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-   -   Possible Bug, can someone please confirm - Effort-Duration-Change of days per day (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=15325)

stephenrussett 2010-02-15 12:24 PM

Possible Bug, can someone please confirm - Effort-Duration-Change of days per day
 
Ok here is the situation.

Create an activity with a effort of 8h.
Assign it to someone with a work schedule of:Mon 9am - 3pm, and Thur 9am - 12pm.

Make sure your project hours per day is set 8h.

The durations of the activity should now be 6d 3h.

Now change your project hours of work per day to say 24h or 1h.

The duration in the WBS changing according to the Project hours per day. But the Gantt is unaffected. Start and end dates are also unaffected. BUT the Duration seems to be linked with the Project hours per day even when it should not be because of custom work schedules.

stephenrussett 2010-02-16 01:55 PM

Anyone try this?

whpalmer4 2010-02-16 02:11 PM

The duration changes because of the irregular work week. If you look at your chart as you drag that 8h task across the week, you'll see the duration column continually changing. It is showing you how many days of the week will be covered by the bar for that task, and that number is clearly going to increase as the bar covers more days that resource isn't active.

When you change the value that says "this is how many hours are in a work day" all you are doing is changing the divisor in the calculation that converts small units into larger ones for purposes of display. As you noticed, the Gantt chart doesn't change (except if you are showing a textual duration figure next to a task). It doesn't have anything to do with the actual project work schedule, either the general one or the week-specific one or for any given resource's schedule. It's just a way to let you deal in more convenient units.

stephenrussett 2010-02-16 02:38 PM

Right i understand why the duration was changing. My confusion is why the gantt chart was not updating to represent the change.

Can you explain your second paragraph again. It is very confusing.

Thanks

whpalmer4 2010-02-16 03:01 PM

Hmm, read [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=10949"]this[/URL] and see if it is made any clearer!

stephenrussett 2010-02-16 03:36 PM

Ok but that does not explain by the Gantt does not update. The gantt shows the duration. So shouldnt the Gantt and the Duration column be equal to each other? Meaning that if i change the project hours of of a day, the duration changes in the WBS. But the Gantt does not change. unless i am spacing out on something here, and everything i know about WBS and PMOK and PMI, the duration column and the Gantt bar length should show the same information. ???

whpalmer4 2010-02-16 04:11 PM

[QUOTE=stephenrussett;73422]Ok but that does not explain by the Gantt does not update. The gantt shows the duration. So shouldnt the Gantt and the Duration column be equal to each other? Meaning that if i change the project hours of of a day, the duration changes in the WBS. But the Gantt does not change. unless i am spacing out on something here, and everything i know about WBS and PMOK and PMI, the duration column and the Gantt bar length should show the same information. ???[/QUOTE]

Maybe the reason it makes sense to me is that I don't know what the acronyms mean :-)

Okay, let's try it a different way. The bar OmniPlan draws on the Gantt chart goes from the start of the task to the end of the task, regardless of what is between them. Weekends, holidays, days off, it doesn't matter. If you have assigned an 8 hour task to someone who works 2 hours per day, the bar is probably going to span at least 4 days on the Gantt chart. Similarly, if you assign that 8 hour task to someone who works 9-3 on Monday and 9-noon on Thursday, it is always going to cover at least 4 days, because it will span either Thursday to Monday or Monday to Thursday unless it has to go into an additional week (because it couldn't start until 2 PM on Monday, for example, in which case it would occupy 1 hour Monday, 3 hours on Thursday, and the 1st 4 hours of the next Monday, thus spanning no fewer than 8 days). OmniPlan does [b]not[/b] draw a chain of sausage links only on the days the resource actually works.

Suppose you worked for your town government as an OmniPlan consultant 2 hours on each Monday and Wednesday. Suppose also that to save costs your town government switched from working 9-5 M-F (5 x 8 hour days) to 8-6 M-Th (4 x 10 hour days). The value you would enter in the town's OmniPlan documents for project hours per day would change from 8 to 10, but a Gantt chart showing tasks assigned to you would not change, agreed?

whpalmer4 2010-02-16 04:15 PM

An addition to my previous post: when I say the task will span so many days, i mean so many project working days. If the project work schedule also is only M 9-3 and Th 9-12, then the 8 hour task starting Monday 9am will only span 2 days in the chart unless you've selected the option to show off hours (View->Gantt chart->Show Off-hours)

stephenrussett 2010-02-16 04:16 PM

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;73423]Maybe the reason it makes sense to me is that I don't know what the acronyms mean :-)

Okay, let's try it a different way. The bar OmniPlan draws on the Gantt chart goes from the start of the task to the end of the task, regardless of what is between them. Weekends, holidays, days off, it doesn't matter. If you have assigned an 8 hour task to someone who works 2 hours per day, the bar is probably going to span at least 4 days on the Gantt chart. Similarly, if you assign that 8 hour task to someone who works 9-3 on Monday and 9-noon on Thursday, it is always going to cover at least 4 days, because it will span either Thursday to Monday or Monday to Thursday unless it has to go into an additional week (because it couldn't start until 2 PM on Monday, for example, in which case it would occupy 1 hour Monday, 3 hours on Thursday, and the 1st 4 hours of the next Monday, thus spanning no fewer than 8 days). OmniPlan does [b]not[/b] draw a chain of sausage links only on the days the resource actually works.

