From the course: Advanced Microsoft Project

Defining part-time resources using maximum units - Microsoft Project Tutorial

From the course: Advanced Microsoft Project

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Defining part-time resources using maximum units

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- [Instructor] Suppose someone works part-time on your project. To avoid over assigning that person, you have to tell Project how much that person's time is allocated to your project. In this video, we're going to use a resource's maximum units field to handle a part-time schedule. Let's say the subcontractor has an intern who works halftime to help with hardware installations. They work a flexible schedule though, any four hours of each day. So let's go to the primary pane and display the resource sheet. I'm going to insert a resource above the subcontractor's hardware lead. So I'm going to right click and insert resource and I'm going to call it sub HW intern. Now, when I press tab to go into the type cell, it automatically sets it to work, which is what I want. I can change the initials if I want and I'm going to change the maximum units to 50%. So now that I have the resource let's switch back to the Gantt chart. We're going to head to Task 25, install cameras. Notice it's a five-day task. When I select that task, I can see it in the task form. So I'm going to add the intern as the assigned resource for this task. So I'm going to click choose that resource, and then let's say that the estimate for the installation is 12 hours. Well, I can change that in the work cell and just put in 12 hours and then click okay. Notice that Project sets the units to 50%, that's the maximum units for the intern, and it changes the duration to three days, 12 hours of work, four hours a day, you get three days' duration. Remember, this works when the resource doesn't work specific work hours of the day. With this approach, the intern will be over-allocated if you assign them at 100%, for example, to attend a meeting, and you'll have to type any percentage over 50% into the unit cell. To practice this technique, take a moment now to assign the intern to other tasks in the project and see what happens if you specify the intern's units or work.

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