Overview of assigning work in the Workload Balancer
As a resource manager, you can use the Adobe Workfront Workload Balancer to view work items that have not yet been assigned to users as well as assign these items to them.
For general information about the Workload Balancer, see Workload Balancer overview.
You can assign work items (tasks and issues) to users in other areas of Workfront. However, by using the Workload Balancer you can easily understand users’ availability and clearly see all other items they are assigned to before assigning them more work.
For information about assigning work items in other areas of Workfront, see the following articles:
User availability in the Workload Balancer
You can assign work in the Workload Balancer to match the users’ available time. To ensure that you assign the right amount of work and not overallocate the user, the total of the Planned Hours of the work items assigned to the user must match the user daily or weekly allocations.
You must understand how Workfront calculates the available time for a user.
Workfront uses the following information to calculate the capacity of the user in the Workload Balancer:
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The Resource Management Preferences. The Workfront administrator determines how the available time is calculated for the system by selecting to use one of the following in the Resource Management area in Setup:
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The Default Schedule of the Workfront system and the user’s FTE.
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The user’s schedule, as indicated in the User Profile area.
This calculates the user’s daily and weekly availability. Any schedule exceptions on the schedule selected are reflected in the user’s capacity in the Workload Balancer.
For more information, see Configure Resource Management preferences.
For information about schedules, see Create a schedule
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The user’s time off. This indicates which days the user is planning to take off.
For more information, see Configure personal time off.
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The user’s Work Time. This indicates the percentage of FTE time that the user is available to perform actual project-related work, not including overhead. Set the Work Time value to 1 to indicate that the user is available for project-related work their entire full-time equivalent.
Assign work in the Workload Balancer
You can assign work items that have not yet been assigned to a user or reassign items that have been assigned to users in the Workload Balancer.
You can assign work in the Workload Balancer in the following ways:
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One item at a time by manually assigning each item.
You can make Advanced Assignments when assigning items manually, one at time.
For more information, see Assign work manually using the Workload Balancer.
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One item at a time, by dragging and dropping work items to the user who needs to be assigned.
For more information, see Assign work in the Workload Balancer by dragging and dropping.
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Multiple items at a time, by using the Bulk Assignments option. You can define rules by which items are assigned to multiple users at a time.
For more information, see Assign work in bulk using the Workload Balancer.
For information about unassigning work, see Unassign work in the Workload Balancer.
Assignment areas in the Workload Balancer
You can assign work to users using the Workload Balancer in the Resourcing area, at the project, or at the team level. For more information about where the Workload Balancer is located in Workfront, see Locate the Workload Balancer.
There are two areas in the Workload Balancer where you can view work items:
- Unassigned Work: displays items that are not assigned to users.
- Assigned Work: displays items that are assigned to users.
The following table describes which items display in each area based on their assignments:
*When a work item is assigned to a user and a role, it displays in the Unassigned Work area only when the role is the Primary Assignee.
**When a work item is assigned to a user and another entity, it displays in the Assigned Work area only when the user is the Primary Assignee.
For more information about the Unassigned and Assigned areas of the Workload Balancer, see Navigate the Workload Balancer.
Considerations for multiple assignments to job roles, teams, and users
Consider the following when assigning multiple resources to a work item:
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Users can have more than one job role associated with their profile. For information about associating users with job roles, see Edit a user’s profile.
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Tasks or issues are usually first assigned to one or multiple job roles or to a team. When projects are ready to start, they might need to also be assigned to users.
If a task or an issue is assigned to one or multiple roles and then you also assign a user, Adobe Workfront decides which job role to associate with the additional user (if any) according to the following rules:- If there is only one job role assigned and it matches the user’s Primary Role, then the task or issue is assigned only to the user fulfilling their Primary Role.
- If there are multiple roles assigned and at least one of the roles matches the user’s secondary roles, then the task or issue is assigned to the user fulfilling one of their Other Roles — which Workfront selects at random if there are multiple matches — as well as any additional roles that are assigned.
- If there is one or more job roles assigned and there are no matches to the user’s roles, then the task or issue is assigned to both the role or roles as well as to the user.
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If a task or an issue is assigned to a team and you also assign a user, the task or issue remains assigned to both the team and the user.