Suppose you worked for your town government as an OmniPlan consultant 2 hours on each Monday and Wednesday. Suppose also that to save costs your town government switched from working 9-5 M-F (5 x 8 hour days) to 8-6 M-Th (4 x 10 hour days). The value you would enter in the town's OmniPlan documents for project hours per day would change from 8 to 10, but a Gantt chart showing tasks assigned to you would not change, agreed?[/QUOTE]

Right so the Gantt bar should span over the 4 days in your first example. What i am saying is that when you change the Hours of a day in the Project settings, and have custom work days, the Durations Column updates with the new settings for the project hours per day but the Gantt bar does not.

Did you follow the steps in the first post? Give it a try and let me know what happens. What i am saying is that i think there is a bug that has the duration column linked with the hours per day field in the project settings but the gantt bar does not update if you change the hours per day setting when the assigned human resource has a custom work schedule. Just give the steps in the first post a try.

PS. WBS stands for work breakdown structure. The 1, 1.1, 1.1. etc is called a WBS.

stephenrussett 2010-02-16 04:17 PM

You can set the normal working days to 9-830pm sun-sat

whpalmer4 2010-02-16 04:53 PM

[QUOTE=stephenrussett;73425]Right so the Gantt bar should span over the 4 days in your first example. What i am saying is that when you change the Hours of a day in the Project settings, and have custom work days, the Durations Column updates with the new settings for the project hours per day but the Gantt bar does not.

Did you follow the steps in the first post? Give it a try and let me know what happens. What i am saying is that i think there is a bug that has the duration column linked with the hours per day field in the project settings but the gantt bar does not update if you change the hours per day setting when the assigned human resource has a custom work schedule. Just give the steps in the first post a try.

PS. WBS stands for work breakdown structure. The 1, 1.1, 1.1. etc is called a WBS.[/QUOTE]

WBS is the one I did know, of course :-)

I did try out your example, and it behaves just as I described. There is no need for the gantt bar to update because the work scheduled has not changed. The hours per day setting in the Project: Formatting inspector has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual scheduling of the work, only convenience of display and entry. OmniPlan uses that value to convert "1 day" into however many hours that is [b]according to your setting[/b] but that setting does not reflect individual or project work days unless you set it to the proper value (if that is even possible). If you type "1 day" into a effort field before assigning a task to a resource, OP multiplies 1 day by whatever value you have set for project hours per day and inserts that number of hours in the duration field. It can't very well look at the work schedule of a resource that has yet to be assigned, can it? Neither can it necessarily know when in the week the task will fall for those resources with irregular schedules. When you tell OmniPlan a task involves "1 day" of effort, that is 1 standard project day, which may not be the same number of hours as the work day for any individual resource in the project.

Put yet another way -- this all goes away if you uncheck all units except hours in the Durations Display of the Project: Formatting inspector.

stephenrussett 2010-02-16 04:59 PM

Right, but assign a resource. Then change the hours of work per day. My point is that the Duration column in the WBS should be the same as the length of the activity bar in the Gantt. My exp was giving me a change in the duration column after changing the work hours per day, but not changing the gantt bar (resource is assigned to activity and custom schedule is already set)

stephenrussett 2010-02-16 05:00 PM

I will try to create a more hardened example later tonight for you to try.

michaelaye 2010-08-05 10:05 AM

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;73423]Maybe the reason it makes sense to me is that I don't know what the acronyms mean :-)

Okay, let's try it a different way. The bar OmniPlan draws on the Gantt chart goes from the start of the task to the end of the task, regardless of what is between them. Weekends, holidays, days off, it doesn't matter. If you have assigned an 8 hour task to someone who works 2 hours per day, the bar is probably going to span at least 4 days on the Gantt chart. Similarly, if you assign that 8 hour task to someone who works 9-3 on Monday and 9-noon on Thursday, it is always going to cover at least 4 days, because it will span either Thursday to Monday or Monday to Thursday unless it has to go into an additional week (because it couldn't start until 2 PM on Monday, for example, in which case it would occupy 1 hour Monday, 3 hours on Thursday, and the 1st 4 hours of the next Monday, thus spanning no fewer than 8 days). OmniPlan does [b]not[/b] draw a chain of sausage links only on the days the resource actually works.

Suppose you worked for your town government as an OmniPlan consultant 2 hours on each Monday and Wednesday. Suppose also that to save costs your town government switched from working 9-5 M-F (5 x 8 hour days) to 8-6 M-Th (4 x 10 hour days). The value you would enter in the town's OmniPlan documents for project hours per day would change from 8 to 10, but a Gantt chart showing tasks assigned to you would not change, agreed?[/QUOTE]

Not really. A 10 h task that starts on Thursday morning would cover Thursday and Friday before, and only Thursday only after the change, as it fits now into 1 day, therefore the Gantt chart should change here.

BR,
Michael

whpalmer4 2010-08-05 12:14 PM

[QUOTE=michaelaye;82746]Not really. A 10 h task that starts on Thursday morning would cover Thursday and Friday before, and only Thursday only after the change, as it fits now into 1 day, therefore the Gantt chart should change here.

BR,
Michael[/QUOTE]
Go read my last paragraph more carefully, specifically the part about which days you work :-)

michaelaye 2010-08-05 03:21 PM

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;82755]Go read my last paragraph more carefully, specifically the part about which days you work :-)[/QUOTE]

it does say: first Mo-Fr 9-5, then Mo-Thurs 8-6?
Sorry, it doesn't make click yet? What am I missing?

whpalmer4 2010-08-06 08:45 PM

[QUOTE=michaelaye;82774]it does say: first Mo-Fr 9-5, then Mo-Thurs 8-6?
Sorry, it doesn't make click yet? What am I missing?[/QUOTE]

The very first sentence of that paragraph:
[indent]Suppose you worked for your town government as an OmniPlan consultant 2 hours on each Monday and Wednesday.[/indent]


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