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Notification When Resource is Scheduled for Time Off

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WendyWh
Level 8

3/9/17

When assigning tasks to someone who is scheduled for time off it would be helpful to get a pop-up notification either at the top or similar to the notification when assigning a task to a Reviewer letting the Project Manager know that the person will be out of the office.

Currently it automatically adjusts the dates, which is great, but it would be really helpful to get a notification as well so you don’t go crazy trying to figure out why the dates aren’t calculating correctly.

20 Comments

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DavidCo3
Level 10

3/9/17

Yep - the shifting dates are one of the more common questions. Fortunately there is a good reason for it but it would help for the user to be notified. The date-moving gets even more complicated if you are dealing with users and projects in different timezones.

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DavidGu1
Level 7

3/14/17

Agreed. This is actually the reason we don't even use the built in feature for scheduled time off. Without any sort of notification to the project owner or resource manager trying to schedule work this causes no end of headaches.

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BrookeVa
Level 8

3/20/17

We don't use the built in PTO feature because of this reason. If someone is over allocated, we want to be able to see that in the User Utilization tab when our resource managers review staffing for the upcoming week. We then shift the hours around to someone else. We don't want dates on tasks automatically moved, we just want to know when someone is off. Great idea.

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BarryBu2
Level 8

7/23/17

Agreed, but it needs to be more than when the PM first assigns the task. Their should be a 'spans PTO' icon / reportable flag so that if someone puts in PTO after they were assigned the work (but before they committed to 'work on it' the icon/flag kicks in.

PM's could have a view for tasks affected by PTO. PMO's could have reports across all projects to ensure PM's are aware, or even be pro-active if a staff member is suddenly not available (e.g. sick) - put in PTO for that user, then have a prompted report to show what specific tasks within projects are affected.

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Kelly_Wehrmann
Level 10

8/17/17

This would be beneficial to PMs when they are working on assigning tasks. What about also providing them a calendar view within their project that shows them all of the time-off that has been scheduled by Project Team Members?

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kateh19355
Level 2

8/24/17

This is so important for us. Right now, we simply cannot use the time-off feature. Working on hard due dates for various clients with various campaigns running, and fast turnarounds, we can't have dates get pushed out without a notification or a visual indicator in the UI. This could really be huge for us and allow us to track PTO finally in WF too.

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WilliamEn1
Level 6

9/15/17

Upvoted. Not sure what the best solution is, but a couple come to mind:

  • If a user enters (or removes) PTO on their calendar and pre-existing task due dates are auto-updated as a result, an update is automatically generated on every affected task indicating "this due date has been increased (or decreased) by X days due to an assigned resource's availability."
  • Addition of an e-mail notification type, "Assignment Date changed due to calendar conflict"
  • If entering a new task and the desired due date is affected by PTO already entered on the resource's calendar, a dialog box that prompts the user assigning the task to accept the revised date, or return to task editing.

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Kelly_Wehrmann
Level 10

4/25/18

Something interesting we found when testing the new Resource Management features...if you have a task with more than one person assigned and one of those resources enters time off after being assigned, they still show as having planned hours for the period of time that they entered as "off"...even if you recalculate the timeline. Plus the PM doesn't really get notified that the time was requested. I think it would be helpful if the PM would be notified via workfront email AND an entry appear in the Update feed, similar to when an entry is made indicating that a commit date will/will not affect the project schedule.

"Resource ABC has entered time-off for the following day/dates which may affect assigned tasks on your project"....

or something along those lines. Just a thought.

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