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Allocating Hours for Multiple People in a Task

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Level 2
Hello all! We have a video department that wants to schedule multiple people to one task - which is not a problem. Where the complication comes in is that they only want the hours allocated to those additional people for the day that they are doing the work. Here is an example... We have a task for a video shoot that has a duration of 4 weeks and then they have assigned 40 hours of work. Tomas would be the primary on the project, Caleb the secondary, and then two student workers to help them as needed. They only need the student editors on the day of the shoot - but there could be multiple days shooting with different students each time. I'm thinking we may need to divide this up into multiple tasks, but the video area would like to keep it as one if possible and have the hours allocated to the correct people on the correct days. Thoughts anyone? Lauren McCollim Project Manager, Advertising Services Pensacola Christian College
5 Replies

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Level 3
You may have already considered this, but what about keeping Shoot as the main task, and then create sub tasks for each person, so they can be accounted for separately. Debbie Scalf BCBST

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Level 10
I'm with you. I would break it into multiple tasks (1 per shoot day or whatever makes sense). Even if Workfront can do this, I suspect it would be more arduous for everyone than creating separate tasks.

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Level 2
I agree - I think that would be the best plan too. I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something :) Lauren McCollim Advertising Project Manager Pensacola Christian College

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Level 2
Yes i think you are right. And that was one of the complaints was that it was too difficult to allocate. Reassigning a task is much simpler than fixing allocations each time. Thank you! Lauren McCollim Advertising Project Manager Pensacola Christian College

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Level 10
Interesting topic about when to split or share tasks: In a previous system we had the concept of "Work Orders" (which are now Tasks). One benefit of our Work Orders was we could create a chain reaction of events. So a single work order could say "Design will hand off artwork to Production to prep art and provide it to Comps so they can produce mock-ups." This work order could have separate deadlines for each group, and caused a seamless and fast handoff between the two groups. We initially launched with separate tasks as suggested by this thread, but handoffs became more confused and slower. We've tried everyone on the same task, but allocation of time is confusing, handoff less clear, and reports became cluttered (if a particular user is "done with my part" it still stays on their Active Tasks report...). Managing deadlines and handoffs became alot of task micromanagement. So in short, both methods are slower than our old system; it's foisted alot onto the Project Managers rather than spreading-around the responsibility a bit. Granted, we're new to Workfront, which has turned our Project Manager's lives inside-out, buried them in notifications, and forced them to micro-manage when they didn't have to before. Some of the pain is just getting used to a new system and method; but as a SysAdmin it's also my job to mitigate their pain when possible. ;-) Any suggestions? Kevin Quosig