Calendars are used in project management consult Services USA to establish when work can be completed. Calendars define the working and non-working hours for the schedule in Microsoft Project. Within the application, you can construct a number of calendars for various projects. You can even utilize multiple calendars inside one project for various sorts of work. Microsoft Project allows you to construct a variety of calendars to illustrate when work will be completed and when it will not.
While Microsoft Project includes various preset calendars, you may need to construct your own. Before adding tasks to the project, you should first build your ideal calendar. However, this is not required; you can always alter the assigned project, task, and resource schedules as needed later on.
This article will show you how to use Microsoft Project to create, update, and allocate calendars. The samples below are from Microsoft Project 2023 Professional. However, the procedure is the same for most Project versions.
Types of Calendars Available in Microsoft Project
Project has four types of calendars: base, project, task, and resource.
Calendars of Basis
Base calendars are commonly used as default template calendars. Project will provide three base calendars by default: Standard, 24 Hours, and Night Shift. The calendars are templates for creating other calendar types. Base calendars should only be used for generic work periods. You could, for example, create a base calendar for your company that includes your typical work and non-work hours. This base calendar can then be used as a template to create additional calendars. Base calendars are the foundation for all other calendar types.
Only administrators can change the base calendars when using the Project Web App.
Project Timelines
Project calendars are base calendars that are tailored to a specific project. A project calendar must be assigned when you create a new project in Microsoft Project. This calendar will determine the project’s default working days and times. Unless otherwise specified, each task added to the project will use the project calendar. For example, you could have a project with a project calendar that works four days a week for ten hours per day. Based on this calendar, each task added to the project will be set to work four days a week for ten hours a day.
You must create a project calendar for each project. Project calendars, like all calendars, are duplicates.
Task Calendars
Task calendars are base calendars that are customized for each individual project task. Each task will use the assigned project calendar by default, but you can adjust the individual task calendars as well. Each project task can have its own calendar. For example, you may have a project with an assigned project calendar for 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. A new task for the curing of concrete forms is required. This task will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can modify the calendar for this specific task to specify its working days and hours.
Task calendars are duplicates of base calendars that have been modified and assigned to specific project tasks.
Resource Calendars
Resource calendars are base calendars that are customized for specific resources. By default, each resource is assigned to the project calendar; however, you can change this to a specific resource calendar. Each project resource may use a different calendar. This is critical because resources may have PTO or be unavailable to work at specific times. Adding these times to a resource calendar ensures that the resource can complete the tasks assigned to them.
Resource calendars, like project and task calendars, are base calendars that have been modified and assigned to specific resources.
Although these calendars are used in various ways, they are all made in the same way. The calendar type is determined by how the calendar is assigned within the project.
