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Want to know how to change the default calendar in Microsoft Project to reflect your actual working project hours? This tutorial from our MS Project trainer Maggie will give you a glimpse of the sort of content you’ll learn on our beginners Microsoft Project courses. We also run PRINCE2 courses and an Introduction to Project Management workshop so you can gain the skills to stop your projects from running overtime.
The Default Calendar in Microsoft Project is set to an 8 hour day, the Start time being 8:00 am and the finish 5:00 pm, with an hour for lunch. This calendar is called the Standard Calendar and is the calendar initially used for all Projects. This calendar can be found from the Project Menu, Change Working Time.
This calendar can be modified to reflect the working hours for an entire project. You can modify the working hours to the actual working hours for your Company, so if your standard Company hours are 9:00 am to 17:30 pm with an hour for lunch you can change the calendar to these times. With this calendar you are setting the Work Hours for your people
However, there is also a calendar that is used when you enter your tasks, this can be found in the File Menu, Tools and Schedule tab. You can set in here the start and finish times for the tasks, hours per day and hours per week. It is important that you change the calendar before entering any tasks. If the calendar is changed afterwards, the duration of the tasks will change to reflect the new hours, thus changing what you have already set.
If you are changing times for the tasks, it is important to change the resource calendar to the same time, otherwise when you assign your resources the durations of your tasks will change. Follow the instructions below to see how to do this. Read the rest of "How to Change the Calendar in Microsoft Project 2010"
Posted by Maggie in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project, News on August 31st, 2012| No Comments »
When you come to us for training in PRINCE2, or to learn how to use Microsoft Project, we’ll teach you about using Gantt charts to plan and track the progress of your project.
But what do we know about where they came from? Here’s a little bit about Henry Gantt, the brains behind the Gantt Chart.
Henry Laurence Gantt
Henry Gantt was born in 1861 in Maryland, USA. He died in 1919 and developed the management tool that is the Gantt chart just after the turn of the century. He was educated at the Stevens Institute of Technology and became a mechanical engineer.
Gantt soon became known for his passion for economy/efficiency and for his sense of social responsibility. He was an advocate for the social responsibility of businesses and of applying scientific analysis to improve efficiency in industry. While he was a technician, he always strove to develop the most economical methods of production, and achieved a job role of “efficiency expert” at a textile plant in 1904. Read the rest of "Profile of Henry Gantt & the History of the Gantt Chart"
Posted by Andy Trainer in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project, News, Project Management on August 16th, 2012| 1 Comment »
MS Project Training
Ok, so you’ve defined your project, setup all the tasks and resources but now you need to monitor the progress and check that everything is going to plan (or not as the case may be!!).
Microsoft Project offers you several ways of viewing the project, depending on the information you need to see, this is done via the ‘View’ menu. Here we look at how to access the different views.
To learn more about Views, and loads more in MS Project, why not attend our MS Project Training course here in Brighton, Sussex?
Different Ways of Viewing a Project
The VIEW tab on the Ribbon provides different ways of viewing a Project Plan.
A VIEW BAR also appears on the left hand side of the Gantt Chart, enabling you to change to different views.
Yet another way on the TASK TAB on the Ribbon, select the view from the Gantt Chart button.
Views are split into different types, either Task or Resource Views. Read the rest of "Viewing Data in Microsoft Project"
Posted by Andy Trainer in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project, News, Project Management on June 17th, 2011| No Comments »
Microsoft Project 2010 was released last year and many of our clients are upgrading to the new version. Our guest blogger this week is one of our MS Office trainers and she has put together a list of some of the bugs in Project 2010 and (most importantly!) ways of getting around them. In time these bugs will be ironed out with updates but for the time being they can be extremely frustrating if you encounter them.
To learn more about the Office Suite of products, see our Microsoft Office training courses, including MS Project training, Beginners Excel training and Advanced Excel training. If you are upgrading from a previous version, our Office 2010 Upgrade training course covers all the new features in Office 2010.
Bugs in Microsoft Project 2010
As a Microsoft Project trainer I was interested to see the new Project 2010 and how it compares to previous versions. I am always keen to find out what’s new with an application and what benefits it can bring to the users that I train, and how best to communicate these features. There are some great new features such as:
- The Team Planner – this enables you to click and drag work from one resource to another.
- The ability to use the drop down list in the Resource Names column in the Gantt Chart table to select more than one resource.
- An icon in the Indicators column in the Gantt chart table to indicate over-allocations. This saves you having to go a view such as the Resource Sheet to check for over-allocations.
- The ribbon interface which matches the other MS Office applications.
Whilst working with Project 2010, various bugs came to light and a quick “google” and a chat with some other Project trainers reassured me that it isn’t something that I am doing wrong and that I am not the only one to have discovered these problems. For the most part, these bugs affect the display only and if you dig deeper into the detail in other views, the data in the background is correct.
Look out for the release of the Service Pack, but in the meantime, here is a description of the bugs that I have discovered and my suggestions of how to get around them:
Read the rest of "Microsoft Project 2010 Bugs (and Workarounds!)"
