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Audience
Project Insight administrators, project managers and resource managers
Description
Holidays, shutdown days and other non-working events may be input into Project Insight as non-working days or times. This powerful feature pushes scheduled work off of non-working days and re-schedules the work. Part-time employees and consultants may have work schedules that differ from your default work calendar. Project managers, resource managers and executives will find out how to utilize this robust and useful functionality.
Benefits
- Understand how to set up non-working times at the global, project and task levels
- Learn how and when to create specific resource work schedules
- How and when to add multiple work schedules
Key Points
Transcript
Intelligent scheduling is core functionality of the Project Insight project management software (PPM). In order to optimize the intelligent scheduling and reduce the project manager’s administrative overhead as much as possible, you need work schedules. Work schedules reflect the basic schedule that your organization works on a daily basis. For example, your team might work from 8 to 5 with a one hour lunch, or 9 to 5:30 with a half hour lunch or other schedule.
Default work schedules are created at the system level. Work schedules will come into play for projects and tasks. For example, if your typical workday starts at 8:00 AM, then your project tasks will also start at 8:00 AM on your task list. Don’t worry, you can change work schedules at the project, task and resource levels as well. We will cover all of these options during this session.
Multiple work schedules may be set up to reflect parts of your organization that reside in different geographical areas. Or perhaps you have a manufacturing site with workers that work longer shifts. These are a couple of the many reasons why you might need to create multiple work schedules.
Default work schedules are set up once and used to create project level schedules, task level schedules or user level schedules. Work schedules in Project Insight are very flexible. You can make them as simple or as sophisticated as you require to match your organization’s business processes.
Default Work Schedules
Only Project Insight system administrators can create default work schedules.
System administrators and user managers can set up unique schedules for individual resources. Project managers and schedulers can set up work schedules on their specific projects and tasks.
To start, you are going to set up your organization’s default workdays and times.
To set up your organization’s default work schedule, click on Administration to expand that section.
Click on the arrow next to Projects to expand out the project administration section.
Click on Default Work Schedule.
You can see there are several different work schedules already set up: Canadian Work Schedules, UK Work Schedules and the system default.
You must always have a system default work schedule. For a lot of organizations this is all they will ever need.
You can change the name of this to make it more readily recognizable to your team, if you wish.
Click the edit icon on the System Default line.
Erase the System Default name and change it to US Work Schedule.
Click Save.
You can always tell which work schedule is the default one, because there is no delete or the x icon next to it.
You cannot delete the system default work schedule because you must always have at least one work schedule in your system.
For now, click the edit icon for US Work Schedule.
Erase the US Work Schedule name and change it back to System Default.
For organizations that have just one work schedule, this is the standard naming convention and they usually keep that.
Click Save.
If you have multiple locations with different holiday schedules, then you will most likely use the system default schedule for the location of your head office or where the majority of your project work is done.
Remember, these are default schedules only. They are used to reduce your data entry and maintain consistency when setting up project level, task level and user level work schedules.
Setting up a Calendar
To set the default workdays and times for your default work schedule or any other work schedule. Click on the work schedule name.
A form appears with the default workdays and times.
This is the same form that you use to edit work schedules at the project and user levels as well. Once you have learned how to use the system level work calendar, you will know how to use the other levels.
Collapse the left navigation.
You can see that the workday for Monday is set to start at 8:00 AM until noon. Then there is one hour for lunch, then work again from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM.
If you scroll down, you can see that the rest of the days of the standard work week are set that way as well.
However, if you scroll backup, you can see that there are no work times for Saturday or Sunday.
For Monday to Friday, it is expected the organization works an eight hour workday, 4 hours in the morning and 4 hours in the afternoon and, normally, does not work Saturday or Sunday.
If these times do not reflect your organization’s start and stop times, no problem. You can change them. For example, many of our advertising clients work from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM or later. Or sometimes our clients start at 7:00 AM and work until 4:00 PM. Project Insight is flexible. Simply adjust the times to fit your business.
In Canada, a seven and a half hour workday is very common. In that case you may change the start time to 8:30 for each workday.
Just click in the Start Time for Monday and change it to 8:30 AM.
Click in Tuesday and change the start time there as well.
This is now a 7.5 hour workday instead. That's fine as well. You can work shorter or longer workdays than 8 hours.
You can see that for Monday and Tuesday, since you changed the default time, it becomes automatically identified as a non-default time in the system.
