Does a user's Worktime need to match the schedule? For instance, if we operate with a 40hr week schedule, does user's work time need to be set to 1?
If we change our worktime to .75 to account for shrinkage (meetings and etc.) what else would need to be changed in the system to ensure projects aren't negatively impacted?
There is a project setting that says something like "Do not let user time off affect project timeline" or something like that. I would keep that checked.
I would then assign a critical path task to a person that has their FTE and Work Time set to 1, then screenshot the timeline. Then change their FTE to something drastic like .2 and see if the timeline changes. Then set their work time to something drastic like .2 and see if that affects the timeline.
Maybe after doing that, you could report the results back here so everyone can benefit from that knowledge.
The way I think of it is, work time helps me in the resource management area by showing me how over/under a specific assignee is. I can use it to see that the user was assigned to 20 hours of work this week, but that they are still under water because their work time was set to 0.25 so they are really only available for 10 hours. But it doesn't change the project schedule to make sure the user can fulfill the task.
But, @skyehansen, shouldn't it impact automatic resource leveling? For example, if we have told Workfront that a given user is only available for 75% of their work schedule (e.g., 6 hrs out of an 8 hr work day), then shouldn't resource leveling take that into account and space tasks out on the timeline based on a 6 hrs/day availability? It seems like this should be core functionality because, in my mind at least, that was the whole benefit of having a feature like this.
I don't believe resource leveling was in scope of the original question, but please feel free to post separately if you have a question about this, detailing your exact experience and steps to get there -- it's always possible it might be an error in your configuration somehow.
I will mention though, that if you feel as though something in workfront isn't working as intended, I recommend submitting a case to Workfront Support for this. If they confirm it is working as desired then your next step would be to add an Idea for customers to vote on.