Posted by Andy Trainer in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project, News, Project Management on May 25th, 2011| No Comments »
Microsoft Project is the definitive tool for project managers. However using it in a shared environment can often lead to difficulties – particularly when you’ve got lots of projects that use the same resources. This is where resource pools can be invaluable – and they’re not that hard to set up!
To learn more about Resource Pools, and plenty more besides in MS Project, why not attend one of our public 2-day MS Project Training courses here in Brighton, Sussex? For general project management skills we also run a 1-day Introduction to Project Management training course, and we are also an Accredited Training Organisation for PRINCE2 Training.
How to use Resource Pools in Microsoft Project 2010
Creating the same set of resources in each project is unnecessary duplication. You can create a resource pool, entering the resources only once and saving time and storage space. The resources reside in one file and other projects can link into this pool, thus creating project sharer files. If information is changed in the pool, all sharer files will be updated. Also when the pool is changed from a sharer file, the resource pool is updated.
Creating a Resource Pool in MS Project 2010
Follow the following simple steps to create a resource pool in Project 2010
Don’t worry about the start/end date, or entering any tasks
Read the rest of "Microsoft Project 2010 – How to Use Resource Pools"
Posted by Andy Trainer in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project, News, Project Management on February 9th, 2011| 7 Comments »
Microsoft Project allows you to plan, monitor and schedule your resources to manage your projects effectively. This tutorial shows you how to change the standard working hours in Microsoft Project 2007.
If you want to learn more about Microsoft Project, check out our 2 day Microsoft Project Training in Brighton, East Sussex for a comprehensive introduction. We also provide Project Management Training and PRINCE2 Training to provide you with excellent project management skills.
Changing the Working Hours
In Microsoft Project, the default project calendar, called the Standard calendar, defines the standard working hours for all projects. The default working hours are 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with an hour starting at noon for lunch.
You can modify the working hours to reflect the actual working hours for an entire project. You can also specify the length of the workday. For example, if the standard working hours at your company are 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM with an hour for lunch, you would need to adjust the project calendar.
If the work day is longer or shorter than eight hours and/or starts before 8:00 AM, you need to make these adjustments before entering any tasks or the durations for your project will be incorrect. By default, all tasks are scheduled to start at 8:00 AM. Therefore, if you have entered tasks and altered the working hours so that the work day starts at 7:00 AM, Microsoft Project will not recognize any work completed before 8:00 AM. Microsoft Project will then schedule the extra hour into the next working day and extend the duration of the project.
When you change the default working hours, you make the changes in the Options dialog box and in the Change Working Time dialog box for the Standard (default)calendar. The Options dialog box allows you to change the working hours and the duration of the work day. You can also indicate the number of working days in the month, with 20 days being the default. The changes you make in the Change Working Time dialog box must match the changes made in the Options dialog box. For example, you change the working hours in the Options dialog box to 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM, with eight hours in the work day. You then need to change the working time in the Change Working Time dialog box for the Standard calendar to 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM with an hour break, equalling an eight hour work day.
The Calendar page in the Options dialog box
If you change the settings on the Calendar page in the Options dialog box and then select the Set as Default option, each new project will be scheduled according to these settings. For this reason, you should not select this option unless all of your projects will be scheduled according to these settings. For example, if you set a project to have a seven hour work day, each new project will default to a seven hour day.
- Select the Tools menu.
- Select the Change Working Time command.
- Select the Options command.
- Select the time in the Default start time text box.
- Enter the new start time.
- Select the time in the Default end time text box.
- Enter the new end time.
- Change the working hours in the Hours per day spin box to correspond with the new working time.
- Change the hours in the Hours per week spin box to correspond with the new working hours.
- Change the days in the Days per month spin box as necessary.
- Select OK.
- Select the Tab WORK WEEKS
13. Click on DETAILS
14. Highlight the days to change, i.e. Monday – Friday
15. Choose – Set day(s) to these specific working times
16. Enter the same time that you entered on the Calendar page in the Options dialog box. (Allowing the time for lunch)
17. Click in the lines below the times
18. Select OK.
Adding a Non-Working Day
By default, the project calendar defines the standard working days (Monday through Friday) and nonworking days (Saturday and Sunday) for a project. The default calendar has no holidays, so you must mark the appropriate holidays as nonworking days. It is very important to mark all applicable nonworking days as durations are calculated according to this calendar. In any view, nonworking days are identified with gray shading.
The Change Working Time dialog box
- Select the Tools menu.
- Select the Change Working Time command.
- Display the month in the calendar in which you want to add the nonworking day.
- Select the day(s) on the calendar you want to add as nonworking.
- Select the Exceptions Tab
- Enter a Name for the holiday, i.e. Christmas Eve.
- Click on the Start Date and the dates you selected should appear in the Start and Finish Date boxes
Posted by Andy Trainer in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project, News, Project Management on December 10th, 2010| No Comments »