This setting is used more in the backend of Project Insight than with any kind of user interface. It’s just telling Project Insight that you are not going to use the inherent default that is built-in which is 8 to 12 and 1 to 5 Instead you are going to use other times that are specific to your organization. There are really no other implications to this.
To keep the information consistent for all the workdays, change Monday back to 8:00 AM .
Or instead of changing it back you can just click Use Default.
There are also settings to identify the default workday length,
the default workday Start time
and the default workday End Time
The work schedule information is used in calculating resource workloads and other reports.
You should ensure that these settings match your information on your workdays, so you see consistent resource data. For example, this data shows up in reports about full time employees or FTEs.
Enter in the FTE average hours per day,
And the FTE average number of hours per week
And the FTE average number of hours per month
Again, these should match your default workday length and start and end time and your work schedule.
Holidays and other Non-Working Days
The next step is to set up your organization’s holidays, non-working days and special days.
For the workdays and times, you may decide to use the defaults and not change them, but most organizations will need to add in company-wide holidays or shutdowns and special working times.
To do that, click Holidays, Non-Workdays and Special days.
By adding in the organization’s non-working days, Project Insight will assure that no projects or tasks are assigned on those days, unless overridden at the user, project or task level.
You can also add in special working days or times to over-ride what you set on the other tab.
Start by adding in a common holiday in North America, which is January 1st, or New Year’s Day.
Click on the Calendar for the first date.
Use the arrows to navigate to January, if necessary. Click January 1st
If you had multiple holidays, you could enter a range, but for now just leave one date.
The next step is to categorize that date. You need to specify why it is a non-working day.
For this case, click on Holiday.
Click the plus sign to add it.
You can see that date is now listed as a Holiday.
In Canada, most people get both the 25th and the 26th off.
Enter that by clicking the Calendar for the first date.
Use the arrows to navigate to December if needed.
Click December 25th.
You can also just type in a date. Click on the Calendar for the second date.
Type in the date instead
Click on Holiday to categorize it.
Click the plus sign to add it.
You can see the software added both December 25 and 26th as holidays.
Non-Default Times
You can also enter non-default working times. For example, maybe “staff only” work a half a day on Christmas Eve or the 24th of December.
To account for that, click on the Calendar for the first date.
Use the arrows to navigate to December, if you need to.
Click December 24th.
Click Non-Default Times.
The Inherent default times are displayed. Now adjust them to reflect the time for that day.
Erase the 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM entries
Click the plus sign to add it.
You can see that this is listed with the changed work times for that day.
Now that you have done this, Project Insight will not schedule a resource to work on that date and time.
Here are the ‘real world’ implications for your project team: If you have a task that is going to take 5 days’ duration, but you have a holiday during that time period, the task duration will increase to 6 days because one of those days cannot be worked.
In our example above, the software will also schedule only 4 hours of work time on the 24th of December instead of the default 8 hours.
You can also add working days. For example, if your standard workday is Monday to Friday but your team works the last Saturday of every month as well, you could add in those Saturdays as special workdays. You'll see how to do that later on.
Shutdowns or Non-Working Time
You can enter other types of non-workdays, not just holidays.
For example, you can specify a date as a shutdown date.
Or non-working time.
These categories appear as filters on the time entry grid. You can choose whether or not to include days marked as holidays, shutdown time, or non-working time on the time entry grid.
Whether or not you use the filters will depend on the business process for your organization. You can still enter time on these days with the time entry worksheet or task details form.
Shift Project Schedules and Notify Project Managers
You will set up your default work schedules when you first implement Project Insight, but you will also maintain them over time. For example, a best practice is to enter all the holidays for the next year, prior to starting to plan the coming year’s projects.
However, sometimes you need to add new holidays, adjust your shutdown times or change start and end times after projects have been created. If that occurs, Project Insight will re-calculate the schedules for active and planning projects that are affected by the changes made.
Click on the Automatically re-calculate schedules option.
You will get a notification that the updates may take a few minutes and you may not see the changes immediately. Click Ok.
You can also choose to send an email to the project managers of all active and planning projects which may be affected by work schedule changes.
This benefits the project managers as they receive a notification that their project has been impacted. They can review the changes and make adjustments if necessary.
These checkboxes are optional.
