Difference between eDays and Fixed Duration? 1

[davidd31415]

What is the difference between using edays and a fixed duration task type?

 

[davidd31415]

Fixed duration with a 24hr project calendar that is.

 

[PDQBach]

Your question doesn't make a lot of sense. It's like asking "what is the difference between using a banana and a book?"

I *think* what you're asking is:

If I have a task that is 10days and a task that is 10edays what is the difference between putting those tasks on a Standard calendar and putting them on a 24-hour calendar?

If you use the defaults on a Standard calendar then Mon to Fri are working days and Sat and Sun are non-working days.

The first task will start Monday of week1 and finish Friday of week2; the second task will start Monday of week1 and finish Thursday of week2 (if you display the time you'll see that if the task starts are the beginning of day1 it finishes at the beginning of day 10 -- not intuitively obvious but there you go.)

If you use the defaults on a 24Hour calendar then all day, *every* day is working day.

The first task will start Monday of week1 and finish part way through Thursday (10d = 80 hours; 80hrs = 3 1/3 days); the second task will start Monday of week1 and finish Thursday of week2.

 

[davidd31415]

I'll try to ask a clearer question...

If I have a Fixed Duration test on a project with a 24hr calendar is there any difference in setting the duration to 1d instead of 1eday?

 

[PDQBach]

Assuming you have not changed any other defaults:

Yes, there is a difference (as would be expected, of course).

A 1D task
will start at 8:00AM
will finish at 4:00PM

A 1ED task
will start at 8:00AM
will finish at 8:00AM the next morning.

 

[davidd31415]

Ahh yes, I have the default day set to 24hr from 12:00am to 12:00am. But if that's the only major difference that answers my question- I was just wondering if there was something else I was overlooking.

Thank you!

David

 

[PDQBach]

Another one solved. Glad I could provide yu with some of the pieces so you could fit the whole puzzle together.

 

[PDQBach]

A minor typo crept in but it has a significant impact on understanding the situation.

In my first reply I wrote:

"The first task [note: a 10D task] will start Monday of week1 and finish Friday of week2; the second task [note: a 10ED task] will start Monday of week1 and finish Thursday of week2 (if you display the time you'll see that if the task starts are the beginning of day1 it finishes at the beginning of day 10 -- not intuitively obvious but there you go.)"

That should be "finishes at the beginning of day 11 -- not intuitively obvious but there you go.)"

That's easier to understand if you consider a 1ED task. It starts on the first day and, since it covers a full elapsed day, it ends 1 full elapsed day later: the beginning of the second day.

 

[davidd31415]

I did miss that but I wasn't looking at hours as much as exactly what elapsed timing was. Thanks for the correction though, that could have been confusing when re-reading in the future.

Thanks for the quick reply too- I'll be tempted to post here before googling/experimenting next time but I'll try not to.

Dave

 

[davidd31415]

When I assign a resource with a standard calendar to a task that is defined in edays (24/7 project calendar, 24hr work day) the resource does 24hrs of work per day and the resource allocation shows only 100% per day... Seen this before?

 

[PDQBach]

Tools | Options | Calendar-tab

Look at the entry for "Hours per day". (It might be more accurate to name this "Hours per shift".)

If it's 24 then you're a very mean employer <grin> expecting your staff to work for the company 24x5 -- assuming you give them weekends!

If it's 8 then I don't know the answer off the top of my head.

Let me know what you find and I'll see if I can come up with something else.

 

[davidd31415]

I do have 24hr per day, this is because some of my tasks are for machines which do run 24 hrs a day (elapsed time works great here) and some are for employees (I am hoping to eventually use work here but using fixed duration leads to the problem I posed on May 9th. Using elapsed time leads to this problem.

I figured using an 8hr work calendar with 24 hrs a day would give me the flexibility I am looking for here but maybe there is a better way...