How do I account for a Workers time spent on meetings and calls?

[tonyj90775617]

When a designer or developer has meetings or calls that are not accounted for in WF those times are seen as gaps in resource management availability. Is there any tried and true solution/work-around for this? I was thinking of a project when they can self-assign tasks/hours for meetings/calls etc they are on. Another consideration was using the Outlook plugin to maybe sync meetings somehow. Anyway, any suggestions to make resource planning hours more accurate would be great.

[EricLu2]

Hi: We handle it a couple of ways: 1) If it is a recurring meeting, we create a part of the plan (at the bottom) where we use WorkFront’s ability to create recurring tasks. Then, the PM regularly closes past meetings each week; 2) For ad hoc meetings, we have a bucket of time that we put people on. Depending on how well things are understood, we might have more or less hours. It’s a guess, really. People can put their time in that bucket. I don’t like this alternative generally, because people will start dumping their time against this bucket rather than take the time to apply their time to the correct tasks. I frown on timesheet buckets; If the essence of the project labor is spent in meetings, then planning the meetings by deliverable, and planning who should be involved might be time well spent. In this alternative, people would have tasks that represent the various meetings they would attend. For example: Deliverable: Print Ad · Meeting to discuss client key messages, tone, talent; · Meeting to storyboard / mock up ads; · Meeting to get final agreement on approach and look/feel; · Meeting to review short list of talent; · Meeting to mock up ads using PhotoShop; · …you get the idea. If the tasks are REALLY meetings, then model them that way. If the goal is resource planning, more detail is better. More detail, however, is more difficult to manage, both for the PM and the person filling out their timesheet. Does this help at all? Let me know. Thanks, Eric

[tonyj90775617]

Eric - thank you for the approaches, they are certainly helpful. These types of meetings and calls are not necessarily related to specific projects which make them hard to work into a project plan. They often happen same day or a couple days in advance. The goal here is having a Worker's weekly resource allocation include unplanned meetings, calls, overruns, misc etc. not part of any project task list. These Worker users are not filling out timesheets. Have a General Meeting Project and allocate, say 4 hours a week, for Workers so that the resource allocation is more accurate. I would have to give all workers Manage rights to the project so they can modify hours as needed (adding more or less hours spending on how week looks). But I don't think that will be an issue for them to have 'sync up' weekly meetings time by adding or removing time. I think it has to be user-managed vs a project manager tracking this information down. Thanks for the ideas! -----End Original Message-----

[AdinaPi1]

We track meeting hours three ways. 1. In a project as a meeting task. 2. As a hour entry in the General Hours section on the timesheet 3. We have a quarterly "Cost of Doing Business" project where we track time for things like that (certain meetings, demos, reporting, participating on the WF community forum =). Adina

[EricLu2]

Hi: Okay, I see what you mean. Here is something else we do: I have two Demand Plans. These are simply project plans where we plan two kinds of demand - future projects that are in the pipeline, will likely be approved but aren't yet, and Support. The Support Demand plan accounts for the average amount of time we expect someone to spend working on support work. You could create a project plan and model the generic meeting time in there. I do think it will prove problematic allowing everyone access to that plan to modify tasks to represent meetings. You also need PLAN licenses for everyone to modify tasks. Yes, a WORK license can be authorized to create tasks, but to perform maintenance, you'll need a PLAN license. Another approach would be to let people create issues of type Action Item. Issues look and feel a lot like tasks inasmuch as they have the same essential attributes available - start time, end time, planned hours, assigned resources. You can charge time to issues, which means they will appear in their timesheet. If you configure it right, you can even set it up so they can send an email to WorkFront, which becomes an issue. If you want to be clever, you can set up a request type that ends up in a common demand plan. A request is really an issue in WorkFront. Using emailed issues or requests really makes it easy for them to create an object specific to their meeting that can be charged against. I assume you really don't want a generic bucket that spans a long period of time. You really lose a lot of the detail - a lot of the variance that occurs throughout time. Any good idea there you can steal? 🙂 Eric

[SusanPf]

Hi, Tony. We use meetings and calls as a task within a project.

[CraigSe1]

We created a project called "Administrative Tasks" and then created individual tasks for the various things that occupy time but are not attributable to a specific project. We have tasks for "Internal Meeting", "Company Activities" (to cover things like birthday celebrations, community service days, etc), and others. This project appears on the time sheet and associates simply enter time to each task as appropriate. The down side of this is each task occupies a lot of space in the scheduling screen. I am considering changing the availability of each team member to reduce their number of available hours by their estimated time spend on "Admin" tasks so the time simply fails to show as available for assignment Craig

[SriniAn]

We use General Hours buckets for non-project activity. Everybody in the company gets it and then they add projects and/or tasks as they see fit.

If the meetings, calls, discussions are part of a project, then the Project Manager will add tasks for those, enabling resources to track their time to specific buckets.

When it comes to Resource Management, we've set the role level capacity lower than 100% and varies by division. What this means to us is that we have already accounted for Admin time and the remaining hours are available for project work.

