Work patterns

Work patterns determine the regular working and non-working periods in a calendar. A work pattern can be used in more than one calendar, and a calendar can use more than one work pattern. You may need to set up a different work pattern for each permanent resource you use, as the work pattern defines the working and non-working time for permanent resources.

A work pattern is a collection of shifts. Each shift spans a period of 24 hours, so you must create a shift for each 24 hour period within each shift sequence. For example, a typical working week would have seven shifts: one for each working day of the week (Monday to Friday) and one for each day of the weekend (Saturday and Sunday), containing no working time. If a permanent resource works a shift pattern that does not conform to the standard seven-day week you must create the appropriate number of shifts. For example, if a permanent resource works five days on and five days off, you must create ten shifts in their work pattern.

If a task is performed by two teams, where Team A does a morning shift, Team B does an afternoon shift and the two teams switch shifts each week, you can represent this by creating a work pattern of 14 shifts:

Days 1-5 have working time 06:00-14:00.
Days 6-7 have no working time (weekend).
Days 8-12 have working time 14:00-22:00.
Days 13-14 have no working time (weekend).

You can then create a calendar for Team A and a calendar for Team B, assigning the 14 day work pattern to both calendars, with Team A's aligned to start on the morning shift and Team B's aligned to start on the afternoon shift.

Days and weeks can have different durations in different work patterns. For example, an 8 hour day contains 28,800 seconds and a 7.5 hour day contains 27,000; a week made up of 8 hour days contains 144,000 seconds and a week made up of 7.5 hour days contains 135,000. Time units in Asta Powerproject have a default duration, but you can specify the exact duration of the time units as they are used in each work pattern. For example, you could specify a day as being 7.5 hours in one work pattern and 8 in another. This enables Asta Powerproject to convert durations between different time units with complete accuracy. The precise length of a time unit in relation to a work pattern is known as an override. If you do not specify time unit overrides for a work pattern, the default time unit durations are used.

To assign irregular periods of working and non-working time, such as overtime and holidays, you use exceptions.

You can edit the properties of a work pattern and align its shifts to the appropriate days by editing options on the Work Pattern Properties dialog. To access help for each tab of the Work Pattern Properties dialog, press F1 while viewing the tab.