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Hi Experts,
We have resources that we need to book for travel on the weekends on projects but normally do not want to allocate work time on weekends. Example is normally when we add a task for a project resource we would have it allocate on weekdays but I want to be able to specifically add a task for the weekend but it does not let me do this. Is there a setting to override this or do you have a different recommendation.
Thanks,
Drew
Drew P in this case I think we have some gaps between your requirements and the product, if there's no flexibility in the requirements. I can come up with some ways to at least partially fill the requirements you have. Please note that I'm using PSA V3 while I'm replying to your requirements as that's really the version everyone should be focused on, moving forward.
Problems:
1. Tasks over weekends. The calendar template defines this and I can't see a way past this unless you change the template to something that includes weekends. If weekends are more of an exception, I'd set this aside for now and move to "possible solutions" below. If you could create an idea on http://experience.dynamics.com/, I'd definitely vote this up.
2. Res rec functionality. This is also beyond our reach at the moment. Again, if you could create an idea for this at http://experience.dynamics.com/, I'd be more than happy to vote and promote it.
Possible solutions:
1. We can create Resource Assignments for Bookable Resources for a weekend even when their work hours are set for Mon-Fri. This is what they will look like:
2. We can also create Bookable Resource Bookings for resources for a weekend but in this case, the work hours of a resource must reach into the weekend. Otherwise an error is displayed when manually creating a BRB for a Sat/Sun.
As these Resource Assignments are only visible when precisely looking at the correct columns under the Resource Assignments tab or by looking at the Resource Assignments entity, Power BI can play a big role here. I would use that to visualize RAs extending into a weekend. Unfortunately importing to Time Entries from Resource Assignments is not possible when entries cover a weekend and a resource's work hours are Mon-Fri. At the moment, all we get is a blank error box. I've reported this issue to MSFT.
Hi apa,
One of the core business needs here from my customer's perspective is that they need to schedule resources to travel on the weekends to a customer and then they would be meeting with the customer at the beginning of the week. We want to be able to track this in the project for the resources to pull in their schedules (import from assignment) and see they are traveling on those specific days. There actually might be realistic implementations that happen on weekends as well or other meetings and from a project schedule / WBS we would want to enter these types of appointments on weekends and allow users to book their time against it.
Normal scheduling of resources (i.e. when you assign tasks to be scheduled over a couple weeks) should not utilize weekends so I can not just open those up as work days.
Overall this seems like a scenario that would come up all the time and I am very surprised that this is not easy to do in the product. Overall I think it should work like this:
1. Project Manager is able to enter tasks that occur on non workdays. It would be nice to provide a warning on the project schedule that this is not a normally planned workday
2. Ability to go into resource reconciliation and book the resource to this non workday and provide a warning that this is occurring outside a normal planned workday.
Thanks for your attention and feedback on this Antti.
Drew P, can you help me understand why you need the Project Tasks extended to a weekend from your business point of view? Is this a reporting related issue more than a project management related issue? If you need a "travel task", you can always just create one as a manual mode task and have people submit time and expense for that task - if this is about time and expense reporting.
Sorry Matthew, I reviewed the information you have above a few times and could not get this to work in my situation...
Here is what I did and the impacts.
Initial Flow
1. Current Calendar Template assigned to project is an 8-5 calendar Mon - Fri.
2. With the calendar in #1, I could only create tasks that occurred during Monday through Friday, no ability to create tasks that started on Saturdays and Sundays.
3. If I created a task (manual scheduled) that was 60 hours and setup to start on a Monday of one week and end on a Friday of the next week it split the task evenly each day for the 10 business days (6 hours per day)
Change Project Calendar
1. Changed Project Calendar to a "7 day a week" calendar
2. This allowed me to create tasks that started on Saturdays and Sundays
3. If I created a task (manual scheduled) that was 60 hours and setup to start on a Monday of one week and end on a Friday of the next week it split the task evenly each day for the 12 business days (5 hours per day)
Final Steps
1. Set the project back to the correct calendar template because I do not want normal scheduling of tasks to spread over weekends.
2. At this point I tried to use the Resource Reconciliation to "Extend booking" for the Saturday and Sunday hours (5 per day) on the one task I setup that split across the weekends but it would not let me do this. It basically comes back with no error / warning and does not book the resource. I can only assume this has to do with that resource's calendar not having Saturday / Sunday as work days.
I don't see anywhere where I can make this happen without all of these manual steps.
Thoughts?
Hi Drew,
You could try creating a dedicated work hours template that includes weekends.
It is possible to have different types of work hours templates - resource-specific, project-specific and booking-specific.
You could try something along the lines of creating a booking-specific work hours template for travel.
This is how I can see these used:
Consider how BASE resource's work hours are linked to work hours in a work hours template
The resource has to be re-selected on the template. Simply changing the resource's hours will not be automatically reflected on the template
Create RESOURCE work hours templates
One for each organisational unit/time zone
Time zone (double check on the resource, set correct one on the template, temporarily change in personal settings for the logged-on user to check all is fine)
Observe business closures
Create additional RESOURCE work hours templates if required
Some additional templates might be needed for interns, part-timers and/or night shifts
Add RESOURCE work hours templates to resources
'Set calendar' on the grid with resources'
Update work hours for particular resources if required
Some people who do 3 or 4 days per week may require that their individual work hours are adjusted
Be careful when you update work hours of the user used for the template.
Business closures (because they are global, you might consider using time off on work hours templates instead)
Specify hours (9-5 etc.) to avoid time zone issues One set of closures for all organisational units.
Another option is to set up one project for national holidays per organisational unit and track holidays there - this will skew utlisation calculations though.
Add time off for particular users in their work hours
Resource's capacity takes into account: work hours (template/individual), business closures (global) and time off (individual).
It may make sense to create PROJECT work hour templates to be used by projects
(e.g. client wants us not to work between 15 Dec and 5 Jan and not work on Swedish national holidays)
It may make sense to create REQUIREMENT/ BOOKING work hour templates to be used by requirements/bookings
(e.g. to ensure that resources are only booked up to 90% capacity to leave time for training etc.).
Add default work hours template to parameter
Delete redundant work hours templates
I hope this helps.
Matthew
Hi Scott, it definitely is a task that we book time against and track this with the project. Sometimes it is billable and sometimes not. Overall there are always situations where we will want to normally plan on weekdays but have special situations where we want to schedule time on weekends. How do we do this? No ability? Another example, need to implement a project on a weekend. Is this just not possible? Seems like a big gap... We do this all the time in the system we use called ConnectWise.
Hi Scott, but then if I create a task and assign to a resource with a "manual" schedule option wouldn't it book them over the weekends with this approach? This is what I don't want to happen. Overall I want tasks to schedule time over the 5 day period (not weekends) but then still provide me the ability to create a task for the weekend (i.e. travel to a customer site).
Make sense?
The default calendar template is set for M-F from 8:30-5pm. It’s modeled after a bookable resource and their work calendar. What you would need to do is create a work calendar that includes weekend hours and have a resource (generic is possible) where their work hours encompass weekends. Then you need to associate that calendar template to the project.
I hope that helps.
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