Can custom dates for issues be made to appear on Workload balancer?

[itmailbox]

We have a case where we want to assign multiple custom start/end dates to a single request/issue, and then assign to different staff (e.g. staff person 1 works on this from 12/1 to 12/3, then staff person 2 works on it from 12/4 to 12/6).  I realize that's not the way WF is designed to work, but it's very easy to admin this vs. creating 4 unique issues/tasks.  I can do this in a report, but the work assignments don't appear on the workload balancer.  Is there any way to get custom dates to show up on the workload balancer?  Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[skyehansen · Accepted solution]

I really suggest that you convert the issue to a project. What you're currently doing seems very fiddly (manual) and as you pointed out, since Workfront wasn't designed to work this way, you're now struggling to align with workload balancer. If you used a project template it would be much more automated (tasks would automatically show for specific roles instead of having to wait for someone to reassign. Even if you were reassigning using automation like fusion, it would be so much easier to automate the creation of projects.

For my own interest I'd love to hear more about how much easier it is to admin this (add four sets of dates to the issue, and have everyone assign themselves) vs converting to a project using a template with four tasks preloaded and perhaps pre-assigned in some way, and then being able to use workload balancer (I suppose you can see where my preference lies... not sure how to make that question less "loaded"...)

[gunaymusayeva]

I agree with Skyehansen, however I would suggest to convert the issue to a task and add 4 subtasks and optionally predecessors. As converting to project will cause a lot of projects accumulating each active for small time period.

Regards,

Gunay Musayeva

[itmailbox]

Thank you. I agree with you that converting several issues a day to projects would be too much (resulting in too many projects). I like the idea of converting them to tasks, I just wish there were a way to automate this more so it could be done with a single click and that we could default the selections so we didn't have rely on staff remembering what to select.  I also wish there were some way to manage all this in a report view.  The report views are great because you can change so many variables on one screen.  It's very easy to train staff.  As soon as inexperienced users start getting into the guts of WF, we start to lose them.  They think it's too complicated in some cases and just don't use it.  

[itmailbox]

Thanks for this reply.  I think for a casual Workfront user, there are too many steps involved in converting an issue to a project, and then adding x number of tasks to a project. The number of tasks varies each time.  It also results in too many projects, so the admin is somewhat messy.  Having everything in a single report / view has worked well for adoption and for staff who only use WF an hour or two a week.