New Resource Planner

[DagmaraGa]

I have watched new webinar and was reading thru supporting articles but still cant find the answer for my question.. I've run new Resource Planner for my whole team to see our team allocation. It doesn't seem to be accurate. For some reason it does shows Planned Hours for only couple of team members and lets to expand a list of projects just for those two users ( screenshot below) It's worth to mention that every single person from the list works on projects and has got some Planned Hours on them. Any idea/thoughts why doesn't it show a project list for the rest on the team?? Dagmara Garwell BAKKAVOR LTD

[AlexiGl]

Hi Vazgen, I just checked out the Resource Scheduler and it looks like while there is a daily view, it doesn't actually show hours/allocation. What our team really needs is tasks (with hours) by resource by day. Currently we access that from the Legacy Resource Planner. How can we access that in the new 18.1 or 18.2 release? Alexi Glines iProspect

[DavidCo3]

Hi @Alexi Glines . In the Scheduler or Working On calendar, if you edit the settings, you can enable to "Show Totals for Daily Planned Hours". This gets you part of the way to what you want. If you then click on the > next to each task you can expand it out and see the numbers of hours per day. This is OK, but there is no overall view that shows the totals per task. @Vazgen Babayan What I think is needed to help the Scheduler and Working On Calendar replace the Legacy Resource Planner are two things: Provide an option (easy to toggle) which shows not just planned hours/percent, but available hours/percent. This is important if you take Alexi's example and are looking for which resources have available hours, taking into consideration that people may work different numbers of hours per day and looking just at planned hours won't work in that regard. Provide an option for a third row of info (daily assigned hours) for each task which can be seen without needing to expand it out. I know there is currently the water-level to indicate that, but some users prefer to see numbers, similar to the Legacy Resource Planner. Regards, David Cornwell

[AlexiGl]

David, Thanks so much for sharing the tip about expanding task details to see the actual planned hours! I have updated my settings to include that and now see the daily totals for users. That said, I'm confused about how the hours are calculated. In the new Scheduling Planner the totals are different from the Legacy tool (see screenshots below, the same user is selected for both tools): "https://s3.amazonaws.com/higherlogicdownload/WORKFRONT/UploadedImages/QAIQk1lbRqeatEz29h6F_CRHours2.png" target="ThumbnailFullImage" title="Image link"> "https://s3.amazonaws.com/higherlogicdownload/WORKFRONT/UploadedImages/ECgImqkUQN6zW8X68B0z_CRHours.png" target="ThumbnailFullImage" title="Image link"> Also, one thing that's great about the Legacy tool is the ability to easily, at a quick glance, see which team members are over-allocated (since those days are highlighted in red - you can see an example in my screenshot above). While the new tool does show the hours total, there's no visual indication that the person is over-allocated. Perhaps this is meant to be addressed by the new planning tool? If so, I'm confused because the planning tool shows yet a totally different view of that person's allocation and planned hours. "https://s3.amazonaws.com/higherlogicdownload/WORKFRONT/UploadedImages/I6IXC12pSRm859S4BFta_CRHours3.png" target="ThumbnailFullImage" title="Image link"> Like I said before, I'm just hoping to find a way to get the same information out of the new tools. One more note about the Legacy tool vs the new one - one thing that was really great about the Legacy tool was the ability to look at a single user's allocation. That is, I could go to the user > Allocation tab and easily get this information. It was essentially one-click. With the new tool, I have to navigate to the People page > Scheduling and then search for the user as a filter. It's more like 2-3 clicks. Might seem like a minor quibble, but a big part of what I do all day is make ad-hoc schedule adjustments based on shifting priorities. Thanks again, David and Vazgen! Hope to continue this convo and get this tool working the way I need it to. Alexi Glines iProspect

[DavidCo3]

Hi Alexi, Regarding the difference in the daily planned hours that you see between the Legacy Resource Planner and the new Working On Calendar, perhaps this is due Planned Dates vs Projected Dates. In both tools, you choose which you want to see. It's possible that you've got one configured for Projected, and one for Planned. Please check your settings in the new tool....there is an option called "Use Planned Instead of Projected Dates". This is how we use it. On your next point regarding seeing which resources are over-allocated, you CAN do this in the new Working On Calendar and Scheduling tools without needing to use the new resource planner. You need to enable the option "Show Resource Allocation Highlighting" in the settings. Thirdly, regarding why you are not seeing planned hours in the new Resource Planner, this is a known bug which also affects us. If you have a look in your Preview environment you should see the values, as this is being fixed in the next 18.2 release. We'll hopefully start using the new resource planner once 18.2 is released. In terms of seeing an individual user's allocation, presumably the new planner/calendar will replace the existing flash-based tool on each user's profile. Vazgen? Regards, David Cornwell

[AlexiGl]

