Welcome back to our course on Project 2013.
In the previous section we looked at setting up the resources that we’re going to use
in our building project.
And I left you with an exercise where I asked you to add a carpenter as a work resource
and door and window as material resources.
And I’m looking now at the resource sheet in example_04.
Now I appreciate that term carpenter normally implies a much more skilled resource than
somebody who fits windows and doors.
And in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and various other English speaking countries,
the term joiner would be used.
But I believe that term is no longer in use in the U.S.A.
Similarly, there’s a fairly common abbreviation for a carpenter or joiner working on a building
site of Chipee but you wouldn’t use that expression in the U.S.A.
So we’ll start with this list of resources and we’re now going to assign these resources
to various tasks in our building project.
So I’m going to switch back to the Gantt Chart using the button on the status bar,
left hand button takes me back to the Gantt Chart.
Now I’m going to right click on the task Build walls, and when I right click, one of
the items that I can see on the contextual menu is Assign resources.
It’s just below the midway point.
Click on Assign resources and I see the Assign Resources dialog which is a dialog that you’ll
use a lot when you’re working with Project 2013.
Now quite a lot of this Assign Resources dialog we’re going to look at later on.
For instance, if I click on the plus sign here where it says Resource list options there
are facilities there, for example, to filter.
If I have a long list of resources and I want to find a suitable resource by filtering I
can use the filter facilities.
I can also look at finding out which resources are actually available for a task rather than
being used elsewhere.
But I’m not going to go into any of that at the moment.
We’re going to do some of those things later on in the course.
For the moment, all I want to do is to allocate the brick layer to the task of building walls.
Now the very simplest way of doing that is having selected the brick layer is to just
click on the Assign button, and what happens if I just click on Assign is that the brick
layer is assigned 100%.
That means one brick layer.
And depending on the cost figures, the cost of using the brick layer on that task is indicated
here.
Now at the moment I haven’t put any cost in.
We’re going to come back to cost later on.
But if I had put a rate per hour and possibly even an additional cost per use, then the
total cost of using the brick layer on building those walls would be shown here.
I could go through now and assign more resources to more tasks.
The first thing I’m going to do though is to actually close this Assign Resources dialog
and look at the impact of what I’ve just done on the Gantt Chart.
Now you may not quite see the same as me here but if you’re still using a default installation
of Project 2013, you should see something pretty similar.
And one of the things that’s apparent is that you can now see the word Brick Layer
next to the task in the Gantt Chart.
Now exactly what you see in a Gantt Chart is something we’re going to look at in some
detail later on.
You can customize and format a Gantt Chart but basically by default you would normally
see the names of the resources that are used in a particular task listed next to the Gantt
Chart bar.
Now we’ll be able to change that later on, but for the moment it’s actually quite useful
because we can see that we’ve got a brick layer resource allocated to the task of building
walls.
So let’s now use some bricks.
Let’s again right click on Build walls, click on Assign resources, and this time I’m
going to assign bricks buut I’m not going to assign one unit of bricks which of course
would be 1,000 bricks.
I’m going to assign 12 units because I’m going to need 12,000 bricks for this house.
Now if I use the little rollers here, I can go up in multiples.
I’m going to say I want 12.
Again, if I’d entered a cost per thousand of bricks that cost would appear here.
But it does say in the units column there 12 and then my units, thousands.
So it’s 12 thousands of bricks.
Now you may be wondering what this RD column here is.
The RD column is really outside the scope of this course but basically R and D stand
for Requested and Demanded.
And in situations, particularly where resources are shared between different projects and
possibly different project managers, you can demand specific resources or you can request
resources.
When you’re doing that, then this column comes into play.
But as I say that’s pretty much outside the scope of this course.
So I’ve now allocated 12 thousands of bricks.
You can see on the Gantt Chart there that that resource is named and I’m starting
to build up a list of the resources that are needed on the Build walls task within my house
building project.
Okay, let’s close this dialog again and now let’s take a very quick look at the
Resource tab on the Ribbon.
On the Resource tab on the Ribbon, one of the options there, the second group along
the Assignments Group, is Assign Resources.
And if I click on Assign Resources, I get that same dialog again.
So that’s two ways into that dialog.
In Project 2013 in general, you can get just about everything from the Ribbon and a selection
of things from the contextual menu at any specific point.
So we’re now going to allocate the resources to the Fit windows and doors task.
Note that while this particular dialog is open, you can still select tasks in the Gantt
Chart.
You don’t have to close it.
So having selected the fourth task, I can click on the Resource dialog again and I’m
going to leave you now with this as your next exercise to do.
For Fit windows and doors, what I’d like you to do is to use one carpenter; there are
going to be 12 windows and, believe it or not, nine doors.
Now you may think most houses don’t have nine doors but this is internal and external
doors; so 12 windows and nine doors and one carpenter assigned to that task.
I’m going to start you off at example_05.
So you open example_05 to do this and my answer to this is example_06.
That’s it for this section.
I’ll see you in
the next one.