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I'm trying to create some level-of-effort/hammock tasks that span from project start to project finish. For example, 1h/wk team meetings, 1h/month invoicing.

Is there a convenient way to make such a task update the total work automatically by tying it to other tasks? I've tried a few different ways and can't figure it out.

I specifically don't want to clutter the project plan with recurring tasks, which is the most common solution I find when googling.

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A normal hammock task will do it: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/32040.ms-project-hammock-tasks.aspx

Just be sure to assign a LOE resource to the hammock task

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  • Thanks, this looks promising - I'm not sure what you mean by LOE resource though. I'm specifically trying to get project to calculate the total hours/cost for the hammock tasks based on actual duration. So, say team meeting has 3 resources assigned at 1hr/wk each, goal is to get 156 hours if the project is a year long. I'm having issues since the LOE is very low - so I'm setting units to 2.5% for a weekly 1 hr meeting and 0.6% for a monthly task. It seems that project rounds these to integer perecentages, which throws off the whole thing.
    – jake
    Commented Jan 26 at 18:55
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    Jake, The 2.5% assignment is correct as that gives 3 hrs per week for the 3 assigned resources. However, you are assuming an exact 52 weeks in the year but for 2024, as an example, 1/1/24 through 12/31/24 is 52.4 weeks so the actual total hours is 157.2 for the 3 resources for the year. The rounding you see is a display value, the internal calculation is correct.
    – john-project
    Commented Jan 26 at 20:20
  • One further comment, if the weekly meeting is on a Monday or Tuesday then the total 157.2 hours is valid, but it the meeting is on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, then the total would be 156 hours but you will have to manually adjust that via the Task or Resource Usage views.
    – john-project
    Commented Jan 26 at 20:32
  • This is mostly working for me, but I am inexplicably getting incorrect work calculations, including different amounts of work for resources with the same assigned units. Any guesses why that would happen?
    – jake
    Commented Jan 27 at 0:18
  • Jake, I'd have to see your file or at least a screen shot.
    – john-project
    Commented Jan 27 at 2:02

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