Hi David, Thanks for your reply! I do see the option to use planned vs projected hours in the Scheduling tool, but not in the new Resource Planner (the only option I have on that tool is to include Issues or not): "https://s3.amazonaws.com/higherlogicdownload/WORKFRONT/UploadedImages/JEInKgWbQHSw5FWXRo8g_WFResources.png" target="ThumbnailFullImage" title="Image link"> Thanks also for pointing out the Resource Allocation Highlighting! Sadly, I find the interface on that a bit disappointing. The highlighting is odd and visually very clunky. I think a better option might be to bold the total hours at the top of the day, but that's just my two cents. "https://s3.amazonaws.com/higherlogicdownload/WORKFRONT/UploadedImages/dM9b0C9R8hoxEnIqV5IQ_WF_Resource_Highlight.png" target="ThumbnailFullImage" title="Image link"> One final thing - I noticed that the task hours are not available at a glance in the new tool. I'd really like to be able to see that, as it allows me to quickly see what's taking up a team member's time. "https://s3.amazonaws.com/higherlogicdownload/WORKFRONT/UploadedImages/eJys6MaFSVm5PZmDnRw3_ResourceHours.png" target="ThumbnailFullImage" title="Image link"> Really appreciate all the comments and feedback so far. Thanks, everyone! PS: I confirmed that in the 18.2 preview environment I can see planned hours in the new Resource Planner! Alexi Glines iProspect

[DavidCo3]

Hi Alexi, Re Planned vs Projected hours, I meant only in the Legacy Resource Planner vs the Working On Calendar. The other points are over to Vazgen and the product managers! I do agree that some highlighting of the planned hours might make it easier to clearly see where users are over. Regards, David Cornwell

[CaityRi]

Hi Vazgen, I just wanted to check in to see if there was an update to the original issue? We are having the same problem, and are uncertain when to expect this to be resolved. Thank you! Caity Caity Rietzen The Free Library of Philadelphia

[Exp_-_VazgenBa]

Hi Caity, The original issue is now resolved in Preview sandbox and should go live with 18.2 release. Please feel free to contact me with any feedback you might have on this. Vazgen Babayan Product Manager Workfront

[Kelly_Wehrmann]

I have a question more around the People > Team > Working On View. We are looking at getting into the new resource management tools, currently we do not use the legacy tools. We are starting with a small group that pretty much has a consistent pattern of tasks from project to project. I have been looking to see how a Manger can see what tasks have been assigned to their resources and assign any unassigned work to them. One issue I have, and I want to know how other people handle this is, there is not a good way to filter out Projects that we have created "bucket" tasks on. Basically, these tasks are planned to start/finish the entire year, so "IF" a resource needs to log time for an Admin Activity or Misc Support Activity, they have a place to do so. These tasks do not have any planned hours and should not have any real impact on actual tasks assigned to the Resource. Since these Task display in the view, it clutters it up making it harder to see the real assignments that that have. A little history on this... initially we tried using General Hours to manage these bucket type of activities so that a project would not need to be created at all, HOWEVER, since we are unable to add custom forms to General Hours, we were not able to report on these hours using our custom fields. So we had to get out of the business of using General Hours and switch to using a Project to contain these tasks. So our workaround for cleaner /consistent reporting is proving to be a little problematic with Resource Management. A cheat, workaround we've dabbled with to get these "bucket" tasks off this working on view has been to set the commit date to the end of the year (12/31/2018) and to change the Planned Start/Finish for the tasks to 01/01/18. Although this appears to work and clean up the view, it is not ideal and is by no stretch of the imagination the best way to handle this due to the maintenance involved. How is anyone else doing this? I would be nice if we could filter them off the Working on View and make it sticky, but that's not an option. Help! Admin Kelly-Wehrmann SSFCU

[VickiCa1]

We have the same problem with long term ad hoc tasks, we were told to put them under the GO area. Which may work fine, but there is no way to section out the GO area so it gets awfully crowded and hard to look at... Anyone else doing something different? I'd love to be able to filter out by portfolio, what's shown for each person, but that's not available.

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Kelly, I just re-read this whole thread (and will be posting a you-know-what alternative in due course), but in the meantime, had a thought about your "bucket task" conundrum: create a new Task Status (e.g. "Bucket Task"; or "N/A", which is what I use) based on the "Closed" status filter for all such bucket tasks within your Workfront environment bulk update them to use that new Task Status When you then refresh the Working On tab, the bucket tasks will no longer appear, having been effectively designated as Closed, while still allowing time to be entered against them, which is their sole purpose. Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

[Dr_DougWi]

I am adding the "bucket task" to the list of solves...very interesting. One extra point - be sure to add time to the bucket task at least once to have it show on a timesheet. Then, have the user pin the task so show all the time until unpinned. This will reduce the frustration of not seeing in either in the Home panel or on the timesheet when the equate to closed on the task status is used. Doug Williams Working to balance how technology supports the integration of people and process.

[DagmaraGa]

An another idea around resource Planner: "https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360016731714-User-Based-Wildcard-in-Resource-Planner-by-User-filters-">Using User-Based Wildcard in resource Planner Filters Dagmara Garwell BAKKAVOR LTD