Hi,
another question from my Blog reader: “How do you determine whether to create a task calendar 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?”
The answer is: It depends of your Task! Let me give you an example. Resource Calendar has purpose to establish working time, and non working time for some resources. So when you assign Resources to some Tasks, Start and End Date depend of Resource Calendar.
Let me show you that in MS PROJECT 2013.
Let’ say that I have resource Nenad and that I’m freak, and I am going to work every day (including Saturday and Sunday).
I will arrange Standard Calendar for me:
and then:
If I add Task to my Project with 5 days durations it will looks like:
As you can see it will start at 10.07.2013 (Wednesday) and it will finish at 16.07.2013 (next Tuesday). But, when I assign Nenad to the Task it will looks like:
As you can see now the Task will start at 10.07.2013 (Wednesday) and it will finish at 14.07.2013 (Sunday). Why? Because Nenad will work at weekend. But Let us suppose that we have another Resource, Mary, with Standard working Time (e.g. no work for weekend), and that she will work with Nenad on the same Task:
As you can see it will start at 10.07.2013 (Wednesday) and it will finish at 16.07.2013 (next Tuesday), like at the First example. Why? Let’s look at the Task Usage View:
As you can see, Nenad will work at Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but Mary will work at Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday.
And if you have this particular Calendar for Nenad it will be applied to all Tasks.
Let me now say that I have Task called Weekend Task. And it has to be done only at Saturday and Sunday.
I’m going to cerate Task Calendar:
and:
and then:
and:
Finally I’ll assign this Calendar to the Task:
and I’ll get:
As you can see duration is 4 days, but it will spread across two weekends (13.07.14.07, and 20.07-21.07)
Now let’s suppose that we need Mary for that Task:
Huston, we have a Problem. Since Mary doesn’t work at weekends, we have a conflict. What Can we do? We can leave it as is, and we will get:
Or we can say that we don’t care about Mary’s working time for that Task like:
Now I can assign Mary and I will have no warning!
So, to conclude. If you want some Task to be done on Particular days of the week, no matter of Resources, then yes, use Task Calendar!
Regards!
Nenad Trajkovski 
Nenad,
I’m new to MS Project and really appreciate information on this site. I have a question reqarding your post “Resource vs. Task Calendar in MS PROJECT 2013” posted on July 10, 2013.
Please explain how were you able to schedule the Task for your resourse Nenad for Sat. 10/13 and Sunday, 10/14 even though both of those days were his working days?
Isn’t the MSP scheduling rule states that in order to schdeule a task for an assigned resourse, the task and the resource should have COMMON working days, unless the optoion to ignore resource calendar is selected.
In this case Saturday and Sunday of 10/13 and 10/14 respectively were set as working days for Nenad, bot set as non-working days for the task as it was useing a Standard calendar with non-working Saturdays and Sundays.
Thank you,
Alex
Hi,
I will make a post a blog about this.
Hello! And many thanks for your blog!
But if due to any reason, Mary can’t work in that specific weekend planned and must delay the work to another weekend? The only way is to go the the Details Exception and change it manually?
This is the Best way!
Thank you very much.
My problem is that some of resources have 2 work schedules. When they work on-shore (5 days week 8 hours day) and off-shore (7 days week and 11 hours day), For each work day off-shore they wave a rest day.
But because off-shore conditions are very unpredictable and dates change often I wondered if there were another way.
Thanks Nenad.
Rather than creating a task calendar for the task, could you do the following;
1. Go to the resource’s resource calendar
2. Choose the exception tab
3. Put in the specific Saturday and Sunday date
4. Go to details tab and specify working times.
Then when you assign the resources to the task, say starting on a Monday for 7 days, it will allow the resources to work on the weekend.
Is that an alternative to setting a task calendar?
Many thanks
Yes it is alternative, but you should be careful because tht working time is aplicable not to just one Task but all Tasks in the same period for the same resource!