How can you tell when employees are schedule for work, and when they need more  projects to work on? You could try to remember. Or you could just ask the  employee. Or you could guess. But there’s a simpler way to check employee  scheduling and availability. Choose View, Project Resource Allocation.   Consider this "Part 1" of the Resource  Allocation video.

When you choose this menu, a window opens that displays a bar chart showing when  each employee is scheduled to work. You’ll see red bars for over-scheduled  months, yellow bars for under-scheduled months, and blue bars for  correctly-scheduled. This graphical view lets you look out into future months to  see exactly when employees are scheduled. If you see any yellow bars, you’ll  know they need some work. You could shift around projects in the red bars, or  assign the employee to new projects. (They can get an email notification when  you make that new assignment.)

There are actually two methods of scheduling employees to work on projects.  We’ll discuss both the simple and advanced methods below.

Simple Project Scheduling: In this method, you can simply assign employees to projects and set a percentage  of their daily hours to that project. No tasks are needed. The employee is  simply expected to work a specified percentage of their day on the projects they  are assigned to. The Resource Allocation window displays bars for each period of  time they are working on projects. They can be assigned to multiple projects,  which makes the bars stack up. If they are assigned to too many projects, you’ll  see a red bar indicating they are over-allocated. Yellow bars means they need  more work. Blue bars means everything is just about right. Projects have start  and finish dates, which dictate the duration of employee work.

Advanced Project Scheduling: For advanced project scheduling, you can subdivide projects into tasks. Each  task has a start and due date that are used for scheduling, and a duration that  is used to set the number of hours the employee should work during this date  range. Tasks can overlap, which means the employee is responsible for multiple  tasks during a period of time. The principles are the same as the simple method  above – red, yellow, and blue bars indicating hours of scheduling for each time  period in the bar chart.

You’ll notice that the inverse of Resource Allocation is Employee Availability.  In other words, employees are available when they have not been scheduled to  work. If you look out into the future and see yellow or blue bars then you must  assign new projects or tasks to the employee to keep them working.

Also see: Video: Project Resource Allocation, Video: Timephased Hours, or Employee Task Scheduling, Video: Assigning Resources  By Skill

 

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