Plan a task in hours

Plan a task in hours

Goal: plan tasks in working hours alongside tasks in days.

When you need this

A crane is hired by the hour, a pour takes six hours and a night crew works outside the day shift. Duration in hours is always available. The calendar determines when those hours fit.

Steps

Enter the duration

1. Select the task and open Properties › Time › Duration.
2. Type, for example, 12h or 1h 30m and press Enter. u is also accepted for hours.
3. Press Calculate (F5).
4. Choose View › Time Scale › Hour to see hours in the timeline header.

At the Day scale, a bar moves in whole days. At hour zoom it moves by the hour; with Quarter-hour zoom and sufficient zoom, by quarter-hours.

Show the unit selector

1. Open App settings › Appearance.
2. Under Duration display, enable Allow mixed day/hour planning.

This shows the Duration unit selector. Without the selector, you can still type a duration with a unit.

Default new tasks to hours

1. Open Project settings.
2. Choose Hour measure under Default measure for new tasks and click Apply.

New tasks get the chosen measure. The same choice is available when creating a project, alongside the shift preset. In the P6 and MSP profiles the choice is fixed on Hour measure. The text below the list then says so.

Pitfalls and what the app does

Derived duration. You cannot type the duration of a summary, hammock or zero-duration milestone.

Fixed work. A task with the task type Fixed work always uses the hour measure. If you set a task of 3 d to Fixed work, it becomes 24 h: 3 × the working time per day. The finish can therefore move, as with a duration change. In the table you cannot set such a task back to days.

Duration display in OPS. This setting is disabled: each task shows its own unit. In the P6 and MSP profiles the choice remains available.

See also

• Days and hours: the two units.
• Set working times: the calendar.
• App settings: display and quarter-hour zoom.