John AlbaughSenior Consultant, Owner| Work Reformation, LLCLake City, Mi, United States
Good Afternoon,
I'd like to know if anyone is aware of either a Task Constraint type or Dependency Type that will constrain the task to a day of the week. If not, can we please implement this so that software can take this into account.
Use Case 1: Release Dates
For software and hardware projects, the implementations are usually done during a Change window. Many shops have those change windows predefined and especially for Infrastructure they are usually weekly. In my case Friday. I'd love to be able to have a constraint like ASAP - Friday for a task that will pick the next available Friday for planning purposes rather than be forced to either put a delay in the dependency or change the constraint type to Must Finish On.
Use Case 2: Resource Availability
Many times, vendors, contractors, and inspectors are only available during certain days of the week due to their own schedule constraints and in a similar case above, it would be nice to have a task constraint to for that next Wednesday they are in. I know this one can be partially mitigated by Work Schedules, but for shared resources it doesn't.
I'd love to get feedback from the group regarding implementing something like this as a new constraint type as well as getting examples of how you deal with it now.
I would see if using calendars can get you there. That is put this specific task on a calendar the has only Fridays and the only working day of the week. This will depend on the tool you are using. If you cannot put the task on a Friday only calendar, maybe make a resource that only works on Fridays and assign it to this task. Saving Changes...
Jason GrabowskiOwner / Master Scheduler| Baseline Achieved, LLCFredericksburg, Va, United States
I have to agree with Chris. It sounds like a task calendar that covers the change window would be appropriate for the first situation and a resource calendar that identifies the schedule of the resource would be appropriate for the second situation. Shouldn't make a difference if the resource is shared between other projects. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
In Microsoft Project, you can define specific calendars to make sure the activity will only occur on certain days of the week.
I do this, for example, for production deployment activities which I only want to occur on weekends.
You first create the new calendar then assign it to the desired activity. Make sure that you have checked the box that allows it to override the assigned resources' calendar. Saving Changes...
Thanks Stephane, that's spot on. However, is there any way of getting an alert from MS Project that it has overridden an assigned resource's calendar? I've never noticed one, but it would save lots of manual checking in this situation. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
I cannot verify it for you, Tim, but I expect the setting should be available in one of the Project tables. Once you figure out which table and field it is, you can show it as a column in your Gantt view. If you want more, you should be able to use VBA macros to, say, send email notifications. Saving Changes...
