Workload Balancer

Juicy questions, Vazgen! Having hit this a couple of years ago when we created our "https://store.atappstore.com/products/all/" Resource Contouring solution -- we decided that protecting a carefully crafted (and time consuming) contour was the MOST important priority, and therefor went with the following: Allow contouring at the Day, or Week, or Month level (but storing under the hood at the day level), for a more efficient and pleasant user experience Allow people to change the Planned Hours or the Duration at the Task level in a way that also preserves the current contour (to avoid rework) Prevent saving the data in an imbalanced state (e.g. "Please correct the imbalance"), to ensure data integrity Highlight any imbalance in red when such a change (e.g. "extra planned hours, longer duration) occurs Update the imbalance visually as the end user adjusts the contour accordingly (e.g. adding hours at the end) Restore visual normalcy (e.g. back to green) once the imbalance is removed BONUS as there a number of standard use cases in this area, we also invented a few right click helpers (e.g. front load, back load, spread remaining balance evenly until end of duration, etc.) to help project managers adjust their plans more effectively I'm very interested to see how other folks answer this one -- both Vazgen's initial questions, and any thoughts on the decisions we went with in our solution. Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore

That's the plan, however there are a few outstanding questions I would like to double-check with you first. - If the Planned Hours changed on the task, should the contouring values change? - If the duration of task changes, should the contouring values change? Both of these changes have the potential to alter the Planned Hour distribution made by the user. Today they do reset the distribution back to uniform spread and cases like that are a hindrance for us to stop the values for changing. Vazgen Babayan Senior Product Manager

Hi Vazgen and Christine, We are also looking at being able to change the hours within the Workload balancer as mentioned above, would the system default to spreading hours across the duration first and then if changed by a Resource Manager, hold new information and not default back to spreading across duration when going back in at a later date to make another change? Our creative projects change or add resources and the current contouring we do as a work around, always defaults back to the hours being spread across the duration. Ellen Rayme Boeing Creative Ellen Rayme Creative Services

Thanks for letting me know, I'll work with out tech writer on updating it Vazgen Babayan Senior Product Manager

Thanks Vaz. The guidelines may be a little out of sync with currently available functionality as they suggest that tasks assigned to job roles also appear under Unassigned Work, " Tip: Work items that are assigned to the teams you selected, or the teams you selected and a job role display in this area". I am viewing via the New Experience. Jane Bradshaw BAKKAVOR LTD

Hi Jane, That is working as designed, we are currently working on adding filters to the Unassigned and Assigned sections so that this limitation can be removed. Thanks, Vazgen Babayan Product Manager

I am experiencing this issue also. The unassigned area is currently only displaying tasks assigned to Teams, not Roles. Jane Bradshaw BAKKAVOR LTD

Yes - I haven't been able to see unassigned work for my team. I have the roles all assigned in the projects, filter it by the portfolio the work is in, and nothing shows as unassigned. It does show up in the scheduling module. Is this similar to your issues, Christine? Bill Gentilesco Commerce Bancshares, Inc.

Hi Vazgen, I believe that should work, as long as you're able to change the Planned Hours by increasing or decreasing the amount directly in the Workload Balancer. Also, we've been having issues w/ the Unassigned tasks appearing in the Balancer - has anyone else experienced that as well? Christine Zhu Chobani

The way we were thinking about that is to control it through contouring experience, so if you have a task that spans 2 days with 10 hours and see a 5, 5 split, you can change the hours to 6, 6 or 7, 5 and it will update the task Planned Hours to 12. It should also be available only to the people with the corresponding access permissions. Will this solve for the scenario you mentioned? Vazgen Babayan Product Manager