Calendars and calendar settings provide the basic information about working and non-working time that MindView uses to schedule the tasks of a project plan. MindView does not allow work to happen on non-working days or at non-working times. Calendars and calendar settings provide the basic information about working and non-working time that MindView uses to schedule the tasks of a project plan. MindView does not allow work to happen on non-working days or at non-working times.
There are three types of calendar:
The default calendar
The default calendar provides the initial settings for any new MindView project you create. By editing these defaults to values reflecting your company's normal working days and times, you can minimize the changes needed when you create a new project plan.
The project calendar
Each project plan has its own project calendar. The settings it contains affect the way MindView schedules the project tasks. To start with, when you create a new file, the project calendar is identical to the default calendar.
The project calendar is saved with the rest of the project properties whenever you save the file.
The resource calendars
These control the working and non-working time of the resources working on the project. Each resource has its own calendar. By default, they are identical to the project calendar.
Any changes you make to the project calendar are automatically transferred to all the resource calendars. However, specific changes you might have made to the working time of a particular resource are preserved.
For more about resources and resource availability, see "Assigning resources".
Resource calendars are not taken into consideration by manually scheduled tasks. For more information about manual task scheduling, see "Using scheduling task modes".
You can edit either calendar together with the relevant settings:
To edit the default calendar, click the File tab, choose Options and open the Calendar panel. Changes you make here only affect the initial settings for new files; they do not affect existing files.
To edit the project calendar, choose Project | Project Calendars on the Gantt Tools tab. Changes you make here only affect the current file.
The two dialogs are almost identical: all the options are described below, but only the project calendar dialogs are illustrated.
Hours per day: Defines the number of working hours in a standard working day, for example 8. You can enter the value as a decimal number (e.g. enter 7.5 to specify 7 hours and 30 minutes). MindView uses this value to calculate task durations that are specified in days.
Advanced notes: This setting and the next two settings determine the amount of working time that MindView allocates to a task when you specify a duration in days, weeks or months.
When you enter durations, MindView always converts them to minutes and that is the number it stores behind the scenes. MindView uses standard values to convert hours to minutes: one hour equals 60 minutes. However when you specify a duration in days, weeks or months (provided you have not specified "e" for elapsed) MindView uses the number of working hours per day, week or month defined here to calculate the corresponding number of minutes to store.
From the working days and working times allowed by the project calendar it then works out the number of days required for the task and calculate its end date. For this reason, it is a good idea to make sure that the values you choose here match the working time allowed by the calendar as closely as possible, as it will make the entries in the Duration column of the Gantt Outline match the lengths of the task bars more closely.
Redefining these settings after having entered tasks does not alter their real durations (since they are stored in minutes) or the lengths of the task bars (since the amount of work has not changed), but the numbers for days, weeks and months in the Duration column will change.
For more information about durations, start dates and end dates, see "Entering and editing tasks".
Hours per week: Defines the number of working hours in a standard working week, for example 40. You can enter the value as a decimal number. MindView uses this value to calculate task durations that are specified in weeks.
Days per month: Defines the number of working days in a standard working month, for example 20. Enter a whole number value. MindView uses this value to calculate task durations that are specified in months.
Click Project Calendars in the Project Calendars Settings dialog to access the calendar itself (or Default Calendar in the Calendar panel of the MindView Options if you are viewing the default calendar settings).
Working days are shown in white and non-working days are shown in grey.
In the project calendar, a red dot on a particular day indicate that the working hours for that day are different from those set in the default calendar.
In the default calendar, a red dot indicates that you have made a change to the working hours of that day since opening the dialog. These red dots disappear as soon as you save the default calendar.
Note that the distribution of red dots in your project calendars may change if you edit the default calendar. This does not mean that your project plans have changed, only that the differences between the default and project calendars have changed.
To see the working hours for a particular day, select the day by clicking it.
The working hours appear in the boxes on the right of the calendar grid.
If the day you want to examine is not currently visible on the calendar grid, you can browse to it in several ways by using the calendar header:
Click the arrows placed on each side of the header until the correct month and year appear.
Click the year on the header and use the up and down arrows to reach the correct year.
Click the month name on the header and choose the correct month in the drop-down list.
To change the working times defined by the calendar, start by selecting the day or days to be modified:
To select one day only, just click it.
To select several contiguous days, select the first day and drag the mouse until the last day in the range. You can also select the first day, press the Shift key and click the last day in the range.
To select several non-contiguous days, select the first day and press the Ctrl key while selecting all the other days.
To select all Fridays (for example), click F in the column header. This selection applies to the whole duration of the project, not just the displayed month. You can select several columns by Shift- or Ctrl-clicking them.
Select one or more days as described above.
If you select several days with different working hours, the boxes on the right show the working hours of the earliest day in the range.
You can now make changes:
To change the working hours, enter new values in the boxes on the right.
To make the day(s) non-working, click Clear to delete the time entries from the boxes.
To reset the working times to the default calendar values, select "Set selected days as default".
To save the current project calendar as the new default calendar, open the Project Calendars dialog and click Save as Default. Your existing default calendar will be overwritten.
To return all project calendar settings to those of the default calendar, open the Project Calendars dialog and click Restore Default.
You can return the default calendar to the original MindView settings as follows:
Open the Default Calendar dialog (click the File tab, choose Options and open the Calendar panel).
Click Import Calendar.
Browse to:
C:\Program Files\MatchWare\MindView 6.0\UserData\Gantt
Select the file default.xml.
Your current default calendar is overwritten with the original MindView default calendar.
Click Save from the Default Calendar dialog to save the restored default calendar.
You can also import calendars from other projects or export your calendars for use by colleagues.
To import a previously saved MindView calendar, click Import Calendar. Existing settings will be overwritten.
You can also import the calendar of an existing Microsoft Project document by exporting that document to XML from Microsoft Project, then choosing the exported XML document in this dialog.
To export your current calendar for use on a different project for instance, click Export Calendar.
When exported, the MindView calendar is saved the MindView XML format.
Use the drop-down list at the top of the Project Calendars dialog to select the calendar of the resource you want to edit.
Make the changes required. The steps to follow to edit a resource calendar are exactly the same as for the project calendar.
For more about resources and resource availability, see "Assigning resources".