Can specific 2-week periods be set in the resource usage view timescale?

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    • #410003
      Timothy Jones
      Participant

      A scheduler in our organization receives actual hours for two-week periods and enters them into the resource usage view. She sets the timeline so each cell is a 2-week period and enters the hours for each resource. The problem is that the 2-week time periods for which she receives the data are not in sync with the 2-week periods in MS Project. Is there a way to customize the timescale to align with the dates for which the actuals are received?

      Thanks for any help on this!

      Tim

    • #410057
      Daryl Deffler
      Participant

      Tim,
      I’ve played with this several times and I don’t think we have any control over how MS Project displays the 2 week time periods.
      What I can tell you is that Project, like other MS products, appears to store their date values as a number value, starting with 1/1/1900, which is date is a value of 1. 12/31/1900 is a value of 365 and so on. So the value of 365 means it’s the 365th day since 1/1/1900.

      I set up my timescale for Weekly with 2 week intervals.
      The earliest a project can start is 1/1/1984 so I moved my timeline to that date and the first two week time period I see is 1/8/1984. (not 1/1/1984)

      Looking at the table below, I entered sets of dates (D1 and D2), subtracted the dates (D2-D1) to determine the date value number, and then divided that day number by 14 (two week periods). Looking at the 2nd row, the date of 1/1/1984 converts to a value of 2191.5, the “.5” meaning it’s halfway thru a 2 week period. Looking at the next row, with a D2 value of 1/8/1984 this equates to the 2192nd 2 week period, which is the first full two week period of 1984 and hence, it’s the first full two week time period project will display on the timescale.
      So in summary, the time periods are 14 day increments from 1/1/1900.
      Hopefully, this helps explain how Project arrives at it’s two week intervals.

      D1 D2 D2 – D1 Divided by 14
      01/01/1900 12/31/1900 365
      01/01/1900 01/01/1984 30681 2191.5
      01/01/1900 01/08/1984 30688 2192
      01/01/1900 04/02/2017 42826 3059
      01/01/1900 04/09/2017 42833 3059.5

      The only suggestion I can offer to help resolve your issue is to potentially re-align your two week intervals to the MS Project intervals, which we can’t configure. For example, the next time reporting period would be one week, then back to 2 weeks from then on.
      Hope that helps.

    • #410058
      Daryl Deffler
      Participant

      Sorry, the table didn’t convert well when uploaded. Hopefully this one looks better. I had to add non-blank characters to separate table columns
      D1……………………D2……………..D2 – D1….Divided by 14
      01/01/1900…..12/31/1900…..365
      01/01/1900…..01/01/1984…..30681…..2191.5
      01/01/1900…..01/08/1984…..30688…..2192
      01/01/1900…..04/02/2017…..42826…..3059
      01/01/1900…..04/09/2017…..42833…..3059.5

    • #410059
      Timothy Jones
      Participant

      Daryl,
      Thank you very much! It’s a huge help to understand exactly how Project displays the increments. This will save us a lot of time trying to figure this out – we’ll look at changing the reporting periods if that’s possible. Your time and expertise are much appreciated.

      Tim

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