[miked378]

I'm working on a project with Omniplan, and for the most part, things are great. I'm having the following problem, however:

I want to put in a task that has a duration in calendar terms -- for example, the task will take 2 calendar weeks. There is a person (resource) who is responsible for the project during that time period. How do I set this up?

Here's what I've tried:
-- It seems to work if I don't assign a resource. But then I can't track that this person is responsible during that time.
-- If I assign a resource, I can't figure out the right combination of working hours for that resource (in the calendar view) and "duration conversion factors" (in the Project Formatting Inspector) so that it works out to be 2 calendar weeks.

Another dumb question -- should I always be thinking in terms of "hours" when I'm setting up durations? For example, when I think of a certain group, I think, "It'll take them a week to finish that," and I'm taking into account their schedule -- maybe they work 2 hours a day, so by "a week" I mean "10 hours." For other groups, though, "a week" might consist of five 9-hour days, so my mental picture of "a week" for them is 45 hours. From what I can tell, you set up these hour-day-week relations in the Project Formatting, but on a project-wide setting (not resource-based), right? How do I get around this?

Thanks for any help!

--Mike

[Lizard]

You want the duration to be fixed, and the effort to vary with the amount of resources assigned. So put two weeks in the duration field, and make sure the little people icon next to the duration is light gray and the effort one is dark gray.

If you assign the resources first, and then set up durations it should help you work around the fact that different people work different numbers of hours per week.

[miked378]

You want the duration to be fixed, and the effort to vary with the amount of resources assigned.

That sounds exactly like what I want.

So put two weeks in the duration field, and make sure the little people icon next to the duration is light gray and the effort one is dark gray.

I didn't notice that these little people icons were clickable! From your description, it sounds like light gray means "enter a value here" and dark gray means "calculate this value from the light gray user-entered value." Is that right?

If you assign the resources first, and then set up durations it should help you work around the fact that different people work different numbers of hours per week.

That would be great, but it didn't work that way for me. Maybe I can set up an example:

1. New document with default values (work day is 8a-12p, 1-5p, 5 days per week).
2. Make a new resource, called "hard workers." They work same hours, but also weekends.
3. Create a task that should take 1 week to complete, duration =1w (=40 hours in the "Duration Conversion Factors" box). It uses 5 work days (skipping the weekend). When you mouse over it, it says "Start 10/11/06, 8:00 am, End 10/17/06, 5:00 pm"). OK, we have a 1-week task, by the calendar.

OK, now I can't figure out how to set the resource to "Hard Workers" and have the duration NOT CHANGE from 1w. No matter what I do, it now says when I mouse over the task, "Start 10/11/06, 8:00 am, End 10/15/06, 5:00 pm."

I understand that these hard workers will finish the 40-hour job in 40 hours, which is 5 days from the start (no weekends), and of course, that's 1 week of their EFFORT. But I want the DURATION to be 7 calendar days, whatever their effort is. Clicking the little gray people isn't helping me.

I feel like I'm missing something obvious. Thanks again for your help and patience...

[Lizard]

Now I think I'm missing something. If the hard workers start Monday morning and finish Friday evening, that's 5 days duration. Why do you want it to be 7?

[miked378]

Now I think I'm missing something. If the hard workers start Monday morning and finish Friday evening, that's 5 days duration. Why do you want it to be 7?

Bad example, I guess. Maybe I'm just not used to thinking in the terms that a program like this requires, but it seems like there should be a way to do what I want to do.

Forget the previous example. Let's say that the task is something where I have to wait for a period of time for something to get done. Like "Wait for paint to dry," or "Allow chemical reaction to run to completion," and I know how long that will take (say 7 calendar days, starting on Monday, ending the next Monday). These are things that have a DURATION, right? I just want to put somebody's name on these, so that I know that the Painter is checking on the paint drying, or the Chemist is checking to see that the reaction is going. I can't get the program to say that the task WILL TAKE 1 WEEK, regardless of the hours that any person works. I should be able to change the assigned staff resources to people who work 7 days a week, or 4 days a week, or 12 hour days, but the task should still take 7 days, regardless.

I thought that's what "duration" would do in the Task Information box, but it doesn't seem to work that way.

Hope that's a little clearer!

--Mike

[Lizard]

That's exactly what it should do, if the little people icon is light gray. That means the duration will not change, even if you have 14 people watching the paint dry. This puts the dark gray people icon next to the effort field, meaning that field's value varies depending on the resources assigned.

If however, the task is painting a fence, then getting 2 people to paint the fence will make the job go twice as fast, so the duration *should* be affected by the resources. Then you want the dark gray people by the duration field, and the light gray people icon by the effort field. Then you can say that painting the fence will take 12 hours of effort, and if you assign 2 people, OmniPlan will set the duration to 6 hours automatically.

If you've got a specific case where your tasks aren't behaving like this, please send us an email (omniplan@omnigroup.com) so we can track down the issue.