Turning on hour planning

Turning on hour planning

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

When you need this

You hire a crane by the hour, not by the day. A pour of six hours does not fit in a whole work day. A night crew works at different times from the day crew. For such work you want a duration in hours and a start and finish with a clock time. You also turn this on if you open a file and the app reports This file contains hour-based planning. Why the app counts days and hours differently, you can read in Days and hours.

Steps

Enabling hour planning

1. Choose Settings › Project › App settings and open the Planning tab.
2. Under Hour planning, tick Enable hour planning. It works right away. In the message This file contains hour-based planning. the Enable hour planning button does the same.
3. Below it is Allow mixed day/hour planning, on by default. With that setting you choose per task whether it counts in days or hours. If you turn it off, the Duration unit list disappears. You can then still type a duration with a unit, such as 12h.

That changes more than the duration of a task: under View › Time Scale you can choose the scale Hour, in the Calendars window an ordinary calendar can get working-time blocks (the Working times block; a calendar that already has blocks always shows it), and the New project window gets the choices Shift and Default unit for new tasks.

Planning a task in hours

1. Select the task and look in the Properties panel, under Time, at the Duration field.
2. Type the duration with a unit and press Enter: 12h (12u, the Dutch abbreviation, also works) for twelve hours, 1h 30m for an hour and a half. 1.5h is fine too. A number without a unit counts in the unit the task already has.
3. If you want to convert an existing task, choose the unit Hours under Duration unit. The app converts the duration immediately, for example from 2 days to 16 hours. To go back, use Undo.
4. Back to days is possible with 2d or with the unit Days.
5. Press Calculate (F5), for example via Home › Schedule › Calculate. The task now has a start and finish with a clock time.
6. If you want to see the hours in the Gantt, choose the scale Hour in the list under View › Time Scale.

New tasks in hours by default

1. Choose Settings › Project › Project settings.
2. Under Default unit for new tasks, choose the unit Hours and click Apply.

A new task then starts with 5 hours instead of 5 days. Existing tasks do not change. With a new project the same choice is in the New project window. If you choose Day shift under Shift there, Hours is disabled. Choose another shift, or set the default unit after creating in Project settings.

Pitfalls and what the app does then

No valid working times. If the task's calendar has no usable working times, the app reports This calendar has no valid working times. Check its working days and times. When calculating, the message Hour task 'name' has no valid working hours in its calendar can appear.

No decimals with days. A duration in days is a whole number. 1.5d gives the message Enter a whole number of days or hours, for example 2d or 12h. If you want a day and a half, calculate in hours.

A conversion that cannot be exact. Twelve hours does not fit in whole days of 8 hours. In Properties and in Edit task the app then shows a yellow block with 12h does not fit into whole days on this calendar. The unit has not changed. and leaves the unit. The task table gives a shorter message: This duration cannot be converted to the other unit exactly.

The field is disabled. For a phase, a hammock or a milestone with zero duration the duration follows from something else, and you cannot type it.

Turning hour planning off again. Tasks in hours remain and are still calculated. Their duration cannot be edited then; the field says Enable hour planning to edit this hour task., with a button to turn it on again.

See also

• Days and hours: how the app counts hours, what happens when days and hours meet and where it rounds.
• Setting working times: the times of a calendar per weekday.
• Adding relations: a lag in hours between two tasks.
• App settings: the setting Enable hour planning and what else it changes.
• De Vaart Apartment Complex: contains tasks in hours (rebar fixing and pouring) with an hour calendar of its own, Hourly calendar, rebar fixing & pouring.