Reference no: EM133909256

Project Libre Lab: Introduction to Project Scheduling

ProjectLibre is considered one of the best open source project management tools. It was created by the founders of OpenProj and continually gains popularity. In the following article, we will show you how to create your first project in ProjectLibre. This tutorial will give you a sense of ProjectLibre's basic functions.Downloading, Installing and Running ProjectLibre

If you have a Windows Operating System, you can download
ProjectLibre
Once you have downloaded and installed ProjectLibre, you should see a window like this one below.

Ready to Create Your First Project?
After clicking on ‘Create Project' you must enter some basic project details as seen in the screen below.

You will need to enter the following information about your project:

Project Name: Web Implementation Project
Manager: Student's name
Start Date: 18th August 2025
Notes: This is my first Project using ProjectLibre!

Forward Scheduled: If ‘Forward Scheduled‘ is checked, then the project's end date changes according to the task finish dates you enter. If ‘Forward Scheduled' is unchecked, then you indicate the project's finish date/deadline. This means that the project has a mandatory, non-negotiable, end date. And for good reason, you may be managing a project involving a scheduled event at a hotel.

Adding Your First Task

After you enter your project details you are ready to create your first task. As seen in the table above, type in the appropriate field, the task's ‘Name‘, ‘Duration‘ and ‘Start‘ - the finish date is then calculated automatically. Take a moment to change the ‘Duration' from 1 day to 20 days and notice how the chart on the right changes. On the right of this window, is where you will see the project's Gantt diagram -we will come back to this.

Referring to the image below, you may want to see how many hours it takes to complete a task. You can do this by right clicking on the column ‘Duration‘, click ‘Insert Column‘ and then choose ‘Work‘.

Now, you can see your task's total hours. After showing the total project's work hours, double-click on the tasks record for different viewing options. For example, double click on ‘Meeting with Client‘ text. As seen below, you can see some of the task's options:

‘Duration‘ and ‘Work‘ represent the task's duration. ‘Start‘ represents the task's start and ‘Finish‘ is calculated automatically. You can click on ‘Estimated‘ if you are not sure about the task's duration. You will see a question mark near ‘Duration'. We will discuss other tabs (Predecessors, Successors, Resources and Advanced) in another tutorial.

Connecting the Tasks
One of the most fundamental actions that you will do when planning a project is connecting tasks to one another as the start of some tasks are dependent on others completion. To do this, add tasks as shown in the image below (left) and then drag and drop the first task to the third task as shown on the right of the image. Your tasks are now dependent on one other. Red tasks mean task dependency. Blue tasks mean no task dependency. As you can see in this image below, this is a great way to visualize your project's critical path. Get Assignment Help from Trusted tutors.

Project Libre Lab 2: Creating a Project Calendar and Adding Tasks to a Project

Breaking down tasks
Let's start by adding a master task. Add a task with a duration of 10 days as at the image below.
After adding the task lets breakdown this task to other tasks. Add another task called ‘Child task 1' with a duration of 5 days and another task called ‘Child task 2' with a duration of 7 days.

We now have three tasks independent from one another. As you have noticed, the first one is red. This is because it is the most critical one. Meaning that the project duration is dependent on that. Anyway, let's connect ‘Child task 1' and ‘Child task 2' with ‘Master task'. If you right click on ‘Child task 1' you will see some options. You can understand what New, Delete, Cut, Copy and Paste do. We are going to use the ‘Indent' option for now. So, right click on ‘Child task 1' and ‘Indent'. Do the same for ‘Child task 2'. You can see immediately the following:

Both child tasks are ‘enclosed' to Master task.
Master task look has changed
Master task duration has automatically changed.

Let's make things a little bit more complicated now. Below ‘Child task 2' add ‘Child for child 2' and ‘Child for child 2b'. Add a duration of 2 days for the first, and 8 days for the second. Also, link the two tasks as we have shown at the previous ProjectLibre tutorial part (making the ‘Child for child 2' completion a prerequisite for ‘Child for child 2b'. Then select both tasks (hold Ctrl key pressed and click on number 4 and 5) and then click ‘Indent'. The result should look like the following picture:

Also, instead of using the mouse to Link and Unlink tasks and right click in order to indent you can use the following buttons located on the top toolbar.

