TMGR: How Team Manager Decides to Use Overtime

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Overtime is the work that may occur after a person's daily work limit, based on the person's working times, has been reached. For example, if a person's working calendar allows eight hours in a day, and a task starts at the beginning of the day, overtime can occur only after the person has accomplished eight hours on the task for that day. This means that if you have two tasks with the same person assigned to each task for eight hours, the tasks will not overlap if you choose an overtime setting.

The Overtime Allowed setting for a person assigned to a task can be one of the following: Never, When needed, and Always.

You can set Overtime Allowed options for any person assigned to a task. However, the total overtime available for distribution on a single day for a person across all the person's assignments is limited to the value per day you have set in the person's calendar. By default, each person has a daily overtime limit of 2 hours.

To illustrate how these settings affect the usage of overtime work, consider the following examples.

Example 1: Always Use Overtime

1. In a new team file, on the Tasks tab, select the Workload Planner view.
2. Enter two tasks, T1 and T2.
3. Assign the same person, P1, to work on both tasks.
   
   NOTE: Task T2 is scheduled the next day after the finish of T1.
4. Click task T1, and then click Task Properties on the Edit menu.
5. On the General tab, enter 10 hours for Total Work, and then click OK.
   
   NOTE: 2 hours of work spill over to the next day on task T1. This causes task T2 to finish on the third instead of second day.
6. In the Task Properties dialog box, click the Scheduling tab. Click Daily Limits & Overtime.
7. In the Overtime Allowed field for P1, change the setting from Never to If Needed. Click OK, and then click OK again.
   
   NOTE: No change has occurred.
8. In the Task Properties dialog box in the Scheduling tab's Daily Limits & Overtime, change the Overtime Allowed field from If needed to Always. Click OK, and then click OK again.
   
   NOTE: The 2 hours no longer spill over to the second day.

Example 2: Use Overtime when Needed

1. Follow the first four steps in the first example above.
2. On the General tab, enter a deadline that is the same as the finish date for the task.
3. In the Scheduling tab's Daily Limits & Overtime, change the Overtime Allowed to Never, and then click OK.
4. On the General tab, enter 10 hours for Total Work.
   
   NOTE: Task T1 has overload work of two hours.
5. In Daily Limits & Overtime, change the Overtime Allowed from Never to If Needed. Click OK, and then click OK again.
   
   NOTE: The overload condition has gone away.

If the Daily Limits & Overtime setting is set to Never, then the person's daily overtime limit will never be used on that task.

To change overtime limits for a person, do the following:

1. On the People tab, click the Working Times view.
2. Click the person whose overtime limits you want to change.
3. Select the days on the calendar for which you want to change the overtime limit.
4. On the Edit menu, click Working Times.
5. In the Daily Overtime Limit field, enter a value from zero to 24, and then click OK.