Hi,
I am using MS Project 2007 on Windows XP to plan a project with many tasks and resource allocations. In general, the tasks have several people allocated to each of them.
A proportion of the tasks are to be carried out on site, the rest happen in the home office; I indicate the site work with the user-defined Task Flag1 in the task input views.
The client wants to know how much of each person's time (work, in MD) is allocated to the site tasks (marked "yes" in Task Flag1). I can give him the total MD at home and on site easily, by reading the MD for each task into one of two user-defined number columns dependent upon whether or not Task Flag1 is set, but I can't find a way to automatically give him the MD breakdown by person for the site work.
I feel as if the Task Flag1 should be available for me to reference for this purpose in the resource usage view, where I can see each person's work broken down by task. However, I cannot see TASK Flag1 in the resource usage view, so there is no way of grouping the resource usage information by person and then by Task Flag1. Apparently only the RESOURCE Flag1 is available in this view. Is this a fundamental limitation of MS Project, and if so, is there some other way I can separately sum each person's MD for site and for home work, please?
I've tried getting round this problem by:
1. Allocating a Resource Flag to each task in the resource usage view, depending upon whether the work is at site or at home - very time consuming, and prone to error, especially as it has to be updated if I later move a task's location from site to home, or vice versa.
2. Duplicating each resource, and using one of each for home work and the other of each for site work - also very time consuming and prone to error, especially if, as above, I later move a task's location from site to home, or vice versa.
It seems wrong to have to enter the same locational information twice, but in different ways. You may tell me there is a way of referencing Task Flag1 in the resource usage view, or you may tell me that I need to take a different approach, and not use Task Flag1 at all - any comments would be much appreciated.
Thanks, Mark