Hi,
again one interest question from my Blog reader:
“Dear Nenad,
Thank you VERY much for your very informative blog! I enjoy reading your posts and visit the site often. I would appreciate if you could answer my question regarding managing exceptions for resources with over 100% availability (I’m a Project 2010 user).
MS Project allows creating resources with over 100% maximum availability. For example, a resource Tester with max availability of 300% means that this is a group of 3 people.
Let’s say that I have assigned this resource to a task. At a later time I found out that one of the people in this group will be unable to work on a 2 specific dates due to medical appointments.
Under normal circumstances, I would edit a resource calendar and specify these dates as an exception (non-working time). However, doing this for the Tester resource takes makes all 3 people unavailable for the dates of exception. One way of preventing this problem (rather than resolving it) is to specify 3 individual resources with 100% max availability each. However, it sort of defeats the convenience of using group resource (with over 100%). I was unable to find the answer to this problem so far anywhere and would appreciate it if you could provide some suggestions.”
I’ll show you how to do it in MS PROJECT 2013, but you can do the same in MS PROJECT 2010!
First I’ll create three Tasks with same duration:
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Now I will crate Generic Resource, called Testers with 300% capacity:
Now suppose that one of Testers is on Vacation from Wednesday, 12/18/2013 to Thursday, 13/18/2013. What does it mean? It means that I’ll have only 200% max Units during this period. How to do that? Follow examples below:
As you can see before, and after Vacation period Capacity is 300%, and during the Vacation Period it is 200%. Now I’ll assign Testers to all Tasks, and I’ll get:
They are over allocated. Where, and when? Let’s look at the Resource Usage View:
As you can see all Resource are over allocated during the Vacation time!
Hope this helps!
Regards!
Nenad Trajkovski 
Looking for answers on MS project I found your Blog. Now I have a problem somewhat similar to above. Say I have a resource poule with 4 people. Up till now I changed the availability of each person when for example they had a day of. I now want to use generic resources for different poules. My problem is that not everybody is 100% available. Some are 70%, some 80% and some 90%. If someone from my group takes a day of, this could be -70 of -80 or -90. for that day. If two take a day of, it gets more complex. Is there no way MS project can count up group availability based on individual resource availability?
Well, yos should modify Generic Resouce in Celndar. For instance if you have 4 Resources (e.g. 400%), and at particular day one person is at Vacation, and another is avaliable only 30%, then for that day in Calendar you should pu5 400-100-70=230%.
Hello Nenad,
Your blog is a great resource for people interested in MS Project and Project Management. Thank you for such a great resource.
My company has recently published a course on Udemy. We will like to give your blog readers a special discount voucher for the course. It would be wonderful if you can review the course and give your feedback. How can I reach you to give access to the course and special voucher?
Prachi
nenadtrajk@gmail.com is my email address!