Calendars and Moving Tasks to non working days in MS PROJECT 2013!

Hi,

again I have a question from my Blog Reader:

“I liked your article and thought you may have an answer to a question I have.
In Project 2010 with tasks set to Auto schedule if you schedule the start date for a task that has a resource assigned to start on a Non-working day, the planning wizard prompts you to either allow it to move it to the next working day or to change the day to working. The issue is that it changes the base calendar day to working and not the resource calendar. Do you know why or any setting that I need to alter so it changes the Resource calendar and not the Base Calendar. You can over come this by changing it to manual after you have manually changed the resource calendar day to working, but this takes time.

Any suggestions gratefully appreciated.”

Let’s go, with MS PROJECT 2013!

First I will create two Tasks:

and then two Resources:

Now I will assign John to Task 1, and Mary to Task 2:

Now I will show you the Standard Calendar:

as you can see, there are no exceptions for this Calendar.

Now, I am going to set Start date for Task 1, and Task 2. Task 1 will have 06.04.2013 (Saturday) as Start date, and Task 2 will have 07.04.2013 (Sunday) as Start Date:

After setting Start date to the Task 2, I will get:

Let’s see a Base Calendar:

You can see that MS PROJECT 2013 made an exception for those two non working days as working days!

Well, that can be a trouble, because all new / existing Task will have those two days as working days.

But, if you want to make those two days only for particular Resource (let say John, or Mary), that you should modify John’s calendar!

Let’s look our Project as it was at the Beginning:

I want John to work at every Saturday, and Mary, at every Sunday!

and:

I’ll do the Same for Mary (I am not going to place this picture Again :-P)

Now, I am going to set Start date for Task 1, and Task 2, again. Task 1 will have 06.04.2013 (Saturday) as Start date, and Task 2 will have 07.04.2013 (Sunday) as Start Date:

So, there is no exception for Base Calendar.

To conclude, if you want to make non working days to working days for particular resources, you can make your own Resource Calendar, or modify existing Calendar for particular Resources!

Regards,

About Nenad Trajkovski

Location: Zagreb, Croatia Occupation: Project Manager Interests: Project Management and MS PROJECT He was born in Zagreb, Croatia at 1963. After completing his college he started working on projects in different business areas (banking, manufacturing, automotive industry, distribution, oil companies, etc.) developing and implementing ERP systems into different companies. He has got a lot of experience working with people in different business processes and also possesses great knowledge in information technologies and financial services. Today he works as a business consultant, adn Project Manager in PERPETUUM MOBILE d.o.o. Zagreb. He is a regular lecturer for Project Management in MS Innovation Center in Varaždin, Logosoft Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina and SEAVUS GROUP in Skopje Macedonia. He was named the best lecturer of WINDAYS 2008 while his lecture was also voted as the best. In addition, he was in TOP 10 lecturers at the MS SINERGY 2009 and MS VISIA 2009, 2010. Shares first place as the best lecturer of KulenDays 2009 and 2010 and PMI Conference 2009 in Zagreb. He is also a regular lecturer in the MS Community. He is a Certified Accountant and a PMP (Project Manager Professional) and a PMI-RMP (Risk Manager Professional), MCP, MCT, and Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist - Microsoft Project 2010. From 01.01.2012 awarded with MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Proffesional - Microsoft Project)!

View all posts by Nenad Trajkovski →

11 Responses to Calendars and Moving Tasks to non working days in MS PROJECT 2013!

Jimmy P John says:

September 3, 2014 at 4:40 am

Good Document.

I want assign a task to a particular resource on a Holiday. How can I do that. For eg: I have specified December 25 th as exception in my project calendar. And I have two resources Resource A and Resource B. I want to assign a task to Resource B on December 25. Is it possible ?

Thanks,
Jimmy

- Nenad Trajkovski says:
  
  September 3, 2014 at 8:24 am
  
  I’ll write a post next week about that issue! Stay tuned 🙂
  
  - Jimmy P John says:
    
    September 3, 2014 at 10:44 am
    
    Thanks.
    
    I tried task calendar. Issue faced : – The resource is shown as over allocated.
    I also tried resource calendar. Issue faced :- If I add new holiday / exception, it will not be reflected in the resource calendar. I have to add that holiday / exception to resource calendar also.
Emily says:

March 4, 2014 at 11:29 am

Hello,

Your tutorials are very helpful – thank you! I was wondering if it is possible to make a particular task not allowed on a particular day? For example, as a rule we do not deploy any projects on a Friday, therefore the task for ‘go live’ would need to automatically be moved to the next working day if it falls on a Friday. This is only valid for that one task and not all of the others therefore changing the calendar for the whole project would not work. Do you know if this is possible?

Many Thanks,
Emily

- Nenad Trajkovski says:
  
  March 11, 2014 at 12:26 pm
  
  Read my post https://ntrajkovski.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/task-calendar-in-ms-project-2013-when-to-use-it/
  Hope this helps.
  Regards,
  Nenad
  
Alley says:

July 9, 2013 at 11:38 pm

How do you determine whether to create a task calcendar or a resource calendar?
For example I start off with setting up the project calendar as standard, and then I decide that a particular task needs to be worked on over a weekend.

If my resources normally work the standard hours, do I create a task calendar?

Or do I go into the resource calendar for that resource and create an exception for that weekend?

Thank you

- Nenad Trajkovski says:
  
  July 10, 2013 at 8:51 am
  
  I’ll write a Post about that today!
  
Alley says:

July 9, 2013 at 11:09 pm

Thank you Nenad, your website is very helpful, I have learnt so much!

atotovic says:

June 13, 2013 at 5:51 pm

Reblogged this on NAV4Construction.

Danishyar says:

April 17, 2013 at 3:10 pm

Thanks, I got what I was searching for.

Chandrashekar says:

April 8, 2013 at 8:06 am

Hellow sir,
Iam Chandrashekar from India….Iam happy that ur posts of ur blog are helpful for me to learn MS project… Iam following ur blog after seeing one of ur post for adding projects(sub projects) to a main project.Thanks for that which was a gud solution for me.
Though I know certain basics of MSP still iam waiting to know more about it so i request you to help me in doing so, by doing mail to me the basics of MSP 2010, MSP 2007 ….if possible….I belive that i get a response…
my mail id: chandrashekarra@gmail.com

Thanks again
with regards,
chandrashekar