Creating a new resource curve

Question

Following on from one of my recent threads, i am now trying to create a resource curve that will amend the forecast for the current month to 0 hours, but keeps the current forecast for the rest of the resource assignemnt
Not sure how this will come out
May June July Aug Sep
20 40 40 60 30
I want to create a curve which will amend the forecast hours to:
May June July Aug Sep
0 40 40 60 30
Using fill down, i have discovered, will not work for this functionality
Thanks
David

Answer 1

what you could do is to offset the activity start (Activity Planned or Remaining Start of say May 1st) and the resource assignment start (Assignment Planned or Remaining Start to June 1st) by using a resource assignment lag. you can display the Original / Remaining Lag or Planned / Remaining Start for resource / role assignments as columns in the Resource assignments window in order to perform a fill down or use a global change. changing the assignment start date changes the assignment lag and vice-versa. Remaining Lag and Start should prove relevant for both not-started and in-progress activities, as opposed to Original Lag and Planned Start.
e.g.
Remaining Lag = 1m . of course it wouldn't simply be exactly 1m (or 21.5d or 172h) every time you run it because of the different number of working days each month. calendar definitions do not apply. admin settings for time conversions are just a convention.
or
+Remaining Start = [June 1st]+ , as a custom date to be changed every time.
if running the global change on the 1st of every month, you could use:
+Remaining Start = [system current date]+
or even
Remaining Start = Remaining Start + 1m , where the existing assignment start is the same as the activity planned/ remaining start date. i assume that to be the data date.
to tell you the truth i'm still not exactly sure why you need to do this in the first place. depending on your exact needs, make sure you check the filtering criteria you want for the global change (e.g. activity status). test it carefully before applying because, assuming all your resources drive activity durations by default, you can inadvertly change activity dates/ durations.
another issue could be that the total resource units, as well as the assignment finish and the activity finish stay the same, which i'm not sure is what you're looking for. by offsetting activity and assignment start dates, that is Gantt chart start and the resource histogram / spreadsheet start, there are several scenarios you can take: redistribute the units in the 1st month over the remaining months of assignment (and activity), make assignment (and activity) 1 month longer, deduct the hours from the units total, etc. you may need to switch duration type to reestablish the equation: duration x units/time = units . you should also consider a level-of-effort activity type if activity durations and assignment unit totals are not known upfront.
hope this helps. best of luck
Edited by: Tibi on Jun 1, 2011 12:06 PM