[Woje]

Hello,

I'm working on my graduation thesis and I'm currently creating a project plan for the whole 5-months period. One of my first tasks is "research design", which will last for about a month. The task, however, will take only 40 hours of my time (I'm the only resource in this project), since I'll be working in parallell on other tasks as well.

What I'd like to achieve is having the number 40h displayed in the task outline window, on its own column. Now, so far I've tried two ways:
1) Setting a "workload" key in the custom data panel of the task and giving it the "40" value. However, I can't display the key "workload" as a column in the task outline window.
2) Assigning myself as a resource to the task, clicking the icon next to the Effort field and tweaking the Assigned Amount related to my resource until I reach a number more or less equal to 40h. Unfortunately, I can't get very precise, since the amount can be expressed up to 2 decimal digits so I get a very annoying "< 40h" or "> 40h" in the Effort column on the task outline window.
3) If I play with the Duration, then I see the start/end date of my task change, and I don't want that 'cause the work is going to happen within one month, not less.
4) If I lock (what is the lock feature for, by the way?) start and end date and then I change the duration of the task to 40h, the task shrinks anyway.

My goal is to show on the task outline window the tasks and their workload in terms of hours needed to complete them, while showing on the Gantt chart window the periods in which these tasks are going to take place.

Another example is "conducting interviews": per se, it might take me no longer than 15-20h, but the period in which I'll be conducting these interviews is about 2 months and I'd like to show both of the aspects, somehow, on the task and Gantt chart windows.

Is there a way I can achieve what I'm looking for with the current version of OmniPlan? Or maybe you can suggest me some alternative to what I have in mind?

I hope I was clear enough.
:-)

Ciao,
Nicolò