Distribute Scheduled Hours – Kantata Knowledge Base

Overview

When you use resource estimated hours in templates or during the Estimate stage to plan your projects, you can duplicate these hours and convert them to scheduled hours on tasks using tools in the following areas of Kantata OX:

From the Resource Center or a project’s Resourcing tab, you can modify the number of scheduled hours you want to distribute, choose how you want the hours distributed, and indicate which days of the week they should be distributed on.

For step-by-step instructions on distributing scheduled hours, see Managing Scheduled Hours in the Resource Center.

Distribution Method

You can use the following distribution methods:

Frontload—Frontloading will fill the workweek greedily, starting from the first date in the date range and scheduling the maximum available hours per day until all hours have been distributed for the assignee.
Example: Frontloading 40 hours for an assignee that only has availability of 5 hours per weekday will distribute 5 hours each weekday for the next 8 weekdays following the starting date.
Distribute Evenly—Distributing evenly will spread the remaining scheduled hours evenly per day across the defined date range.
Example: Evenly distributing 10 hours over 5 days will add 2 hours to those days in addition to any existing hours. Evenly distributing 80 hours over a 4-week period will add 20 scheduled hours per week in addition to any existing scheduled hours.
Backload—Backloading will fill the workweeks greedily, starting from the last day of the date range and scheduling the maximum available hours per day—going backwards—until all hours have been distributed for the assignee.
Example: Backloading 40 hours for an assignee that only has availability of 5 hours per weekday from an ending date 2 weeks in the future will distribute 5 hours each weekday for 8 weekdays before the ending date.
Consume Set Amount—Consuming a set amount clears all existing scheduled hours and distributes the specific number of scheduled hours on each day in the date range.
Example: Consuming a set amount of 10 hours in 5 days distributes 10 hours to each day for a total of 50 hours in that date range.

Note: Custom workweeks, holidays, and time off may affect how hours are distributed for each distribution method.

Workweek

In the Workweek section, you can indicate specific days of the workweek that you would like to distribute hours on, as well as see what a team member’s scheduled workweek is.

Note: If you are distributing hours for an unnamed resource or if a user does not have a custom workweek set up, the workweek will match to the Account Default Workweek.

Distributing Scheduled Hours from the Task Tracker

ALERT

In Task Tracker, scheduled hours can only be distributed evenly between a task’s Start Date and Due Date and you cannot select a different distribution method or date range. You can select different distribution methods—if desired—on a task-by-task basis from the legacy Resource Shaping tool in the Task side panel.

All users with schedule hours project permissions can distribute scheduled hours to task assignments in the Task Tracker. For the hours to properly distribute, tasks must have a Start Date and a Due Date and the number of hours must fit within that date range.

Warning: Updating Start Dates, Due Dates, or resource estimated hours during the scheduled hours creation process could result in errors or unexpected scheduling results.

To distribute scheduled hours in the Task Tracker, select each task that you’d like to distribute hours to—choosing the select all checkbox to apply to all top-level tasks and outdented tasks—then click the Scheduled Hours button in the toolbar and select Distribute Scheduled Hours.

Distributing Scheduled Hours from the Resourcing Tab

Within a project's Resourcing tab, users with Project Permissions to schedule hours can distribute scheduled hours to resources. Select Distribute Hours from the task row to open the Distribute Hours modal.

Distributing Scheduled Hours from the Resource Center

All users that have permission to schedule hours via the Resource Management access group set can distribute scheduled hours from the Resource Center. Select Distribute Hours from the task row to open the Distribute Hours modal.

Note: Users with permissions to schedule hours also have the ability to reassign scheduled hours from one user to another.

Distributing Scheduled Hours from the Task Side Panel

With the legacy Distribute Hours modal—commonly referred to as the Resource Shaping tool—you can distribute scheduled hours on a task-by-task basis. This legacy tool looks and feels differently than the Distribute Hours modal in other areas of Kantata OX.

To access the Resource Shaping tool for a task, open the Task side panel from anywhere in Kantata, select the Scheduling tab, then click the Resource Shaping (“ ”) icon that appears in the Scheduling section in the Task side panel.

Resource Shaping Tool in Task side panel.png