You can leave them unchecked and existing schedules will not be affected. However, anytime a project manager or scheduler makes a change in the duration or resource assignment to a task in the project and the schedule needs to be recalculated, it will automatically recalculate according to the default work schedule as it exists currently. So any new tasks you add or changes to the project you make will be shifted with the intelligent scheduling.
This information is not yet saved in the system.
Click Save to save the changes.
Default Work Schedule for a Project
The first place you will see these default work schedules used are when you add a Project.
Click on the Expand Left Navigation icon.
Click on the Administration section to collapse it.
Click on the Folders section to expand it.
Click on the Projects folder.
Hover on the Add icon and select Project.
Collapse the left navigation.
Enter the project name such as System Upgrade.
You can see farther down the form that it says Work Calendar Inherits From.
When you create a project, a project level calendar gets created automatically. The information in that calendar will inherit the settings from the default work schedule set here.
Click the drop down to see the different options available, you can choose the Canadian Work Schedule or the UK Work Schedule.
Leave it as the System Default.
Hover on Save and click Save & Display project.
A project is created along with a calendar for it.
View Project Level Schedules
To see that calendar, hover on the Views menu option and select Work Schedule.
This is referred to as the Project Default work schedule.
You can see that it is inheriting its information from the System Default Work Schedule.
You can change the information on the project work schedule the same way as you changed it on the default work schedules.
You can change the standard days and times.
You can also specify different non-working days that are applicable only to this project.
For example, the work on this particular project has to run after hours, say from 3:00 PM to 11:00 PM to avoid causing problems with staff regular working hours.
You could enter those alternative hours in.
Erase the 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM first.
Change 12:00 AM to 11:00 PM.
Change 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM.
Click on Holidays, Non-Working Days, and Special Working Days.
Again, if you look at the bottom of the form, you can see the non-working days that were inherited from the default work schedule set for the project. You cannot change those, but you can add additional ones as you require.
Maybe your staff regular workdays are Monday to Friday, but you know that this system is going to be upgraded on a Saturday to avoid conflict with regular working hours.
To set that up, click on the calendar icon for the first date and select the coming Saturday as the date this is going to occur.
Click Non-Default Time.
For now though, just cancel because you want to leave the project work schedule to be the same as the system default work schedule, which is 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM workdays, Monday to Friday.
Project Insight will use that information to schedule your task.
Click in the gray blank line and type Preparation for Go Live.
Add a duration of the number of days left in this week plus one day.
Click Save.
You can see that the start date of the task gets set to today at 8:00 AM and the end date is scheduled for the Monday at 5:00 PM. Work is not scheduled on Saturday or Sunday.
Default Work Schedules for Resources
Not only does a project have a calendar but each user or resource also has an individual work calendar. The individual’s work calendar inherits the settings from a default work schedule, just like a project work calendar.
To set the default work schedule for an individual user, click on the Expand Left Navigation icon.
Click on the Administration section to expand it.
Click on Users.
Click on the Edit icon for your user.
Click the Resource Info tab.
There is an option called, Work Calendar Inherits From.
Click on the drop down and change it to UK Work Schedule.
Click Save.
This setting is used in two places. First, when a project creator adds a project, the default work schedule is as the basis for creating the project level calendar. Second, the user’s work calendar inherits the settings from this calendar.
Effect of User’s Work Schedule on a Project
To see the effect when adding a project, click the Projects Folders
Right click on the white space near the top of the form.
This brings up the menu options, hover on the Add icon and select Project.
Look at the Work Calendar Inherits From.
The default is now UK Work Schedules instead of System Default.
Again, you can change it if you need.
You can see that you can also set the time zone for the project and the user.
If you are setting up schedules by geographical area, then you will also want to set the time zone to match that area as well as set the calendar. Associating a project to a specific time zone anchors the project in that time zone which is useful for global project teams.
Click Cancel, to exit it out of the add function.
Create Resource Work Schedules
To see where the default work schedule for a resource is used and how it can be changed, go in the Administrative section for each user, you will see a calendar icon.
To change that user’s specific work schedule, click the calendar icon.
The Work Schedule for that resource shows.
You can see first of all, that the defaults for her work schedule are set to the Inherit from the UK Work Schedules.
That’s because the UK Work Schedule was set as this user’s default work calendar.
The times for the day that are appearing are those for the UK Work Schedule.
Again, to see where that setting is coming from and change it,
Click the back icon.
Click the Edit icon on the line for you resource name.
Click the Advanced tab.
In the Work Schedule Inherits From drop down, change it to back to the System Default.
