Resources in the project

Project resources are the working time of people that you plan on tasks. For each task you set the effort, and when the task has owners, you split that effort between them. Based on this, the Resources tab of the project and the Gantt chart show how much work each person has on each day. To see the workload of the same people across all projects, go to Resources in the organization.

The tab is available when your organization uses the Resources module (see Resources module settings) and the Resources functionality is switched on in the project.

Effort of tasks without owners

Effort is the number of hours (or days, if your organization counts in MD) needed for a task. Set it in the Allocation column of the schedule list or in the task panel.

The effort unit — hours or MD — applies to the whole organization and is set in the system settings. Changing the unit is described in Resources module settings.

A task without owners and departments keeps its effort to itself — it is not assigned to anyone yet, so it does not count towards anyone’s workload. The effort of a parent task is the sum of the effort of its subtasks.

Effort of tasks with owners

When a task has owners or departments, its effort is split equally between the departments and the owners outside those departments. A department’s share is then split equally between its members.

Diagram: task effort is split equally between departments and owners outside them, then between department members, and finally spread over the working days of the task according to each person capacity

Each person’s share is spread over the working days of the task, taking the person’s capacity into account (see Default user capacity). On the Resources tab you can change an owner’s total or the value for a selected range of days by hand — the remaining days of the task are recalculated.

Expanded person row on the Resources tab with the effort of their tasks

Effort recalculation when adding owners

What happens to the effort when you add or remove an owner depends on the Allocation calculation method in the Resources module settings:

Task duration priority (default) — the task effort is primary. After every change of owners, it is split again between all owners.
Owner duration priority — the owners’ effort is primary and does not change when owners are added or removed. A new owner starts with zero effort, and the task effort is the sum of the owners’ effort.

The setting applies to the whole organization (see Resources module settings).

Allocation on the Resources tab

The project Resources tab shows the workload of team members on a timeline. Above the table, set:

the scale — day, week or month (the zoom slider),
the view — User, Department or Department > User,
the unit — Hours, Percentages (workload against capacity) or Tasks (number of tasks),
the range — Current project or All projects, to see whether a person is overloaded with work in other projects.

Project Resources tab with the view, unit, workload range, export and scale options

The cell colour shows whether the workload fits the person’s capacity. Hover over a cell to see the details: workload from the current project, from other projects, and the capacity. Export saves the view as a Document (.pdf), an Image (.png) or Microsoft Excel (.xlsx).

Workload on the Gantt chart

You can show the Resource workloads panel below the Gantt chart. Switch it on in the Chart menu above the chart (the Resource workloads switch) and choose whether it shows the workload from this project (Current project) or from all projects (All projects). As you move tasks on the chart, you see right away how people’s workload changes.

Chart menu with the Resource workloads switch and the workload panel below the Gantt chart