Adjusting Working Time for Individual Tasks

Sometimes you want specific tasks to occur at times that are outside of the project calendar’s (or for assigned resources, the resource calendar’s) working time. To accomplish this, you apply a task calendar to these tasks. As with the project calendar, you specify which base calendar to use as a task calendar. Here are some examples of when you might need a task calendar:

• You are using the Standard base calendar as your project calendar, and you have a task that must run overnight.

• You have a task that must occur on a specific weekday.

• You have a task that must occur over the weekend.

Unlike resources and resource calendars, Project does not create task calendars as you create tasks. When you need a custom task calendar, you assign one of the base calendars provided with Project (or more likely a new base calendar you have created) to the task.

For example, if you assign the 24 Hours base calendar to a task, Project will schedule that task according to a 24-hour workday rather than the working time specified in the project calendar.

For tasks that have both a task calendar and resource assignments, Project schedules work in the working times that are common between the task calendar and resource calendar(s). If there is no common working time, Project alerts you when you apply the task calendar or assign a resource to the task.

Tip

When you assign a base calendar to a task, you can choose to ignore resource calendars for all resources assigned to the task. Doing so causes Project to schedule the resources to work on the task according to the task calendar and not their own resource calendars (for example, to work 24 hours per day). If this would result in resources working in what would otherwise be their nonworking time, you might want to first discuss this with the affected resources.

In the film project, one of the scenes must be filmed at night. However, the project calendar does not include working time late enough to cover the filming of this scene. Because this task is really an exception to the normal working time of the project, you do not want to change the project calendar. In this exercise, you create a new base calendar and apply it to the appropriate task.

1. On the Tools menu, click Change Working Time.

2. In the Change Working Time dialog box, click the New button.

   The Create New Base Calendar dialog box appears.

3. In the Name box, type Evening Shoot.

4. Click the Make a copy of option if it is not selected, click Standard in the corresponding drop-down menu, and then click OK.

5. In the calendar below the Select Date(s) label, select the column headings M through F, for Monday through Friday.

6. In the upper row of the From and To boxes, enter 5:00 PM and 11:00 PM, and then delete the values in the second row. Your Change Working Time dialog box should look like the following illustration:

   

7. Click OK to close the dialog box.

   Next you will apply the Evening Shoot calendar to a task that must be filmed in the evening.

8. Select the name of task 34, Scene 2 shoot.

9. To see the Gantt bar of this task, on the Standard toolbar, click the Go To Selected Task button.

10. On the Standard toolbar, click the Task Information button.

    The Task Information dialog box appears.

11. Click the Advanced tab.

12. In the Calendar box, select Evening Shoot from the list.

13. Click the Scheduling ignores resource calendars check box, and then click OK to close the dialog box.

    Project applies the Evening Shoot calendar to task 34. A calendar icon appears in the Indicators column, reminding you that this task has a task calendar applied to it. Because you chose to ignore resource calendars in the previous step, the resources assigned to these tasks will be scheduled at times that would otherwise be nonworking times for them.

Tip

To remove a task calendar from a task, on the Advanced tab of the Task Information dialog box, click None in the Calendar box.