Units Of Time

Time can be entered in days (“d”), hours (“h”) or minutes (“m”). The default unit of duration is days; when you enter “1” for duration, Projects considers that to be 1 day. However, if you would prefer to enter time in hours for duration, simply append an “h” after the number, and Projects will recognize that. So, feel free to enter “4h” instead of 0.5 for 4 hours (1/2 a day) of duration. Or if you prefer to enter time in minutes, append an “m” after the number. So 15 minutes would be “15m”. Regardless of the units used in entering duration, duration will be displayed in days if more than 1 day, in hours if between 1 hour and 8 hours, and in minutes if less than 1 hour.

The default unit of work is hours; when you enter “1” for work, Projects considers that to be 1 hour. However, if you would prefer to enter work in days, simply append a “d” after the number, and Projects will convert it to hours (8 hours per day). So, feel free to enter “10d”; WorkZone will automatically convert this to 80 hours. Or if you prefer to enter time in minutes, append an “m” after the number. So 15 minutes would be “15m”. Regardless of the units used in entering work, work will be displayed in hours if more than 1 hour, and in minutes if less than 1 hour.

The smallest increment of time for duration or work is 1 minute (“1m”).

How work gets allocated by Projects:

• When a task is first created, by default, the hours of work are initially set as the same as the hours of duration (i.e., a task with 1 day of duration will also have 8 hours of work).
• If you specify a different duration and amount of work for a task, the specified work is divided equally across the duration.
• • Example: you have 8 hours of work that will be spread out over 2 calendar days of duration. Projects will allocate 4 hours of work to each of the two calendar days of the duration.
  • Example: you have 32 hours of work to be done over 2 days of calendar duration. Projects will allocate 16 hours of work to each of the two calendar days of the duration (presumably, at least two people will be doing the work).
• If multiple parties are assigned to a task, the hours of work are divided equally among the parties (e.g., if there is 8 hours of work, 1 day of duration and 2 responsible parties, each responsible party will be assigned 4 hours of work on the 1 day of duration).
• The formula for allocating work over a duration or among responsible parties cannot be modified.