Project Management Plans - allowing for annual leave days

Andrew Walker

Hi all

 

I am currently compiling a project plan to manage various peices of work within my team. I have columns for start and end dates and a duration (in days) column. What this doesn't take into account are days that my team are out of the office (on annual leave, for example) and not working on the projects. What would be the best way of doing this? Any help gratefully received.

 

Many thanks

 

Andy.

Richard Rymill SBP

Well said Tim, so Non woring days or Holidays can be Project Specific or across the whole account as you prefer? 

What might also help you is to imput your staff holidays, enable resource planning then when you inadvertently task someone for dates when they are on holiday or otherwise tasked on another sheet, you will see the Red man pop up shoing you they are over-resourced, so you can find out why and fix it. 

 

Hope that helps? 

PS we love Suffolk Andy, spent a lovely week last week camping and Canoeing on the Waveney river. 

Regards RichardR

Andrew Walker

Richard Rymill SBP

Andy, I'll ask James Rezin to repond to your question, he writes and delivers our Project management courses in Smartsheet so can provide the best answer for you. 

Regards Richardr 

JamesR

Andy,

As explained the control of non working days is per Project.  Looking at your clip I need to ask, are these projects ot Tasks.

Projects involve multiple tasks and Multiple Resources, where as tasks are individual tasks for an individual Resourse?  Depending on the answer the possible solutions are different.

Set up a different plan for each Person, this would allow you to set up different Holidays for them(i.e. per plan).  Use reporting to get your master view.

If you want to keep it in one plan you can add additional columns into your plan to add holiday dates (obviously this would be quite numerous). Once you have done this you can then use networkday function to calculate durations.

Taken fron Help:

NETWORKDAY(): Same, but adds 1 to the result if the first argument is a non-working day.

• Example: =NETWORKDAY([Due Date]4, [Due Date]5)
• Result: 21

You can designate additional dates as non-working to exclude them when calculating the number of working days. To do this, enter each holiday/non-working day into a cell and then reference the range of cells in your NETWORKDAY formula.

• Syntax: NETWORKDAY(start, end, holiday:holiday)
• Example: =NETWORKDAY([Due Date]1, [Due Date]5, [Due Date]2:[Due Date]3)
• Result: 85

 

It would need to be in an additional column called Dur2 or similar and the end date will need to be changed till the two matched.  You could use conditional formatting or a symbol column with a formula that flagged when it was different.

 

I hope that this helps

 

James

 

JamesR

A Correction to my post, not till they match but untill iDur2 shows the number of days you want.

Andrew Walker

Hi James

 

Thanks very much for your comments, they're really helpful. I guess I am using the sheet more as a task list than a proper project plan. This is my first time of using SmartSheet so wanted to start with something simple and teach myself what it can do.

 

Thanks for your help,

 

Andy

Tim Meeks

Andy,

 

SS does allow for this in the project settings.  

 

Check here: http://help.smartsheet.com/customer/portal/articles/516392-defining-non-working-holidays-on-project-sheets

 

Also, your SS Sys admin can set non-working days to default across all projects at your company.

 

Tim

Tammy Fanara

By only being able to assign working and non-working days on the project level, Smartsheet does not take into account when individuals have time off of work (such as for a vacation) in order to adjust the project duration accordingly.  In Microsoft project, you can assign your resources the global calendar so that it shows non-working days for everyone (such as when the office is closed for a holiday), but you can also edit individuals' non-working days/hours.  Is this possible in Smartsheet?

JamesR

Tammy,

 

Smartsheet does not hsve \resource calendars like MSP.  It only has a global Calander.

It may not be suitable but you can treat Leave as a Project in as much as you can have a row for each occasion of leave and assign the people to thier leave.  This means that if they are allocated to a teave task they should not be assigned to other tasks.

 

James

Richard Rymill SBP

The benefit of what James is suggesting also provides you with a holiday chart which is useful for obvious reasons, not just planning work. 

I think you will find that the benefits of using Smartsheet ilo MSP far outweigh the odd difference in functionality  and often a workaround is avaailable so you lose nothing and only gain? 

 

Good luck and do let us know if you have any other questions? 

RichardR (colleague of JamesR) 

 

 

javier.garcia20846

Hello,

I realize that SS is different that MSP and is more oriented to collaboration and this way we have selected this tool but it is true that being able to specify non-working days per every resource is really a need in almost every project. In all the companies there are general non-workings days but also individual ones and it is necessary to consider in the project schedule.

I vote for this feature to be include.

 

Thanks.

Bill Stadler

Add my vote as well please.