Adjusting Calendar for Holidays in Different Countries

[ChrisLe5]

How do I set calendar to allow for holidays in dififerent countries? I know how to set the holidays through the Exceptions tab, but how do I adjust for our offices in different countries that follow different holidays that are not followed in the U.S.? so although our U.S. offices may be open, our office in Canada or India may be closed due to local holidays, so schedules need to adjust accordingly.

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Chris. There are some primers at https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/217627388-How-to-Add-Holidays-to-the-Calendar-for-Ev... and https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/217222797-Creating-Default-Schedules that might help you out. Regards, Doug

[EricLu2]

I think the approach is: 1) Create a generic non-country specific calendar for the project; 2) Create a country specific calendar for each country represented on the project; 3) Assign the country schedule to each individual, depending on what country they are based in; This will work because (I think), the user calendar has priority over the Project calendar. Am I thinking right? Thanks, Eric

[DavidCo3]

Hi Eric, If the project is for delivery to a customer in a specific country, and if it is important to consider their schedule due to public holidays during planning, I would still recommend applying a country-specific schedule to the project. This means that it will take into account the local holidays when tasks are scheduled (prior to when a resource is actually assigned to a task and their own schedule then takes over). Actually (self indulgent addition here), the #1 schedule-related feature I want at the moment is to be able to add (ad-hoc) additional working days to an applied schedule. e.g. if there a go-live weekend, to be able to make just the go-live weekend days as working days. A feature request has been submitted 10 months ago for this (reference # 8385554 if anyone else also wants to request this feature). Regards, David.

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

David, I'm intruiged by your "add (ad-hoc) additional working days to an applied schedule" idea. Many of our clients run weekend operations (often 24x7), so we've gone to some rather extreme lengths to extend how we track and scheduled time, including extending "why" someone is not available (e.g. Days Off, In The Field, In The Shop, Travel, etc.)...but under the hood, effectively leave the Real Schedule wide open. Have you found any workarounds yourself (e.g. copying the "Company" calendar and making a "Project" calendar so you can then turn the Go-Live weekend "on"?) Regards, Doug

[DavidCo3]

Thanks for your interest, Doug! We haven't (yet) gone to the lengths of creating a unique schedule per project and switching "on" the go-live weekend. What we have been doing up until now is setting the project with the standard schedule for that country/state, and then for the go-live weekend, setting those tasks with a 'Fixed Dates' contraint. This allows us to force the planned start and completion dates/times on the weekend, and set the correct planned hours, and Workfront just sets a duration of 0. However, I have recently noticed that this causes an issue with Workfront's 'User Utilization' reporting. Any tasks with a 0 duration are missing from the utilization report results. E.g. if a user works Monday to Thursday, then takes the day off on a Friday and instead works on the go-live Saturday, the planned and actual hours go missing from the reporting. The user then looks like they were only 80% utilised for that week. I have submitted a ticket to Support on this, which they are looking at. In terms of resolving the above issue, whilst your idea of creating a project-unique schedule would be an OK workaround at the project level, it wouldn't work for applying to the resource as they work on many projects, so therefore wouldn't really work for us because the resource's schedule overrides the project's schedule once they're assigned to a task. So, depending on what Support come back with, we either need to accept that the Utilization reporting will have some inaccuracies, or we need to move to your "wide open" schedule and maintain the non-working times via task bookings (which is another kettle of fish I'd rather not get into if possible!). I am interesed to hear if any of Workfront's product team have thoughts on the idea of allowing ad-hoc working day overrides as per my feature request as I think this would be the most elegant solution and avoid some hefty workarounds. Regards, David

[EricLu2]

{{David}} I agree having the ability to ad-hoc add additional working days would be a great idea. We have the same issue with weekend-based go-lives. Thanks! Eric

[GregBe1]

#ERROR!

[ValerieSo]

Hi David, Did your feature request ever get implemented? I couldn't find it when I searched the Idea Exchange. I'm trying to find a better solution for allowing temporary weekend work rather than having to update the resources's schedule then changing it back when the project is over. We have users in multiple locations with their assigned schedules. The PM really just wants her schedule to reflect the correct dates and duration when work is done over the weekend - like what MS Project can do :) Thank you. Valerie Valerie Somma Nuance