General Hours or ordinary tasks?

[JamieHi]

We've got a few general hours that all timesheet users need to use e.g. sickness, PTO etc. However each team has their own set of 'general hours' (e.g. BAU Break Fix, Vendor Management, Architecture) that - for ease initially - we just set up a tasks in separate plans, and then assigned the individual users to them. I'm now thinking to put these back as general hours (where they should probably sit) but I'm wondering if there's any particular benefit to doing so? We'd obviously have to have different timesheet profiles in the same way we have the different plans now to house these timesheet tasks. Jamie Hill JLL

[DagmaraGa]

Hi Jamie, We keep it within two separate projects. What i mean is: 1) We've got General Hour Project with tasks which ideally are equal general hours. Every single person within our department is assigned to every single tasks so it always shows up on their timesheets. 2) Every team has got BAU projects created for them which obviously is any BAU support, admin work etc they would be doing on daily basis. team members gets assigned accordingly to tasks by team managers. Hope that makes sense? To add to add our Hour Types are equal Team names - makes reporting easier then. E.g. PMO team has got PMO Team hour type. Hope that helps. Thanks, Dags Dagmara Garwell BAKKAVOR LTD

[VickiCa1]

We do the same thing, we have internal projects and tasks which are assigned but not "planned" for that way users can log them as needed. It does muddy up the new scheduling tools with all these tasks, which makes that almost impossible to use. I am looking for another solution so that we can still track this time without having to navigate around it since its ad hoc work that is not planned for them on a weekly basis. I think if WF would add a way to group General Overhead tasks that would help us keep it out of projects and tasks, but still be able to allow us to track as granular as we would like it would look better on time sheets. Just my 2 cents :) Vicki Calabro Bishop Fox

[MarieKe1]

When we first started using Workfront, we found a gap in existed in accounting for & planning for the "non-project" work - which we refer to as Operational (keep the lights on items). We first used the general buckets, but that didn't allow any planning, caused us many reporting challenges, etc. So, we then created an "Operational Project" for each team. The Operational Project is the best solution we have found to date, but it has its drawbacks including 1) Since all projects are treated equal - we are unable to turn off the communications for these projects - so the Workfront communications become overwhelming for staff & they no longer pay attention to any. We'd like Operational projects to be treated differently.) 2) We are unable to use the resource tools, and 3) We encountered problems with logged hour reports because the hours logged on the child tasks did not roll up to the parent task. We did work with Workfront & found a way around this. In today's world, very few staff members or teams are 100% dedicated to Project work. We would really like the Workfront tool to address & handle Operational work in a better way. I need to specifically show project time availability based on operational availability, and allow tracking of hours for all work (project & operational). FYI: > For our Operational/Maintenance projects we standardized the Parent tasks for each team. This allows us to report across teams. The team can create any child task they want, as long as the parent task stays the same. > We house all Operational/Maintenance projects in a Program. Each Portfolio has the same program name. This allows us to report & provide dashboards that exclude the "Operational Programs". (Because we often want to show 'true projects". I would love to hear any suggestions others have for dealing with this! Marie Kelly The MetroHealth System

[EricCu2]

This has really been our biggest obstacle in adopting any iteration of resource planning. The idea that has been brewing lately is to allow folks to log time to tasks by updating the Share permissions but NOT assign them to the task. Then working with individuals to pin said item(s) to their timesheet so that it is available easily to them. Then we'd have to work out an understanding that XX% of their time will apply to this general time and using the resource planner for project work will look at YY% utilization. We have about 150 users and we have about an even split on who needs General [bucket] hours and who doesn't. it's a lot of upfront work but it may pay off. Eric Cuevas Director, Marketing Operations Leapfrog Online

[MichaelLe]

I think every company struggles with this at some point. We use client codes with every project and for these types of projects we did a couple of things. 1) Created suffix client codes for our departments. a. An example would be the hours our marketing team spends on maintaining our IT systems that house our databases. i. The client in this case is us = Guidewell Connect (Abbrev "GWC") ii. Department = Infrastructure [they didn't want to be called "IT"] (Abbrev "INFRA") iii. Project description = Database Maintenance iv. Workfront Project name = GWC + INFRA + Database Maintenance or "GWCINFRA Database Maintenance" v. When we pull hours to bill clients we do not pull those that start with our own client codes. We do run reports that contain all hours and if we see our internal hours are high we work with the leadership of that department to find out why. I hope that helps! Michael Lebowitz Marketing Analyst Michael.Lebowitz@guidewellconnect.com T 904-436-4240 | M 904-200-1364 Fax 904-565-6156 4800 Deerwood Campus Pkwy DCC 800-4-272 Jacksonville, FL 32246 ------Original Message------ This has really been our biggest obstacle in adopting any iteration of resource planning.  The idea that has been brewing lately is to allow folks to log time to tasks by updating the Share permissions but NOT assign them to the task.  Then working with individuals to pin said item(s) to their timesheet so that it is available easily to them.  Then we'd have to work out an understanding that XX% of their time will apply to this general time and using the resource planner for project work will look at YY% utilization.  We have about 150 users and we have about an even split on who needs General [bucket] hours and who doesn't.  it's a lot of upfront work but it may pay off. Eric Cuevas Director, Marketing Operations Leapfrog Online