Resource Scheduling Overview

Overview

At Kantata, we know that effectively managing and allocating your teams’ tasks, hours, and project schedules can be a daunting task. That’s why our resource management functionality allows you to merge your high-level resourcing strategy with the day-to-day planning that a project manager does at the task level.

The goal behind resource management is to improve visibility for key decision makers by providing an “at a glance” overview of showing how utilized team members are at any given time. Depending on how your organization is set up, you may use a combination of different hour types to achieve these goals.

In Kantata OX, allocated hours are used to serve as a guide on assigning scheduled hours. Allocated hours are more of a rough cut, or white board, of hours to "hold" that encompasses the total number of hours that may be required for a project. There is no communication reported to team members regarding allocated hours, but they can be managed both in the Resource Center and a project's Resourcing tab by those who have the appropriate permissions.

Scheduled hours are considered committed hours for resources to work. These hours are scheduled at the task level within a project and are broken down to the number of hours per day that a team member should be working on each specific task. Depending on your needs and permissions, you can manage scheduled hours from the Task Tracker, the Resourcing tab in the workspace, or the Resource Center.

Scheduling Hours on a Task

To add or revise scheduled hours in the project workspace, you need to have Project Permissions to schedule hours for yourself or others. You can view and update scheduled hours on a task at any time by opening the Task side panel and locating the Scheduling section.

Within this section, you can enter the number of hours per day that resources should be scheduled for the task.

Scheduling Hours in a Single Project

The Resourcing tab in the project workspace gives you a high-level view of all of the work assigned to resources within a project. To manage scheduled hours from the Resourcing tab, you need to have Project Permissions to schedule hours for yourself or others.

For step-by-step instructions on adding or revising scheduled hours in the Resourcing tab, see Managing Scheduled Hours in the Resource Center.

Tip: You can quickly update scheduled hours assignments for tasks with the Distribute Hours action, which allows you to distribute scheduled hours—referencing existing resource estimated hours, if needed—and choose whether to distribute them evenly, frontload them, backload them, or schedule a set amount of hours each day.

In the task row, select the More (“   ”) icon, then choose Distribute Hours.

Scheduling Hours across Projects

The Resource Center allows you to see a resource’s schedule across projects. The timeline allows you to take into account allocated hours on the project, scheduled hours on other projects, start and due dates for tasks, and other task information. To manage scheduled hours in the Resource Center, you need to have scheduled hours permissions via the Resource Management Access Group set.

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

Tip: You can quickly update scheduled hours assignments for tasks with the Distribute Hours action, which allows you to distribute scheduled hours—referencing existing resource estimated hours, if needed—and choose whether to distribute them evenly, frontload them, backload them, or schedule a set amount of hours each day.

In the task row, select the More (“   ”) icon, then choose Distribute Hours.