8. Setting Up a Recurring Task
Many projects require repetitive tasks, such as attending
project status meetings, creating and publishing status reports, or
running quality-control inspections. Although it is easy to overlook
the scheduling of such events, you should account for them in your
project plan. After all, status meetings and similar events that
indirectly support the project require time from resources, and such
events take time away from your resources’ other assignments.
To help account for such events in your project plan, create a
recurring task. As the name suggests, a recurring task is repeated at
a specified frequency such as daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. When
you create a recurring task, Project creates a series of tasks with
Start No Earlier Than constraints, no task relationships, and
effort-driven scheduling turned off.
In this exercise, you create a recurring task that will
represent a weekly meeting associated with this project.
-
On the View tab, in the
Task Views group, click
Gantt Chart.
The Gantt Chart view appears. -
Select the name of task 1,
Acquisition.
You’ll insert the recurring task above the first phase of
the project plan, as it will occur throughout multiple phases of
the plan. -
On the Task tab, in the
Insert group, click the down
arrow below the Task button and
then click Recurring Task.
The Recurring Task Information dialog box appears. -
In the Task Name box,
type Editorial staff
meeting. -
In the Duration box, type
1h. -
Under Recurrence pattern,
make sure Weekly is selected,
and then select the Monday
check box.
Next, you will specify the date of its first occurrence. By
default, it is the project start date. However, you want the
weekly status meetings to begin one week later. -
In the Start box, type or
select 4/9/12.
Next, you will specify the end date. You’ll plan for these
staff meetings to continue until the project reaches the Design
and Production phase. In the Gantt Chart, you can see that as
currently scheduled, that phase starts on July 2, so you’ll use
that date for now. You can always update the recurring task later
as needed. -
In the End by box, type
or select 7/2/12.
-
Click OK to create the
recurring task.
Project inserts the recurring task. Initially, the
recurring task is collapsed. A recurring task icon appears in the
Indicators column. -
To view the first occurrences of the recurring meeting’s
Gantt bars, on the Task tab, in
the Editing group, click
Scroll To Task.
A Gantt bar for a recurring task shows only the occurrences
or rollups of the individual occurrences of the task.
Next, you will assign resources to the recurring
task. -
Verify that task 1, Editorial staff
meeting, is selected, and then, on the Resource tab, in the Assignments group, click Assign Resources.
-
In the Assign Resources
dialog box, click Carole
Poland. Then hold down the Ctrl key while clicking
Hany Morcos and Jun Cao. -
Click Assign, and then
click Close.
The Assign Resources dialog box closes, and Project assigns
the selected resources to the recurring task. Next, you will view
the individual occurrences of the recurring task. -
Click the plus sign next to the recurring task’s title,
Editorial staff meeting.
Each occurrence of the recurring task is
sequentially numbered (if you wish to verify this, widen the Task
Name column, or point to the task’s name and note the content of
the ScreenTip), and the resource assignments appear for the
individual occurrences. -
Click the minus sign next to the recurring task’s title,
Editorial staff meeting, to hide the
individual occurrences.
Here are a few other things to keep in mind when creating
recurring tasks:
-
By default, Project schedules a recurring task to start at
the plan’s default start time. (Click File, click Options, and then click Schedule.) In this project, that value is 8
A.M. If you want to schedule a recurring task to start at a
different time, enter that time along with the start date in the
Start box of the Recurring Task Information dialog box.
For example, if you want the recurring staff meeting to be
scheduled for 10 A.M. starting on April 9, you would enter
4/9/12 10 AM in the Start box. -
As with a summary task, the duration of a recurring task
spans the earliest start to latest finish date of the individual
occurrences of the recurring task. -
When you schedule a recurring task to end on a specific
date, Project suggests the current project end date. If you use
this date, be sure to change it manually if the project end date
changes later. -
If you want to assign the same resources to all occurrences
of a recurring task, assign the resources to recurring tasks with
the Assign Resources dialog box. Entering resource names in the
Resource Name field of the summary recurring task assigns the
resources to the summary recurring task only and not to the
individual occurrences.
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