Utilization

Hi Eric, chiming into this thread as Im also looking for a way to report out on our team's utilization, and I keep running into issues with the user utilization area of resource planninng. My goal- be able to see actual and projected utilization for members of our creative services team, for a given period time, organized by job role/level. I seem to be able to get a good idea or projected, but would like to see actual as well, even if timehseet hours were entered outside the planned timeframe of the task) Any guidance you can send would be greatly appreciated, and Im ok with doing some of this work in excel if needed. thanks! Stephanie WF System Admin sscherer@divcom.com

Hi Steph: Please select one of the following: 1) By utilization, are you looking to compare billable versus non-billable hours? 2) Do you mean you want to see, by role, what people with that role are working on (project-task) and how many hours have been planned and projected for that project-task combination? 3) Do you mean you want to see, by named user, what that person is working on (project-task) and how many hours have been planned and projected for that project-task combination? 4) Something different? The solution to number one is a report. The solution to number two is the Capacity Planner. The solution to number three is the User Utilization capabilities. Let me know more details, I’m sure we can do something… Thanks! Eric

Hi Steph, In terms of working with Planned Hours, there are a couple of main approaches - both with their pros and cons. User Utilisation tool: Pros : Planned hours are distributed across each of the days in the time period. It gives you good overall % planned utilisation per day/week/month depending on how you want to zoom in or out. You can drill down on each person to see the projects they are on, and drill down again to the task level...very nice. If you want, you can enable (via the settings cog icon) to view the actual hours logged on the tasks, along with planned hours. Cons: You can't filter or group results based on task-level information (e.g. billable vs non-billable, or other task level codes you may use) You can't group users (e.g. to get sub-totals per team or role) - this is a pain! If actual hours are logged on tasks in a different month from the tasks' planned dates, then this actual time won't be counted in the resource grid. To change the data you have to close the screen, adjust the filters and then open it again and then maximise it again Task Reports (especially with matrix views): Pros: You can filter and group the results however you like, based on task-level information (e.g. billable vs non-billable, or other task level codes you may use) You can group the results by the primary assignee's and/or their team/location etc. Cons: If a resource is a secondary assignee, they won't show up on the task report. Planned hours are not spread out on a daily basis. They are grouped and totalled based on however you group the report. e.g. a 5 day task with 40 planned hours, will show 40 planned hours for the last day if you are grouping the results by planned completion - daily. Grouping by week or month is not so bad but it depends on the length of your tasks compared with the range of your report. If you want to group by Team Name or Group Name, you can achieve this via text mode for the Details tab, but you can't show the team name on a Chart! I have a ticket open about this at the moment but it looks like there is no option currently. So, what we are currently working on is an excel spreadsheet where we manually bring together available hours from the User Utilisation screen, with planned hours from Task Reports, and also some actual hours from Hour reports. It's time-consuming and has some irregularities but gives a better overall picture than using the User Utilisation report or Task Reports alone. I'll keep an eye on this thread in case others have better ideas! Regards, David