Using resources for a project
Since you got a pretty good idea about how you can handle tasks, break them down and connect them, we can now move on to the resources section of a project. Click on Resources at the top menu and you should see the following image:

The important elements here are:

Type: It can be either material or work
Standard rate: Rate of use per hour

Overtime rate: If the resource is used at a time different than normal working hours (overtime). Then use this rate
Cost Per Use: This is for contract jobs or for materials. If you hire someone and you pay him a fixed amount to do the task, then you can use this item instead of standard rate. Also, if you consume some resources then you have to use this item too.

Accrue at: ‘Prorated' means that costs are calculated when the task is planned, ‘Start' means when the task starts and ‘End' when the task ends.
Base calendar: We will get to this at a later part of the tutorial.
If you double-click on any resource row you can click on the ‘Costs' tab and define different cost rules for different dates. If a resource charges a different amount for a specific job, you can take advantage of the ABCDE tabs, and define different rates. Also, at the ‘Resource Availability' tab, you can define from when will this resource be available.

As in Task data entry, at resources, you can also have child resources. So, you can add a resource and ‘Indent' it in order to show where it belongs. Notice however that the master's rates are not auto calculated. You have to enter the rates yourself. It is up to you how you are going to handle resources break down.

ProjectLibre Calendar Options
With ProjectLibre you have many calendar options. You can define your own working and non-days, and different calendars for different resources. Let's start with the basics and edit your standard calendar.

Click on the ‘Calendar' button on top. It should be available whether you are at the File, Task and Resource section of ProjectLibre. You will see that the available days have white background while the non-available days have gray background. At the standard calendar the non-available days are the weekends (Saturday and Sunday).

You can try selecting '24 Hours' too to see what happens. Now, select ‘Standard' again and let's make some changes. You will notice that below Calendar choice are three options:

Use default: Use the calendar's default option for this day

Non-working time: Ignore the calendar's default option for this day and make this a non-working day

Non-default working time: Ignore the calendar's default option for this day and make

Excluding days at calendar
One of the most common changes that people want to apply at the calendar is to exclude National Holidays from the calendar. Click on a day (eg 25th of March) and then select ‘Non-working time'

You will see that the day is now red with a gray background. The red colour means that there is a special rule for this day and the gray background means that this day is not a working day.

You might see that the Gantt diagram does not look ok now where there is task dependency. If such a problem occurs click on the connection arrow and ok in order to fix the connection.

Something else that you must pay attention to is that sometimes days might not be correctly recalculated. You should close the project and reopen it if something looks strange to you.

Including days at Calendar
Similar to the previous instructions, by clicking on a weekend day (eg March 24th 2022) and selecting ‘Non-default working day' you can set this day as a working day. Also, by selecting this option, you can set specific work hours for that day.

Defining your own Calendar
By clicking on ‘New' at the bottom of the calendar window, you can create your own calendar that you can use. This might be useful if you have specific workhours for different teams, or resources. Your new calendar can be completely new or based on an existing calendar of yours.

Using the Calendar options
After defining your calendar options, you can set your new calendar or define the task's calendar at the task's details. Double-click on a task and then click ‘Advanced'. There is the option ‘Task Calendar'. You can choose the Calendar that this task will use there. Also, you can choose to ignore the Resource calendar or not (we will talk about this in a while).

Defining a calendar for each resource
Instead of defining a calendar for a task, you can define a calendar for a resource. Click on ‘Resources' on the top menu and then on the ‘Resources' button on the left to view your available resources. Double-click on a resource. At the ‘Resource Information' dialogue you can see the ‘Base Calendar' option. You can leave that option unchanged or change it to any other calendar (ProjectLibre's or your own). After changing that option, if you click on the button on the right you can make further customizations.

If you have defined the 25th of March as a national holiday, then you will see it as gray here. For the purposes of the tutorial, we will make this resource available. You can go on and click on a non-working day and select ‘Non-default working time'. Now, for only this specific resource, the calendar is changed.