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markTwo
Level 2
May 5, 2023
New

Front or back loading planned hours

  • May 5, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 413 views

Description - It would be ideal if you were to specify, at project template level, that planned hours can be front or rear loaded (in addition to being spread evenly across the task duration) when assigned to a user. 

Why is this feature important to you - This would help our project managers to schedule resource more accurately, it will allow them to schedule tasks on the same day, get get the most for the available resource on a granular level. The assignees would also benefit, they can concentrate on one task at a time, moving onto the next once the fist has finished. 

How would you like the feature to work - If a task has a two day duration and 8 planned hours and is assigned to a user who has a capacity of 7 hours per day, WF would allocate 7 hours in day 1 and 1 hour in day two. The task would be set to start at 9am and finish at 5pm which is inline with our default schedule. If the assignee has 2 hours available on day 1 and 7 available in day 2, the task would be spread accordingly, 2 and 6 hours. If an assignee has less than the required amount of capacity across the 2 day duration, an error message should be displayed when trying to assign the task or they are not available to assign when selecting. (similar to the plane icon when they are on leave during the task duration.  If the assignee has a different schedule, eg they start at 11am, the task will schedule to start at that time rather than 9am, the same would be done if the assignee has a task finishing at 3pm on day 1. 

Current Behaviour - Currently the above is a manually process and has to be adjusted on each task as WF distributes the planned hours evenly across the duration days. 

    2 replies

    B
    BrianOs
    New Member
    September 10, 2025

    this is really important to our team. Our people waste hours a day "fixing" allocation. No one works on a task for 6.11 hours, then 3.22 hours. Once you start on a task you usually work until it's done.

    S
    StrattonPo1
    Level 1
    May 13, 2026

    Strong direction. I would extend this with an explicit set of rebalancing modes that planners can select at, each with predictable behaviour:

    Frontload, smoothed. Fill the user's available capacity from the start of the task duration, respecting any existing allocations. The task absorbs whatever capacity remains each day until the planned hours are met.

    Frontload, override. Pack hours from the start of the duration ignoring existing bookings. Useful for priority work that needs to displace softer commitments. The system should still surface a clear conflict warning rather than silently overbook.

    Backload, smoothed and Backload, override. Same logic, working from the end of the duration backwards.

    Target rate (front or back). Planner sets a desired daily rate, e.g. "4 hours per day until planned hours are met". Respects existing allocations where possible and tops up shortfalls into adjacent days. Worked example: 12 planned hours over 5 days at a 4h/day target, on a user already booked 6,6,0,0,0 against an 8h/day capacity, would resolve to 2,2,4,4,0. Days 1 and 2 only have 2h remaining, days 3 and 4 hit the 4h target, day 5 is zero because the planned hours are already met. If the available capacity cannot accommodate the planned hours within the task duration at all, throw an error or flag the assignee as unavailable, mirroring the existing leave indicator. An "ignore existing allocations" toggle should be available for the override case.

    If the user had no existing bookings i.e. 0,0,0,0,0 the 12 hours would be allocated as 4,4,4,0,0

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    A few additions worth bundling in:

    1. Preview before commit. A small visualisation showing the proposed distribution against the assignee's current schedule before the allocation is applied. This removes most of the manual back-and-forth.
    2. Recalculate on change. If the task is reassigned, or if the assignee's capacity changes (leave, pulled to higher priority work, schedule change), the chosen mode should flag for rerun rather than leaving the original distribution stale.
    3. Bulk rebalance. Apply a chosen mode across multiple tasks in a project at once. Saves significant rework when an upstream task moves and downstream allocations need to shift.
    4. Define behaviour at duration boundaries. If planned hours exceed available capacity in the task duration AND override is on, the system needs a documented behaviour: allocate beyond the task end date, or hold within duration and overbook, or reject throw up an error. 
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