Welcome to the world of project calendars in Microsoft Project! In this section, we’re going to learn all about calendars and why they’re so important in managing your projects. Think of a calendar as your project’s personal timekeeper—it helps you keep track of when tasks need to start and finish, and it makes sure that everyone knows when they should be working.

A base calendar in Microsoft Project is a template that defines the standard working and non-working times for a project. These calendars are used as a foundation to track the progress of tasks and allocate resources effectively.

The types of base calendars

Microsoft Project offers three pre-defined base calendars that cater to different working environments and schedules.

When you create a new project, the Standard calendar is the default base calendar for the project. You can change to the Night Shift or 24 Hours calendar as well, or you can create your own...

Customizing a base calendar’s workweek allows you to tailor the calendar to fit the specific working hours and days. This customization can include making the following changes:

• Setting up a non-standard workweek
• Adjusting working hours for specific days
• Setting up recurring non-working days

Here are the steps to do this within the Change Working Time dialog box:

1. From within the Change Working Time dialog box, select the Work Weeks tab. Click on Details to modify the working times for each day. You can set different working hours for each day of the week or define certain days as non-working.

Figure 2.7: The Work Weeks tab

For each selected day, you can then define specific working hours or set the day or days as non-working. This button is a critical feature for customizing a calendar to fit the unique scheduling needs of a project. This allows control over how each day is structured...

Calendars in Microsoft Project are applied to your project in a specific hierarchy to determine how tasks are scheduled. This order or hierarchy is crucial for understanding task scheduling and resource allocation. Here is the hierarchy:

1. Task calendar: If a task has a calendar assigned to it, this calendar takes precedence over all others. Task calendars are used for tasks that have unique scheduling requirements that are different from the project calendar.

   To change a task calendar for the selected task, double-click on the task to access the Task Information dialog box, then select the Advanced tab and change the Calendar as desired. The standard base calendar will be the default if this was not changed previously.

Figure 2.12: Changing the task calendar

2. Resource calendar: If there’s no task calendar, but the task is assigned to resources, Microsoft Project looks at the calendars of the assigned...

• Calendars in Microsoft Project help you plan tasks and resources according to the workdays and holidays of your organization.
• Calendars can be assigned to tasks, resources, and projects. Task calendars define when a task can be performed. Resource calendars define when a resource is available for work. Project calendars define the default working time for the whole project.
• Calendars interact with each other in a hierarchy. The task calendar takes precedence over the resource calendar, which takes precedence over the project calendar.
• You can assign different calendars to different tasks and resources to reflect their specific working conditions. For example, you can assign a night shift calendar to a resource that works at night, or a part-time calendar to a task that requires less than full-time work.
• You can also create and modify calendars to suit your project needs. For example, you can edit the working hours and days, add or remove holidays...

This chapter explained how Microsoft Project uses different types of calendars to schedule tasks and resources. It described the three main calendar types: task, resource, and project calendars. It explored how they interact with each other. It also showed how to assign and modify these calendars according to the project’s needs. It emphasized the importance of understanding the calendar hierarchy and its impact on the project schedule.

The next chapter will dive into managing and defining tasks in Microsoft Project. You’ll learn how to set up tasks easily and view them in the Gantt Chart to display a clear picture. We will discuss task durations, how tasks link together, and the importance of lag, lead time, and task constraints to keep your project on track. Ready to get started? Let’s dive right in!