If you want to enter some exceptional working days in a Merlin project, for example when needing to plan and schedule work during the weekend, you do this in the ‘working time’ inspector.
If you need this information for the whole project, you click the top most entry in the activities views. You switch to the ‘working time’ inspector and add an exception for the specific date in the ‘exceptions’ tab.
To define that this is an exceptional working day, you use the mouse and select the appropriate working intervals for this exception.
That’s it.
BTW: If this exception affects only the work of a specific resource, you add the exception in the calendar of that resource.
I’d like something a little different;
I’d like to be able to have work on the weekends, but I’d like to be able to still show the weekends as a different shade to differentiate those days.
Is this possible ?
You may plan events on weekends if they don’t include any work, so you may plan a milestone for Sunday if this is required. When planing work on standard non-working days you may either use a resource having a calendar which is working weekends, or define for this activity another calendar which is working weekends.
However, even if this is possible, we don’t recommend using non-working time settings, just for formatting the Gantt. I understand nevertheless your point, and forward it as a wish to the management.
Thanks 🙂
hello,
I wonder if this feature is also available in free version, because i haven’t find this icon in merlin free.
Thank you,
Liliana
Sure, this is in the Trial as well. If you dont’s see the working time Tab in the inspector, you have probably selected a task. Please note:
. if you want to define exceptional work for the complete project, you should click the top most row of your tasks (row 0).
. If you want to define exceptional work for a resource, you select your resource by double click in the resources’ well OR single click in the resources view.
A selection allowing defining working time exceptions will then show this tab.
Best regards, Vicky
How to add a public holiday for 2 weeks and shown on the program
To do so, just proceed as explained in Merlin online help:
http://www.projectwizards.net/merlin/webhelp/HTML-Help.en/project_calendar.html
Best regards, Vicky
Hi. I’m testing the trial version of Merlin. I need to schedule an activity over a weekend. I’ve changed the resource’s calendar by adding an exception for this specific weekend. The problem is that the time indication in the Gant chart just shows zero? In this case the work is done on a Saturday and Sunday, I want Merlin to show 2 days? Are there a way to do this?
Hello Rico,
have you already assigned this task to your resource with the exceptional working days on that weekend?
Best regards, Vicky
I have checked it just now:
– The task is planned to start first thing on saturday and to end on sunday at the end of the working day of this resource.
– The resource is assigned
– In its working days, an exception for saturday to sunday is entered with working intervals from 08:00 to 16:00.
–>The label in the Gantt shows on the task row 0 days, and this is correct.
Per default the label in the gantt element is defined to show “expected duration”. As this weekend is not working time according to the project’s calendar, this task happens outside project’s duration.
If you expand the task you will see the 2 days shown in the assignment row. That happens because those 2 days are within the working time of that resource.
Of course you could enter this exception in the project’s calendar, but this would mean that all your resources can work on that weekend. In this case, you would see the 2 days information on the collapsed AND expanded Gantt element.
We have very flexible working hours and I just want to be able to include ALL weekends. Merlin is driving me insane with all the exceptions, it is so impractical. How can I include all weekends just a standard setting?
Hi Nicoline,
if weekends are standard working days, don’t use the ‘Exceptions’ tab to enter them. Just define working intervals for Saturday and Sunday in the ‘Regular’ tab.
Finally, you should sure you adjust the work units statistics in File > Project Settings > General > Work units
Thank you for your comment and best regards, Vicky
Is it possible to allocate the hours per day worked on a project?
Situation is that I have production stuff working on multiple projects each day, therefore I need to indicate that they have worked 3 hours each day on the project so that in effect they have worked 5 days in total on a project, but across 24 days. Does that make sense?
Hello Aaron85,
hmmm, does this mean that they should be assignable on 3 hours per day to one project, and assignable on other 3 hours to another?
You could define the regular resource calendar on project A to be 8 am to 1 pm, and on project B as 2 pm to 5 pm.
Should you assign the resource on project A, it will be scheduled to work those 3 hours in the morning.
Assignments on project B will be scheduled in the afternoon.
Is this what you would like?
If it is ‘actual work’ you are trying to record, you cannot record actual work by resource. You can enter it by task or assignment.
So, you could select your task (on which only this resource is assigned) and enter in the ‘Actuals’ the actual work done, ie 5 days
Or select all assignments of the resource in the project (this is easier in the Utilization view) one by one, and define their actual work in the ‘Actuals’.
I hope this helps.
Best regards, Vicky
Hi Vicky,
Thank you for your response! I think you answered my question completely – there is no way to do it.
My Project Plan has multiple projects on it, therefore I’m trying to indicate that actual time spent on a project per day is not 1 full day.
I think Excel may be the only solution for this, only because it is so manual…?
Thank you for your help anyway, very much appreciated.
Thanks,
Aaron
Hi Vicky,
For my project, the last 2 weeks will require extended working ours (since it is the time leading up the event we are planning). How can I add this?
Thanks!
You can define either exceptional working times for the additional time. So if you are now work 12 hours a day Mon-Fri. You can enter two exceptions for those special weeks with those 12 hours working hours.
OR… you can create a new calendar (with those long working hours), and assign the remaining tasks to that new calendar.
Best regards, Vicky
Is it possible to pad a task with one day? For instance, we like to leave one day between construction phases. In MS Project, it’s possible to create tasks with a +1 for duration so the task has one day duration, but the next task will can’t start the next day.
Hi Tim,
is the next task linked to this first task?
If so, you enter this 1d lead in the dependency as explained here:
http://www.projectwizards.net/en/macpm/merlin/merlin-leadlag-between-activities
Best regards, Vicky
How do I display public holidays on the gang chart (i have created them in inspector)
if so, they are already displayed in the gantt, they show in grey along with other non working days.
Best regards, Vicky
Hi,
Is there a way to extract all exceptions (used in my case for time off/holidays etc) across the project and resource calendars?
A report that produced this would be ideal.
Look forward to your response,
Jon.
I wrote a custom report template for this purpose. I’ll post it in the next days in the reports tutorial series.
Best regards, Vicky