[MartyGa]

We've gone a few directions on this. While we are sill currently using general hours, we are looking to pare that back for the primary reason that these show up in many reports as "NO VALUE". Additionally, it is time that is not forecast / planned. We're moving to the idea of "operational projects" or "cost of doing business" model (Love that terminology, Adina). I've also seen these as "corporate citizenship". In any case, we have each area define what the high-level pieces are (we have 2000 users) and assign their staff and allocate a certain amount of time. This allows us to look at the pie-chart breakdown of work as it is recorded, as well as have a better view of availability.

[KathyNa]

Has anyone done or had success with this approach: Group timesheet is based on an 8 hour day, 5 days a week. BUT...on Project Preferences, the hours per work day is set at 6. This globally makes each user available for 6 hours a day for resource planning. The problem I'm having is with managers who want to know what portion of non-project time is being spent on say meetings, self-improvement/research, training classes, etc. Those managers are setting up the "bucket" projects as sited here. So in effect, those users are showing as unavailable up to ~ 4 hours per day. Makes it hard to find resources when this is happening! Any help advice with the work day idea?

[KathyNa]

Srini, you sited "set the role level capacity lower". Where/how are you setting capacity at the role level? I'm unfamiliar with this. Thanks!

[KathyNa]

One more thought to throw out there... 1.) Set the Proj Hrs/Day at 6 (instead of 8). 2.) Set up a bucket project for those non-project items but do not assign it to any Group. Do not assign it to any individual. Assign to all Roles. "Share" with the appropriate Group. Wouldn't this assure it doesn't clog up anyone's timeline, yet they can log hours to it?

[EricLu2]

Srini - That is a common approach. It does not, however, allow you to incorporate time spent in meetings in the user utilization or capacity planning work. I presume that is why you set the role level capacity lower than 100%. When you say you adjust the “Role level capacity lower than 100%”, what attribute are you adjusting? Is it the FTE value associated with the user record? Please advise. Thanks! Eric

[tonyj90775617]

The variety in these suggestings is amazing so thanks, everyone! It seems the different needs dictate different solutions. I'll attempt to distil solutions a little. Problem: Account for project meetings and calls to make resource planning more accurate Solutions: A: Add tasks (planned) or issues (unplanned ) for meetings/calls for all projects B: Create a separate project(s) just to track meetings/calls (reporting issue?) C: Adjust work schedule/capacity to artificially hide time for meetings/calls (those w/o meetings?) 😧 Add tasks and track actual meeting time against it using Outlook integration< ">https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/217209787-Tracking-Outlook-Calendar-Data-in-Workfront-> I feel like A is the most flexible/popular and also works with the outlook integration flow (pc only) and the new resource contouring< ">https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000811768-Functionality-Made-Available-in-Preview-in-2016#manage-user-allocations-on-the-scheduling-timeline> (I think). I was considering B but concerned it will make reporting a project's actual time/cost more difficult. Thanks for all the insight, let me know if I missed something. ________________________________

[KathyNa]

I want to make sure I'm clear here. Your (A) says "for all project". But I thought the main topic here was dealing with non-project hours? Your (B) says "separate project", which looks good, but then your concern was about reporting projects' actual time/cost. Again I thought the gist here for only talking about handling non-project hours? Thanks for this discussion; any clarity you can bring will be appreciated.

[MichaelLe]

We have several projects that are not considered billable but we account for them as projects none the less. We filter the billing codes to only show non billable in the project and that's how it shows on the timesheets. We then pull hours and filter out non billable by client. Michael Lebowitz Graciously sent from my mobile device. ________________________________________

[tonyj90775617]

Hi Kathy - This thread was meant to discuss how meeting/calls are accounted for from a resource planning perspective. I was hoping for a solution that would work for all project types and for meetings that are both planned (part of the project plan) and unplanned (added as an issue on the project) - The issue (pun intended) I ran into with this is that you can only log time against an issue so having unplanned meetings effect future resources isn't possible with A). ________________________________

[SriniAn]

Kathy,

We use the Resource Estimates section of the Resource Pool to manage Role-level capacity. Our planning cycle uses Roles (We have many!) to assign to projects. As this is done many months in advance, we don't know who we will assign. For that reason we don't use Resource level FTE numbers very much. See attachment.

This Role Level capacity is then displayed in the Capacity Planner. We use this during initial planning phases, but has become unstable due to the large volume of roles and projects in our portfolios. We’re looking forward to the newer integrated version that Workfront is working on.

[SriniAn]

Eric,

That's one reason we have partial capacity at the role level. Also, we may have 50 people all capable of participating in a project (think non-IT staff), but only a few, maybe 5 FTE equivalent can be assigned. We don't know what combination of specific people will constitute the 5 FTE, so there is not much value for us to assign specific FTE values to all users.

See attachement for where me make role-level capacity changes.

[KathyNa]

Srini - you said you've "set the role level capacity lower than 100%". Where are you setting that? It's not something on the Role description/details, and I wasn't able to find any specific reference in Help. Thanks!

[JayeHa]

Craig - we just created a project for Dept Meetings. Are you currently assigning each person to the tasks? We have 40 people in our dept and prefer not to add each of them every time. We made a Team, but looks like when one person accepts it, the request disappears from everyone else. We've asked WF if there's a better solution, but no word yet. thanks