Click Save.
Click the Calendar icon for that user again.
That changed the Default Work Schedule for this user from the UK Work Schedules to the System Default.
You can see that this user’s work schedule now defaults to what was set up in the system default work schedule for the work hours.
Non-Default Times
If you change any of these times, for example, enter 8:30 AM instead of 8:00 AM.
Enter 12:30 PM instead of 12:00.
Then the Non-Default Times option gets set automatically.
This setting here indicates to Project Insight that this user has times that are different from the default work schedule that is set for them.
Holidays, Non-Workdays and Special Days
For this specific user, you can not only set their work times but you can also set their personal holidays and other non-working days.
Click on the Holidays, Non-Workdays and Special Days tab.
Notice that this is the same form as before. You enter vacation, and non-working times for this user the same way that you did for the default work schedules.
You can see that there are holidays already set up. That is because they were inherited from the default work schedule set for this user, which was the System Default work schedule.
You cannot change those, but you can add special days, vacation and non-workdays specific for this user.
Say for example, you are away for two days next week. Monday and Tuesday.
Click on the Calendar for the first date.
Select the start date of your holiday or Monday of next week.
Click on the Calendar for the second date.
Enter the end date of your holiday or Tuesday of next week.
Click Vacation, to categorize it as Vacation time.
Click the plus sign icon to add it.
Scroll down to the bottom of the form. You can see that it added those vacation days to this user’s work schedule which already had some inherited holidays from the default work calendar assigned to that user.
Categorizing User’s Non-Working Time
The categories for individual user’s non-working time differ from the default work schedule settings for non-working time.
Those categories are Holidays, Shutdowns or just general Non-Working Time.
While an individual user’s non-working time categories are Vacations, PTO and Leave of Absence or just general Non-Working Time.
These categories are used on the time entry grid as well.
You can choose whether or not to include days marked as either Leave of Absence or non-working time on the time entry grid.
You can also choose whether or not to filter on days marked as vacation days or PTO dates on the time entry grid.
Click Save.
That is how to set work schedules for individual users.
Create Project Custom Schedules
In organizations with more complex scheduling requirements, you can also create project custom schedules in addition to your default project calendar.
For example, you have the scenario where you are scheduling a go live task of new software to be on a Saturday. You didn't want to enter that in the default project calendar but you do want it setup in a custom calendar for the project.
To do that,
Click on the Projects Folders.
Collapse the left navigation.
Hover on the Views menu option and select Options.
Click the Custom Work Schedule tab.
The first thing you see is an option, Project Default Work Schedule Inherits From.
You could actually change that setting in here. It’s the same function as changing it from the Project Add/Edit form.
Just leave that and add a new custom work schedule by clicking in the blue bar and enter the name of the schedule.
Make it descriptive, such as something like Saturday Go Live.
Select a work schedule that this one will inherit its information from.
Click on the drop to see the list.
The software allows you to select from user’s personal schedules as well as the system level schedules or even any other custom schedules setup.
Leave it as the Project Default, which is the work schedule set above.
Click the Save icon.
You’ve created the schedule, now you need to make your changes to it.
Click on the schedule name.
Click on Holidays, Non-Working Days, and Special Working Days.
Click on the calendar icon for the first date and select the coming Saturday as the date this is going to occur.
Click Non-Default Time.
Leave the default times set and click the plus icon to add it.
Click Save.
In this custom work calendar called Saturday Go Live, you have set a working day for that Saturday.
Setting the Work Schedule to Use
So far, you have set up a default work schedule, schedules for individual users and custom project schedules.
You need to tell Project Insight which ones of these schedules it should use.
Click on the View menu to go to the Task List.
The first rule is that if you don't have a resource assigned to a task, which is the case in this example,
The task will just be scheduled according to the project default work schedule.
If you have a resource assigned, them different scheduling rules apply.
Click the Edit icon for the task.
Click Edit Resources.
In the drop down, select a Resource.
Click Save.
System Level - Project & Task Options
There is an option in the Administration section that sets the system wide default for what schedule should be used.
You must be a system administrator to set this.
Expand the left navigation.
Click on the arrow next to the project administration section to expand it out.
Click on Default Project & Task Options.
There is an option called: Use the resource's personal work calendar when adding resources to the project.
If this option is unchecked, it means that the project default calendar will be used.
If this option is checked, it means that the user's calendar will be used.
