Resourcing Timeline

Overview

The colored bars in the timeline are visual representations of allocated and scheduled hours within the viewable date ranges. You may notice slight differences based on the Resourcing area you are viewing:

• Team Members Tab—This person-centric timeline focuses on managing individual capacity and availability. Bluish-gray bars appear in the top-level row to represent an individual's total workload across all their assigned projects, with these bars turning pink if the resources are over their workweek capacity. The percentage of time and number of hours allocated to each resource is shown and you can immediately identify those who are overallocated.
• Projects Tab—This cross-project timeline uses project-specific colors to show resource allocations and scheduled hours across multiple projects, as well as up-to-date budget projections. It allows for a broader view of where resources are being utilized and includes financial forecasting tools like Estimate at Completion (EAC).
• Project’s Resourcing Tab—This project-specific timeline offers a focused view within a single project, allowing a project manager to see all resource assignments for their project in one place. The allocation bars and scheduled hours bars match the specific project's color.

Regardless of view, the timeline allows you to swiftly manage change by moving, extending, reassigning, or deleting hours. On each allocation bar, you can see the percentage of time and number of hours for each allocation. On each scheduled hours bar, you can see the number of hours per day.

For non-working days, you can see compactly-striped, diagonal gray bars to represent days that a resource is unavailable for work due to holidays, weekends, or scheduled time off. Unnamed resources use the default workweek/holiday calendar. Team members use the calendars assigned to them based on their department or geography.

To help you identify if these non-working days are due to holidays or time off, the top-level row shows a dark amber line at the bottom of the allocation bar, top of the scheduled hours bar, or between the two hours in the respective hours display preference that is selected. When expanding the secondary row to view resources or projects, Time Off (“   ”) and Holiday (“   ”) icons also appear in-line with the secondary row’s column header.

In the Projects tab, the Compare Scheduled vs. Allocated and Scheduled Hours selections allow you to click on a named resource’s scheduled hours to open the Availability Inspector. The Availability Inspector gives you an in-depth look at a resource’s capacity across their projects without leaving the context of the current project you are looking at. For example, you can see:

• Total number of hours across projects
• Hours broken down by project—limited to a view of the projects that you have permission to see
• Details on each hours bar, including red bars that indicate a resource may be overscheduled or overallocated

You can review their availability in a day, week, or month view and use the arrows above the table to move forward and backward. This information can help you determine a resource’s current capacity for work based on the number of scheduled hours they have during a specific period of time. You can also hover over a specific hours bar to see more details.

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 Left Arrow (“   ”) and Right Arrow (“   ”) icons 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.

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 see the same information for scheduled hours, allowing you to avoid overscheduling resources.

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 shows the earliest Start Date on their assigned tasks, while the Due Date bracket shows the latest Due Date on their assigned tasks. These brackets only appear if Start and Due Dates have been entered for a resource’s assigned tasks.

Depending on which Resourcing area you are in, the Allocated Hours and Compare Scheduled vs. Allocated selections may display Start Date and Due Date brackets in different rows:

• Team Members tab—Project row
• Projects tab—Resource row
• Resourcing tab in project workspace—Resource row

In the task row, you can also see brackets that indicate a task's Start Date (" [ ") and Due Date (" ] "). Hover over a bracket to see the Start and Due Date of a task.

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.

Display Preferences

Using the Display Preferences in Resourcing areas, you can control the type of resource planning information that appears in the list on the left side of the screen or the timeline that appears on the right side of the screen. The options in the Display Preferences menu only affect the project row and resource row. The task row displays the same in a project's Resourcing tab and both tabs of the Resource Center regardless of your selections.

These preferences are accessible from the Actions (“   ”) menu located to the right of the calendar controls.

Hours View Preference

The Hours View Preference section gives you three different options for viewing information in the timeline. Regardless of your selection, scheduled hours bars will still display in the task rows when team members are scheduled to work on project tasks.

The Team Members tab behaves the following way based on your selected hours view preference:

The Projects tab behaves similarly to the Team Members tab, except all rows match the project colors for allocated and scheduled hours bars on the timeline, with blue being the default color if project colors aren’t activated in the account settings.

Estimate at Completion (EAC) Calculations

The Calculate Estimate at Completion (EAC) Using section is only available when you are in the Projects tab or a project's Resourcing tab. These settings are persistent, meaning that Kantata OX will remember your selections the next time you refresh or revisit the page.

The following preferences allow you to determine how EAC is calculated and displayed in the timeline:

• Named Resource Hard Allocations—Includes named resources with hard allocations in the EAC calculation. This option cannot be deselected.
• Named Resource Soft Allocations—If checked, named resources with soft allocations are included in the EAC calculation.
• Unnamed Resource Soft Allocations—If checked, unnamed resources (which can only have soft allocations) are included in the EAC calculation.

All of the above options are enabled by default, meaning the default calculation for EAC is based on both allocations types (soft and hard) and both types of resources (named and unnamed).