Web Components Guide

Available Capacity

When you assign a resource to a task, it is important to know whether the resource has available capacity for the task.

In People Planner, a resource is associated with up to three different calendars.

Calendar Description
Work Week Hours This describes the typical work week, for example, eight hours on work days, and zero hours on Saturday and Sunday.
Common Calendar This describes national holidays and other company-wide days off.
Resource Calendar This is an individual calendar for each resource. This calendar is unique for the resource, and it can be used for absences.

From the combination of these calendars, People Planner calculates the Capacity of the resource. When a resource has already been booked on other tasks, these hours are subtracted from the capacity to determine the Available Capacity.

Note: The load is calculated across all of the tasks on which the resource has been booked. This includes bookings on projects other than the current one.

You can also determine resource capacity when period-based columns (namely, the Period Load, Period Actuals, and Period Available Capacity columns) are visible in the Web Components. These columns provide a quick way to determine which resources have the highest available capacity for a project over a selected period.

When these columns are available in the layout, a red timeline marker appears on the Gantt chart when these columns are available in the layout. You can drag or stretch this red line to adjust the time period, and the capacity values in the columns update automatically. This is available across the Web Components, as well as in the Assign/Reassign Resource dialog boxes.

The red line and automatic capacity calculations appear when the following columns are displayed in the respective grids:

  • Project Management Workspaces

    • PG grid and RG detail grid: Period Load and Period Actuals columns trigger the red line.

    • PG detail grid and RG grid: Period Load, Period Actuals, and Period Available Capacity columns trigger the red line.

  • Resource Management Workspace and Assign Resource/Reassign Resource dialog boxes

    • RG grid: Period Load, Period Actuals, and Period Available Capacity columns trigger the red line.

    • RG detail grid: Period Load and Period Actuals columns trigger the red line.

  • Assignment Management Workspace

    • If either the Period Load and/or Period Actuals columns are shown in the assignment grid, the red line will be displayed. This allows you to adjust the period and view resource capacity in those columns as well.

By using period-based columns alongside the interactive red line in the Gantt chart, project managers and resource planners can more easily balance workloads. This ensures that you allocate projects to the people who have the most capacity, improving efficiency and project delivery.

When you are assigning resources to a task, the Assign Resource dialog box shows you both how much each resource is currently bookedfor-that is, the load-as well as the total capacity of the resource. For example, the dialog box could display that Ben Bret is booked for six hours each day, and he has a total capacity of eight hours.

Note: The Assign Resource dialog box shows days, weeks, or months, depending on which view the assistant was using when you clicked the Assign Resource button.

Using the default colors, green means that the resource has available capacity, and red means that the resource is overbooked. The color becomes less intense the closer the resource is to being fully booked. A cell that is marked out with an X indicates that the resource has no capacity; for example, that day might be a weekend day.

You can change this default color coding if you have access to the People Planner Web Admin Tool. Under Settings > Edit Settings > System Settings > Colors, you can assign specific colors to indicate loads of 5%, 10%, 20%, 30 %, 40%, 60%, and 80%.