Setting to Stop Shifting Dates with Time off

Yes, this is a major frustration for us as well. It should at least through a notification to the project owner if this happens.

Agreed. But what would make this even better is if there was some indication on the tasks themselves to let us know that the dates have been shifted by PTO, or if it's turned off, that the task is in jeopardy since the assignee will be out and doesn't have the hours available. This way we can react quickly to swap out assignments.

Oh, and if we can't turn it off... can we at least get a notification that a project has been pushed out because someone has scheduled PTO so we can quickly react?

Absolutely need the ability to see people's time off against work assigned without it shifting dates.

The key action should really be to help re-allocating rather than changing the all Project Timeline because of one team member being OOO.

It would also be great to be able to report on this.

ie: Flag allocated tasks against people out of office

This is a huge one for us, as we have SLAs in very short time frames for some of our line items (some within 4-5 days). If someone takes a week off, their shorter projects will not deliver in time. We don't even use time off in WF because of this, but we would really like to be able to keep track of time off without having to use a shared google calendar.

‚Since this can be done as a setting that can be toggled on or off, there is absolutely no reason NOT to do this. You are going to find people that fall on both sides of the debate so making it a configurable setting only makes the product work for everyone where as committing to only one method will ruin the functionality for 49% of users. As an FYI, I would configure it to NOT impact timelines, but I see how others would like the opposite.

I might nice to allow this as a project level setting since some projects can facilitate the availability-adaptive schedule while others need to be fixed.

I could see keeping the planned dates fixed but the allocation adjust for that user, then, if the worker would result in being over allocated, there would be an alert to the planner.

I wouldn't use this personally, but I support it as an on/off setting so it can benefit those who do. :)

I like the shifting dates because I like the truth in my plans :). It tells me if I need to reassign a task or just let the date move. I can see how a setting would be useful so if you don't want the dates to move, you have that option. My only concern is, the unintended consequence that PM's don't know (or forget) their project plan is set to NOT move the dates, then they discover they're in trouble at the moment of vacation time for that person.

My company mainly uses a flex model for resourcing so when a person has time off, they generally have someone else providing backup during their PTO (similar to the OP). This means our dates don't/can't generally change and the current WF time off feature is unusable for us because of this. I'd love for an administrative ability to turn this on/off globally. I see some other benefits to using the time off feature (showing grayed out dates in the team schedule when reviewing resourcing hours) and the like that we just can't use unless an option like this is added.

Good news, we are starting to work on this! I don't have any dates to announce just yet but I will keep you updated on this thread as things progress.

Thanks,

Josh Hardman

Product Manager, Workfront