View Your Team's Time Off In a Calendar?

Hi Tina, There's a few threads on this topic...try searching for PTO (Paid Time Off). This is an area where Workfront is very lacking and this topic comes up a lot. There's two main camps in the user community: Those who use PTO the way it is and put up with the lack of easy ways to view / administer PTO across multiple users. The benefits being that WF still takes PTO into consideration when scheduling tasks and calculating availability. This is the way we use it. Some other customers don't use the PTO functionality and instead create projects and tasks bookings for PTO. This allows easier reporting and management of PTO, however it means that WF doesn't take it into account when calculating availability or scheduling tasks. If any of WF's product managers are reading this, please, please put some focus on enhancing PTO so that people don't have to go down the workaround path #2. Regards, David Cornwell

We go down a third path that combines David's options. Users enter their time off so that WF takes PTO into consideration. Then we have someone who pulls a report every couple weeks and enters that time off as tasks into a few different projects, the tasks then pull into a calendar to show everyone's time off. Which project time off is entered into depends which team the user is on, so we can color code the calendar by team and anyone looking at the calendar can turn off teams that they don't want to see.

We do #2 but now that you've mentioned the availability calculation, maybe I'll try linking that back to the project/users requests for PTO. Polly Co

Hi Heather, Do you have information on that report you pull (i.e. what type and any details that'll help)? I've been meaning to write a report to see everyone's time-off schedule but wasn't sure which Type to start with.

Thanks everyone! Heather, I'd also be interested to know what report type you use, as that sounds like a good option for us. Thanks! Tina Plotner Project Coordinator Mountain West Farm Bureau

We use both "time off" and a calendar report as we needed the resource to show as unavailable AND we needed a singular report of the marketing teams' out of office time. So, each user enters into the "time off" area AND enters a request into an OOO-Marketing queue. Within the OOO-Marketing request queue, the subject is filled out with something like "Denise Moore PTO" or "Denise Moore Travel." The request queue has a custom form on it with one dropdown field for the area/dept to which they report up through within marketing (creative, interactive, channel/products, etc.) The queue is set up to show planned start and planned completion and they fill out those two fields as well. That submission then populates onto a calendar called "OOO-Marketing" which is color coded by the one custom field they filled out for their area and the results show the subject and duration of the out of office time. They close the request when they return. The calendar shows all request statuses. The calendar is saved to their favorites. I've been begging for a calendar report of the "time off" area and will be thrilled when/if that ever happens! Until then...this takes care of our needs. Denise Moore Ameritas Life Insurance Corp

Hi Vic, We use a User Report, with just 2 columns: Name and Future Time Off. I didn't set the report up, but was curious about the the Future Time Off column, it's in text mode: displayname=Future Time Off listdelimiter= listmethod=nested(reservedTimes).lists textmode=true type=iterate valueexpression=IF({endDate}<$$TODAY,"",CONCAT({startDate}," - ",{endDate}," ")) valueformat=HTML I like Denise's method of having users enter their time into a request and having that request populate the calendar. But our users already have to enter time into Workday to get their manager's approval and log it with HR, plus they have to enter it in Workfront so we have their availability. Getting them to enter it a 3rd time would be a real struggle.

Thanks Heather! This report gives me exactly what I'm looking for. Tina Plotner Project Coordinator Mountain West Farm Bureau

I too use a hybrid of a project and a time off entry - but I've tried to take it to the next level by using Fusion/Azuqua to do some automation for me. I have a project called Out of Office that is really a Time away request queue. A user enters the request (options for PTO or NPT) and then enters the start and end date on a custom form along with some more detail as to the type of time away they are utilizing (Sick, Vacation, Training, Conference etc). I embedded a link to our ADP system on the form to to make it easy for the user to jump to the Payroll system and make the 'official request' when using PTO while they are making the WF request. The queue topic also has a default approval process that routes the request to the appropriate manager for approval. Once the request (Issue) it is entered, Fusion 'sees' the new issue and reviews it for basic errors such as if the start date is after end date (negative hours requested) or that the request is for more that 40 hours (I don't try figure out if the request spans a weekend - so this is a bit of a weakness in the process) and sends the user an email if it fails. If OK, it then assigns the issue to the manager (yeah I know belts and suspenders) for approval. The manager then gets an email from WF asking that they approve the task. Once approved, Fusion/Azuqua sees the update (status change from new-pending to new) and does a few things: Creates a task in the Out of office project with the start and end dates already plugged in, assigns it to the requester and sets it to auto complete Inserts an entry into the users Time Off Calendar in WF Creates a 'meeting' entry into a shared Google calendar (Out of Office) and 'invites' the user to the 'meeting'. Closes the issue Sends the user (and the manager) an email saying that the time away has been approved and that WF and G Cal entries have been made for them. To block their personal G-Cal all the user has to do is 'accept' the meeting request. From the Project, I am able to produce a calendar that shows all the time away entries which helps with staff wide visibility needs. I can also run management reports again the project to see what time has been approved All in all it works fairly well with a few exceptions 1 - The API to G-Cal does not have a method for an 'all day event' so single day requests look sorta stupid in G-Cal 2 - I can't crack ADP to insert (or pull) the request there (and I don't expect HR would ever let me do that anyway) 3 - Autocomplete in WF is wonky - I see PTO tasks get auto completed BEFORE the planned end date - and I have a ticket into WF for this - which makes the calendar report less valuable as it incorrectly reflects past PTO. 4 - I have not spent the time needed to handle less than full day requests - or requests that span over a weekend or holiday. 5 - The calendar does not incorporate any 'project related' time they are out of the office - but I thinking of adding this to my next iteration of the workflow. Jim Brown FujiFilm Medical Systems, USA

Ohhhhhhh, Thank You! I've had this on my to-do list for a while. You just saved me a TON of time as I never would have figured out that Text Mode code on my own. Thank you!!!!!! I owe you a beer at Leap.