How to Perform Leveling in Microsoft Project 2007

How to Perform Leveling in Microsoft Project 2007
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This is Part Two in a two-part article series. To read this article from the beginning, click here.

Performing the Leveling

After your task and project priority levels have been set, you are ready to use Project’s resource leveling tool. To level your overallocated resources, follow these steps:

  1. On the Tools menu, choose Level Resources.
  2. In the Resource Leveling dialog box, under Leveling calculations there are two choices: Automatic and Manual. a) Manual leveling occurs only when you click Level Now. b) Automatic leveling occurs immediately each time you change a task or resource.
  3. In the Look For Overallocations On A ___ Basis drop-down list, select the desired option. Day By Day is the default.Clear the Clear Leveling Values Before Leveling check box. Leveling Options: By clearing the Clear Leveling Values Before Leveling check box, you tell Project to level only the new and unleveled assignments. Leaving this box selected can appreciably slow down your work in the schedule because all tasks are leveled instead of only the ones that actually need leveling.
  4. Under Leveling Range For, select Level Entire Project or Level. When you choose Level, you set the From and To dates for leveling.
  5. In the Leveling Order drop-down list, select the leveling order that you want: a) ID Only will level tasks in ascending order based on their ID numbers. b) Standard will look at predecessor dependencies, slack, dates, priorities, and constraints to discover whether and how tasks should be leveled. (This is the default.) c) Priority, Standard will check task priorities first and only then apply the Standard setting.
  6. Under Leveling Order there are four check boxes (select all that apply): a) Select the Level Only Within Available Slack check box if you want to prevent the finish date of your project from being delayed due to automatic leveling actions.
  7. If you select Level Only Within Available Slack, expect to get error messages stating that Project is unable to level the entire schedule. This happens often because there is generally not enough slack available to reschedule assignments without running out of slack time. a) Select the Leveling Can Adjust Individual Assignments On A Task check box if you want to let automatic leveling adjust when a resource works on a task independently of other resources that are working on the same task. b) Select the Leveling Can Create Splits In Remaining Work check box if you agree to let Project create splits in remaining work. c) Select the Level Resources With Proposed Booking Type check box if you want proposed resources to be taken into consideration when leveling.
  8. Click Level Now to perform leveling.
  9. To clear leveling, before performing any other leveling open the Resource Leveling dialog box again and click Clear Leveling to clear the results.
  10. Click OK.

Excerpted from…

With permission from Microsoft Press, this article content was excerpted from the book, Managing Projects with Microsoft Office Project 2007 <em>(Self-Paced Training Kit for Exam 70-632)</em>.

This post is part of the series: Project 2007: Leveling Resources

A step-by-step guide to leveling resources in Microsoft Project.

  1. Project 2007: Leveling Resources (Part 1 of 2)
  2. Project 2007: Leveling Resources (Part 2 of 2)