ProjectLoad Blog

The Team Availability Report helps managers and supervisors balance forecasted work across their teams. It displays one row per team showing the normal work hours into the future (by day, week, month, or year) and subtracts the forecasted hours to show how much time each team has “available” during the period. To aid in spotting trends, problems, or opportunities, the report cells are color coded so that when a team has available time, the cell is green and the intensity of the green gets deeper based on the percentage of time that is available. When a team has little available time, the cell is white. If the forecasted hours exceed the normal work hours, a negative number is displayed and the cell turns yellow with deeper shades indicating higher levels of overtime. Once the system determines a team will need to work more than 50% of the normally scheduled hours in the period, the cell is turned red to highlight the problem.

The team report is simply an aggregate of the personnel defined in each team. You can click on the detail link on any line and review the availability of the individual people that were combined to show the team availability. This report can be very useful for looking at the forecasted load of resource pools, but bear in mind that if people are defined in more than one team, their underlying availability will be factored into each team they belong to.

After diligently filling out your timesheet each day, you may wish to review the information before closing the period. There are several ways to get an “overview” look at your timesheets for a month or pay period, and all of these methods will allow you to jump directly to particular days if you need to make adjustments.

The most common method of reviewing your daily timesheets is from the Monthly tab on the ProjectLoad Menu bar. The Monthly page lists each day of the month in calendar format, and displays the total hours worked on each day. The total is broken into how much time when into each project on each day to give you a feel for where your time went. The system will also include forecasted hours on each day into the future to show how many hours you are projected to spend on each day. You can jump directly to any day in the month simply by clicking on the date in each box.

A second method for getting a quick snapshot of how much time you have entered for the month is to go to the Settings page and set your Home Page Options to display the Monthly Timesheet. You will need to decide if you want it shown on the right or left side of the page (right is usually best since it fits nicely under the Active People box). Once you set this option, your Home Page will include a small calendar of the month that shows the total number of hours you have entered for each day. You can jump directly to any day in the month simply by clicking on the date in each box.

A third method is available from the Reports menu. If you run a Timesheet Report you will get a detailed display of how you spent each day in the pay period. The report is organized as a table that lists the dates across the top and the individual activities (organized by project) down the left side. From this report, you can see exactly how you entered your time for each day of the period. You can also jump directly to any day by clicking in the column heading for that day. The Timesheet Report is opened in a pop-up window, but if you click on a column heading in the report, the underlying ProjectLoad browser will automatically move to the timesheet for the day you picked. You can make changes for that day, save them, and then click the Refresh button in the Timesheet Report to see the effect of your changes.

Activities may now be transferred from one phase to another, even if that transfer crosses project boundaries and even if the activity already has actual hours associated with it from timesheet entries. This is particularly useful if someone has been posting their effort to the wrong phase or project or in conjunction with the “copy” function from the daily timesheets. An activity can be copied and then the copy can be moved to a different project or phase.

To move an activity to another phase or project, the activity must be open and the user must have sufficient authority to perform the transfer. Normally anyone who has the authority to edit the activity and the authority to add new activities under the target project/phase will be able to transfer the activity. However if the activity has any hours recorded on daily timesheets from a closed period, only an administrator may transfer it. For example, if some of the actual work hours reported on the activity occurred in a previous month and that month has been closed, then changing the actual hours may affect published reports.

The process of moving the activity is initiated from the activity editor. If you have sufficient authority to transfer the activity, a “Move To” button will appear at the bottom of the editor with a text box. Simply fill in some part of the name of the project you wish to transfer the activity to (it can be the current project if you just want to change phases) and click on the “Move To” button. A page will appear listing all projects that match the part of the project name you typed in the text box and that you have authority to add an activity to. Clicking on a project name will display a list of the phases of that project. Clicking on a phase name will transfer the activity including all forecasted hours and actual hours.