Personal Time-off

Hi, So we are actually just transitioning over from using Workfront's Time Off to using a request queue for PTO. Like you, we noticed that if a task is assigned to one person and that person has taken time off, the planned completion date for the task moves AND it moves without telling the Project Owner. Now if you have more than one person on the task, there is actually a setting where you can say for multiple people to take the project's schedule not the individuals. That will stop the problem for multiple people. But you still have a problem when one person is assigned a task. We also ran into the issue where resource managers/department leads wanted to see PTO in the resource grid. With Time Off, the person's hours turn red earlier, but my RMs and Department Leads aren't fans of this approach. So we took the approach of a request queue. There is are two queue topics: PTO and OOTO. For both, the employee put in the reason for the time off (Subject), Planned hours (so the time is take up on an resource grids), Planned Start and Planned Completion. We also used the Primary Contact field for cases where an assistant or someone else was putting in time for another employee. For OOTO, the request is just created. For PTO, we have an approval process that goes to the Supervisor of the Primary Contact to approve. There is one thing that we haven't figured out, so if anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. We need the issue to be assigned to the Primary Contact. It doesn't appear on the resource grid until the issue is assigned to the person. But we don't know how to set up routing rules that go to the Primary Contact. You can only do it to a specific person or team. Another thing with this approach is that you can't use a calendar. Unfortunately Actual Dates always trump Planned Completion currently on calendars. This is an issue when someone closes the issue early or late. The dates adjust on the calendar and don't reflect the time actually taken. So we are stuck with list views but this hasn't been a big concern for people.

My pleasure, David; thank you for saying so. Cathleen, excellent point: to avoid having dates inadvertently slip, Must Start On, Must Finish On, or Fixed Dates lock them in. We use the latter on our draggable calendar, since that way, users can easily shrink or stretch the task. Regards, Doug

I found this string while I was trying to do some research on Time off best practices. This string has not been active in almost a year. I am curious if anyone on this string ever came up with a solution to address schedules shifting when someone adds time off to Workfront? My project managers stumbled on this issue a few weeks ago... I am trying to drive the behavior of our employees to enter time off into Workfront so we can use the "Team" area to have visibility to when folks are on vacation. Now my project managers are concerned that project schedules are going to shift without their knowledge.

Hi: It is currently difficult to make use of the Time Off data within WorkFront. There are no automated triggers to alert anyone when things change. The data within WorkFront is not easy to get to. It is my opinion that you’ll have to use Text Mode to make the data most usable. Search the community for more information about how to access Time Off using Text Mode. I’m looking forward to when WorkFront makes the data more accessible. Sorry that is no help, but I’m afraid there is little that can be done. I’m hoping someone jumps in and contradicts me with cool facts I don’t know (yet). Thanks! Eric

I found a way to provide PTO visibility to managers. I am more concerned with notifying a project manager when time off is impacting a Project schedule. Lisa Lisa Schliker Business Systems and Process Lead Certified LSS BB BOSE Product and Communication Design Creative Services Office: +1 508 215 0304 Mobile: +1 978 771 6111

Yes, I share your concern. Here is where surprises happen. A PM will say I have a task that should start on work day 1, has a duration of ten work days, and finishes on work day fifteen. The PM can’t figure out why there are five extra days in the task. Eventually the PM will discover that someone assigned to the task has Time Off declared in the middle of the task, so WorkFront silently and clandestinely adds the amount of the Time Off to the duration. No flags, nothing that tells you WorkFront added that time in. I figure someone could write a report that adds the duration to the planned start date and then calculated the DATEDIFF between that calculated end date and the WorkFront calculated Planned Completion Date. If there is a difference, it is probably due to someone having Time Off within the duration of that task. Thanks! Eric

Hi Lisa, In addition to my esteemed colleague Eric's advice, here's a snipped of an email I sent to a client late last week related to this same "PTO visibility" topic: I’ve been giving this some more thought. My assumption in my last email was that you wanted to load upcoming time off into each user’s Personal Calendar. Upon reflection, though, I would not recommend you use the PTO feature within Workfront. Although convenient and easy, it is relatively hidden from a capacity planning perspective, and cannot be authorized for approval. For those reasons, the best practice is instead to create a special Project (or Projects) with Tasks representing the Time Off Requests, which then are visible and considered in capacity planning, and can be authorized for approval. And in that case, if your Accounting System “knows” those (possibly approved) upcoming time off events, yes: our Excel Updater could easily load that information into Workfront, provided we create some sensible conventions for the Project(s) and Task names. That said, perhaps you were wanting to load actual time off that has occurred, as hours. If so, same solution - Excel Updater - but in that case, loading Actual Hours (with special Hour Types, such as “Personal Time Off”) under - I’d suggest - similarly sensible Project(s) and Task names. Huh: you could do both, too, come to think of it. Let’s add this to our agenda for our next meeting. Regards, Doug

Hi Eric - We are also having issues where a resource submits a new PTO entry and it moves a scheduled task which they are assigned to, and nobody knows.....it is not even in the Journal records that the due date changed!. I arrived at this thread today and I also would like a report/view which does this. I realise that baselines are an option, but from my understanding it should be possible to use calculated columns, but I don't know how to put it together. As an alternative, I could extract the task Start and End dates, and the Duration and then work it out in Excel, but I hope someone here could help do it in Workfront. Cheers

Hi: Yeah, it’s a pain. The problem I saw with using calculated dates is that, well, it recalculates. I’m not sure how to have a formula that calculates once and only once. IF YOU COULD, you could have a date called “Planned Completion Saved”. It equates to the Planned Completion Date until you force a recalc. You could run a report that shows all tasks when the Planned completion date isn’t equal to the saved planned completion date. Actually, that’s really how baselines work. We simply compare the baseline to current forecast to see those tasks whose planned completion date has moved out. I would really like an indicator or something that says this planned completion date includes the impact of one or more assigned resource’s PTO. Best wishes for working out something! Eric

I really like that suggestion Eric. It would be nice if there could be some indicator or formatting on a field to show that it is being impacted by a user or schedule. Perhaps something for Workfront product management to have a think about :) I will look through the feature requests and add one if needed.