These are defaults only. They can be overridden. You can never set a project custom calendar as the default one to use. The use of project custom schedules is set up separately.
Project Level - Project & Task Options
Click on the Projects folder.
Click on the Upgrade System project.
Collapse the left navigation.
That option can also be set at a project level by the project manager or schedule.
Hover on the Views menu and select Options.
The first option is to use the resource's personal work calendar when adding resources to the project.
Uncheck it for now. That means you want to use the project default calendar.
This setting only affects new users being added to the project. It doesn't affect existing users.
Project Resources - Work Schedule Setting
If a task has a resource assigned, the Project Resources function is used to determine the schedule to use.
Click the Resources menu.
Each resource assigned to the project has a work schedule setting.
When you add a resource, it gets automatically set according to that project option - Use the resource's personal work calendar
Click in the drop down for the resource name and select a resource.
Click in the drop down for the work schedule.
It's set to project default.
That's because the project option to use the resource's personal work calendar was unchecked.
You can change it though to the personal default or even the custom calendar.
Hover on the Views menu option again and select Options.
Uncheck Use the resource's personal work calendar when adding resources to the project.
Click Save.
Click the Resources menu.
Click in the drop down for the resource name and select a resource.
Click in the drop down for the work schedule.
It's set to personal default.
That's because the project option to use the resource's personal work calendar was checked.
Again, this is the default and you can change it to the personal default or even the custom calendar.
If a resource is assigned to a task, Project Insight will determine which work schedule to use to schedule the task according to what is set in here.
For most organizations, you can set the Project & Task option defaults according to your business process and just leave that.
You'll change it here to address anomalies or non-standard scheduling requirements.
Click the Edit icon for your user.
Click in the drop down for the Work Schedule and change it to Personal Default.
Click the Save icon.
The next time you edit the task, this change will be applied. Also, Project Insight does monitor these types of changes and will automatically apply the update, it just may not be instantaneous. So to see those changes applied right away, click the Update icon.
Click on the Views menu.
You can see that the task end date was rescheduled to Wednesday. That's because Monday and Tuesday were set as vacation days for this resource.
Resource Allocation
To see how this looks on the Resource Allocation report, hover on Resources and select Resource Allocation.
Click the Display Options.
In the drop down for Dynamic Dates, select Next Week.
Click the Update Display icon.
You can see on the graph there is no black line for Monday and Tuesday because that resource has no availability that date.
Custom Work Schedules at the Task Level
A custom project work schedule was setup for Saturday work.
Click on Resources.
Click the Edit icon for your resource.
Click in the drop down for the Work Schedule.
Click on Saturday Go Live.
If you assigned this work schedule to this resource, then all tasks assigned to this resource would be scheduled using this custom schedule.
However, you may only want one task scheduled for that Saturday custom schedule.
To do that, click Cancel to leave this resource to be scheduled by their personal default work schedule.
Click the Views menu option.
You want to assign that custom work calendar to the Go Live task only.
For each task, you are able to change the Work Calendar that is being used on the task.
Right click on the task.
Hover on Edit Task and select Edit Task (full).
Click on the Advanced tab.
Go to the Work Calendar.
Click in the drop down and select the calendar that you want to apply to this just one task.
Select Saturday Go Live.
Click Save.
Another way to see this is to put that column on the view.
Click Display options.
Click the Column Selection Options section to expand that out if it is not already expanded.
In Selected Columns, click on Admin because you want the new column to be placed just before that.
Scroll down to find Work Calendar.
Double click on it.
Click on Update Display Options.
Click in the Work Calendar column header to drag it wider.
You can see the Work Calendar set for the task.
Click on the Edit icon for the Go Live task.
Click on the drop down for Work Calendar
That is another way to set it.
If you set a work calendar at the task level, it will over-ride the project work calendar and any user work schedules that are set.
Click Save.
You can see the end date of the task has changed again.
It is now scheduled to end on Saturday. That's because it is scheduling it using the custom work calendar.
To see how this looks on the Resource Allocation report, hover on Resources and select Resource Allocation.
You can see that Saturday now has work hours scheduled.
That’s setting up Global and Resource Work Schedules and when and how they are used.
Project Insight can be configured to meet very sophisticated scheduling requirements, however, a lot of our clients simply set a global system default calendar and just use that and their scheduling expertise.
Whatever your business process, simple or sophisticated, the Project Insight global and resource work schedules can be configured to meet your requirements.