring program even though
it works with calendars. Use it to plan your projects, not your workdays.