Resource scheduling - filter functionality

[StephanieMu]

Sharing a conversation I've had with the support team this week in case anyone else is unaware (as I was..) of how the filter functionality works for the new Scheduling tool. Currently you can apply a filter by project status of live or planning - however, this only affects the unassigned tasks at the top of the screen. The user hours shown below the separator line are from all projects, regardless of status. This is "by design", but it's very unclear that this is how the tool works in my opinion, as I would assume that the filter applies to all information on the screen, as per reports. This is also a real problem for us as we have tons of projects in planning for various reasons that are not ready to be scheduled - they may still being scoped, dates are not confirmed etc - but we can't filter out these tasks to get an accurate reflection of the resource we have available and make allocations accordingly. We can currently do this easily in the legacy user utilisation tool, so it's disappointing that this functionality doesn't appear to be carried over to the new tools. It would also be very useful to be able to filter by all project statuses, not just live/planning (as you can in the current user utilisation tool) - I'm not sure if this is planned for a later release? Stephanie Mulrooney Tomorrow People

[VicAl]

I haven't played around with it yet, but based on what you're saying, I agree with you. Never good to go backwards in functionality. I hope they're listening. Vic Alejandro, PMP, CSM | IT | Sr. IT Project Manager Denver Water | t: (303-628-7262) | c: (303-319-6473) "http://www.denverwater.org/"> http://www.denverwater.org INTEGRITY | VISION | PASSION | EXCELLENCE | RESPECT

[DavidCo3]

I agree that it is confusing. Even if the functionality is not changed, it would be clearer for users if the unscheduled task filters had a heading to say this, and then the filters for the user view had their own heading, and perhaps a different shading (perhaps a common shading with the user area of the screen). My #1 issue and request for the filters on this screen is to be able to filter unscheduled tasks based on custom task data. There are a lot of tasks which we don't want to see on the screen because they will never be resourced. Currently this overwhelms the screen with too much irrelevant data and so it is unusable for the users. David Cornwell

[CherieLi]

Thank you for letting us know. The filter is a big issue in the new planning tool. The project filter in my instance does not even work and it has been more than 1 week in support and they trying to fix it I agree with all of you. They should give us more ability to filter / group information. Otherwise, with so many projects in my company, it is hard to use the resource planning tool Cherie Liang Thyssenkrupp System Engineering, Inc

[DavidCo3]

Yep - our filters are broken too, with support ticket outstanding. David Cornwell

[JillAc]

I spent a bunch of time on the phone with Workfront on the Resource Management module. Since I'm new to Workfront it's been really confusing because what I saw a month ago isn't the same as what it looks like now. The filters are definitely not working properly and hopefully the guy I was on the phone with reported this upward. I also experienced other things not working, like the menus to choose the Role and People to assign to a task, and then suddenly they started working again, so it is very buggy. Also, apparently, Assign Tasks within a Project has changed, from what I gather. It used to have a flash tool that has been discontinued. Some people seem to have access to the "old" way (ie the good way) but it seems my instance doesn't have the option, I was told that's because their goal this year is to completely get rid of all flash elements on the site. So, since I cannot view the entire team from within a Project in order to decide who has free time to do the work, I have to leave the Project and go to the People tab where the filter doesn't work properly. I'm not loving it. I hope they fix this quickly, as I am about to launch this to my 30 people team who are going to be super critical during the time when I need them to absolutely love it and buy in. Jill Ackerman

[VicAl]

Hi Jill, For adoption and buy-in I would ensure everyone takes the Workfront training Courses (at least one for Workers). You determine which they should take (and if you haven't already take them all yourself if you'll be the Support Administrator). Then what we did was our own organizational specific training class that we presented ourselves to walk people through the process how they should use the system (according to how you've configured it). I checked names off a list to ensure every person had taken both courses (WF and ours). And then after implementation we walked the floor for two weeks answering questions and ensuring people knew what they were doing. All these items were crucial to our successful adoption and buy-in and we actually won over a few naysayers (which was a pleasant surprise). Regarding managing people's workload, you might be able to work around it until the fix it. You can use the Working On tab under Teams to view their workload. If you're not using Teams, you can just create them for this purpose and not use them for Agile purposes (and don't tell anyone about the teams). Just add whichever people whose work you want to view into a team (or multiple teams) and use the Working On tab to see how they're time is allocated. Hope that helps a little. Vic Alejandro, PMP, CSM | IT | Sr. IT Project Manager Denver Water | t: (303-628-7262) | c: (303-319-6473) "http://www.denverwater.org/"> http://www.denverwater.org INTEGRITY | VISION | PASSION | EXCELLENCE | RESPECT