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Apologies if in wrong sub site.

I just started using Microsoft Project (in my case, Professional 2013), and I wanted to know if there is a way to schedule both real world events and tasks. I will let an example do the talking.

If I have a 3 day training session which I am teaching, I would do schedule the courses like so

  • Training I | 1 day | January 1, 2014 | January 1, 2014 | John Smith
  • Training II | 1 day | January 2, 2014 | January 2, 2014 | John Smith
  • Training III | 1 day | January 3, 2014 | January 3, 2014 | John Smith

If I got a lot of questions on those days that I needed to answer, I could assign the tasks like so

  • Provide docs for running program | 10 mins | January 1, 2014 | January 1, 2014 | John Smith
  • Provide docs for deleting program | 2 mins | January 1, 2014 | January 1, 2014 | John Smith
  • Provide docs for deleting program | 1 min | January 2, 2014 | January 1, 2014 | John Smith
  • Provide docs for buying program | 25 mins | January 3, 2014 | January 1, 2014 | John Smith

But could someone explain how, or provide a snap shot of how, I could merge the two whereby I have events which follow real world time, and tasks under each of those events which are guesses as to how long those tasks will take. My goal is to point out when and under what context the questions were asked. As is, the training sessions take exactly 1 day, but answering their questions could take more or less than a day.

Am I completely abusing Microsoft Project here?

fixer1234
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puk
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2 Answers2

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Add the Trading Day items to a new Project doc, one per line. Then for each task insert a new line under the appropriate day and type the description. Click the indent button to nest the tasks under each day. You can assign a 1-day time period to each day, and smaller amounts of time to the sub tasks.

You may need to select Manual schedule mode for each of the Day items to prevent auto scheduling from changing the dates based on the length of the sun tasks. That is accomplished by clicking the blue square in the first colmn which will change the icon to a pin, indicating manual mode.

This effectively turns off the auto schedule feature, but unless you have a full workday of sub task time for each Day item, the auto scheduler will cause problems. The auto scheduler is very helpful for adjusting a project with linked items when date change or new items are added, but it can be a hindrance if the exact schedule is not known or otherwise can't be explicitly planned.

anders-hou
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I would take a slightly different approach. I'm not sure any benefit is gained by listing each of the 3 days as separate items. If it is a three day task, list is as such.

Create the Task "ABC Training Session" (or whatever the title of the session is). You could then add the Instruction task with a 3 day duration and assign John Smith to the task. Indent the Instruction task under the ABC Training Session task to make the ABC Training session task a summary task.

You could then add a task "class follow up" or class questions as another sub task underneath the ABC Training Session summary task. Set the duration as 3 days (it will span the entire class period). You can then record how much time was taken to complete the questions by recording actual work against both tasks.

As Eander315 notes, if you assign yourself to both the Instruction tasks and the class questions tasks, Project will assume you are working on both at 8 hours per day and assume you are overallocated. If, however, the purpose is to track what really happened - don't assign yourself to the class questions tasks until you have actual work expended.

After all that - I'm not sure Project is the correct product based upon what you describe. It is a very good project scheduling program - but capturing the small details of "I spent 10 minutes answering this question" would be better tracked in a timesheeting or personnel tracking system. My concern is that you are so deep into the details that you'll spend your day tracking in Project.

JulieS
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