Creation - Calendars

OVERVIEW -You can create and assign calendars to each resource and each activity. These calendars define the available work hours in each calendar day. You can also specify national holidays, your organization's holidays, project-specific work/non workdays, and resource vacation days. Calendar assignments are used for activity scheduling, tracking, and resource leveling. Whether an activity uses its assigned calendar or the calendar of an assigned resource depends on the activity type you specify.

Three calendar pools are defined: global, resource, and project. The global calendar pool contains calendars that apply to all projects. The project calendar pool is a separate pool of calendars for each project. The resource calendar pool can be a separate pool of calendars for each resource. You can assign either resource or global calendars to resources, and you can assign either global or project calendars to activities.
 
You can link resource and project calendars to global calendars. Then, if you make changes to a global calendar, your changes apply to all resource and project calendars that are linked to the modified global calendar. - Primavera

1. Make a copy of the current project, RES.  Rename the new project as follows:  ID – CAL, Name – Calendars.  Open the project.
   
   
2. On the menu bar, click “Enterprise” for the drop-down menu and the click “Calendars...”
   
   
3. The Calendars dialog box is displayed.  At the very top you have three choices for what type of calendar you want to create:  Global, Resource, & Project.  The differences between them are simple.  Global calendars are available to all projects within an overall EPS.  Resource calendars can be placed on specific resources.  Project calendars are only available to a certain project.  For our lesson, choose “Project.”
   
   Note:  If you are using a shared database or a database with several schedules, be careful when editing pre-existing global calendars as this may critically effect other schedules.
   
   
4. Click “Add.”
   
   
5. A dialogue box appears asking you what existing calendar you would like to base your new calendar off of.  Double-click “Standard 5 Day Workweek”.
   
   
6. Rename your new calendar, “Rm 201 Calendar.”
   
   
7. Click “Modify.”
   
   
8. Use the navigation bar at the top of the calendar to go to January 2011.  Notice that everyday except Saturday & Sunday are workdays due to us borrowing from the pre-existing Standard 5 Day Workweek calendar.  However, in order to add more realism to the calendar we need to add holidays to it.  If we look at a list of federal holidays in the US for the year 2011, you’ll notice that the first holiday is Monday, January 17th, Martin Luther King Jr. day (The holiday for New Years falls on December 31st 2010).  Click on this day.
   
   Note – Holidays can be inherited from a global calendar by simply clicking the drop-down menu at the bottom.
   
   
9. Once highlighted click on the Nonwork button on the right-hand side.  This will darken out the 17th.  Also notice that the work hours box indicates 0 hours instead of 8.
   
   
10. Click on the “Detailed work hours/day” radio button on the upper-right and you’ll see a breakdown of every half-hour during the day.  Click on the 18th and notice that the hour between 12:00 & 1:00 is blacked out allowing for a lunch break.
    
    TIP – If possible avoid getting too detailed using calendars.  Not only will this add another element for you to manage but also using different calendars can lead to hard to follow float paths.  Also, if you try to get too detailed on the work hours among other things this can cause a one-day activity to start and finish on two different days, which is something you really don’t want to try to explain to a non-scheduler.
    
    Note – If you want to give your calendar a standard amount of work hours per each day for every week on your calendar, make sure that the Total work hours/day radio button is selected and then click on the Workweek button and enter in the appropriate amount of hours for each day of the week.
    
    Note – You can also give each day of the week their own individual work hours by making sure that the Detailed work hours/day radio button is selected and clicking the Workweek button.  You can then highlight the day you want to modify and highlight the hours you want to be work or nonwork days.  Then click the respective button on the right.
    
    
11. Go ahead and add the rest of the 2011 federal holidays to our calendar:
    January 1st – New Year’s Day
1. Monday, January 17th – Martin Luther King Jr. Day
2. Monday, February 21st – Washington’s Birthday
3. Monday, May 30th – Memorial Day
4. Monday, July 4th – Independence Day
5. Monday, September 5th – Labor Day
6. Monday, October 10th – Columbus Day
7. Friday, November 11th – Veteran’s Day
8. Thursday, November 24th – Thanksgiving Day
9. Monday, December 26th – Christmas Day
   
   
12. Once all of these holidays have been added, click OK and then Close to exit out of the calendar windows.
    
    
13. Click on the Columns button on the toolbar.  Under the General heading highlight Calendar.  Click the right-hand arrow to bring it over to the active columns.  Use the vertical arrows to move it to the bottom of the list of columns.  While in the columns window, highlight the Budgeted Total cost column and click the left-arrow to take it out of the active columns.  Click OK.
    
    
14. Now with the Calendar column visible, adjust it as necessary.  With the activities sorted by Start date, double-click the calendar column of the top activity, L2-1000. 
    
    
15. The Select Activity Calendar window comes up.  Notice that our newly created calendar doesn’t show up.  We therefore have to change which calendars are displayed in the window.  Click on the bar that says, Display: Global Calendars.
    
    
16. Click Project Calendars from the drop-down menu.
    
    
17. Our calendar, Rm. 201 Calendar, should now appear.  Highlight it and click the Add button.
    
    
18. Activity L2-1000 now has our calendar associated with it.  Instead of going activity by activity and changing their calendars individually let’s fill down the first activity’s calendar.  Highlight L2-1000’s calendar, hold Shift on your keyboard, click the bottom most activity’s calendar cell and let go of the Shift key.  All of the activities should now be highlighted.  Now, hold down CTRL on your keyboard and press E.
    
    
19. Every calendar should now be set to Rm. 201 Calendar.
    
    
20. Now, click on the Group & Sort button and instead of using the Subcontractor code as a grouping method, select <None>.  Make sure that both Show Group Totals & Show Grand Totals are checked.  Click OK.
    
    
21. Notice that the finish date for the schedule is currently July 25th, 2011.  Go ahead and recalculate it by pressing F9 and then clicking schedule.
    
    
22. The new finish date should be a day later at July 26th, 2011 due to the addition of the July 4th holiday.
    

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