Allocations in Resourcing

Overview

Resourcing areas are divided into two main sections: a Team Members or Projects list on the left side and an interactive timeline on the right side. Within the timeline, each colored bar is a visual representation of how your resources are allocated over a selected period of time.

• When the Team Members tab is selected, the timeline provides an overview of workloads and availability. The percentage of time and number of hours allocated to each resource is shown and you can immediately identify those who are overallocated.
• When the Projects tab is selected, the timeline displays the amount of time allocated and scheduled for each resource. At a glance, you’ll be able to see workloads and availability across multiple projects, as well as up-to-date budget projections.

Regardless of view, the timeline allows you to swiftly manage change by moving, extending, reassigning, or deleting allocations.

What's an Allocation?

The colored bars in the timeline are visual representations of an allocation.

• Allocation—An allocation is how much a resource is “planned" or "allowed” to work on a project based on who’s available and/or most capable of performing the work. There are two main types of allocations:
  
  • Hard Allocation—A solid bar in the timeline represents a hard allocation; this means that a team member has been “confirmed” or “booked” to work on the project.
  • Soft Allocation—A striped bar in the timeline represents a soft allocation; this means that a team member or unnamed resource is tentatively “penciled in” to work on the project; an unnamed resource is always soft allocated.
• Overallocated—An overallocation occurs when a team member's (soft/hard) allocations have exceeded their capacity for any period of time across all the member's projects. A team member's capacity is determined by their Custom/Default Workweek and Holiday Calendars. Overallocated resources are highlighted in red.
• Scheduled—A thin, solid line at the bottom of an allocation represents that a resource has scheduled hours for task(s) in a project. Hovering over this thin line will show you the total number of hours scheduled on the project for each day, week, or month—depending on your view. These hours can be adjusted based on what the project manager believes is necessary to complete a project via the Resourcing tab within a project or on the task row.
• Unavailable—The compactly-striped gray bars represent days that a resource is unavailable for work (e.g. holidays and weekends). Unnamed resources use the default workweek/holiday calendar. Team members use the calendars assigned to them based on their department or geography.
• Time Off—Scheduled time off is represented by a small, gray triangle in the upper-left corner of a day in the timeline. If a day with time off is also marked as Unavailable, it means that the team member has all of their available capacity for that day scheduled as time off.
  

Calendar Controls

Just above the timeline is a header that indicates the current month and year with some calendar controls and a date picker.

If you want to jump to a specific time, just click the calendar icon (“   ”) and select a day, or use the forward (“   ”) and back (“   ”) arrows to scroll through dates.

To view the allocations by day, week, or month, click the D (day), W (week), or M (month) icon. No matter what view you’re in, you can always click Today to return to today’s date.

Display Preferences

To the right of the calendar controls, select the Actions (“   ”) icon to open up Display Preferences for the timeline. The Hours View Preference section gives you three choices for viewing the timeline:

• Allocated Hours—In the project and resource rows, the allocation bars show how each resource is allocated over a selected period of time, in both percentage of time and number of hours allocated.
• Compare Scheduled vs. Allocated—In the project and resource rows, the allocation bars show the allocated hours for each project or team during a selected period with a small Scheduled Hours line appearing directly below it when team members are scheduled to work on project tasks.
• Scheduled Hours—In the project and resource rows, only the hours that team members are scheduled to work on project tasks appear.

Regardless of your selection, scheduled hours bars will still display in the task rows when team members are scheduled to work on project tasks.

Using the Timeline

When viewing allocations on the timeline, you'll see the percentage of a resource’s total available working hours that are allocated for the selected time period. This view also makes it possible to pinpoint exactly where and when a resource is under- or overallocated.

You can also see the range of when a resource’s assigned tasks start and end, indicated by a Start Date bracket (" [ ") and Due Date bracket (" ] "). The Start Date bracket indicates the earliest Start Date on their assigned tasks, while the Due Date bracket indicates the latest Due Date on their assigned tasks.

To change the allocation dates (but keep the allocation percentage the same), click in the middle of the bar and drag it to a new position on the timeline. The Resource Center automatically accounts for weekends and holidays.

If you want to extend or shorten the allocation, click and drag the handles at either end of the bar and drag. This will only change the hours (not the percentage) allocated to the resource.