Tutorial 5: Allocating Users’ Time to Projects with the Availability and Allocation Calendars

This tutorial takes about 30 minutes and is intended primarily for project managers.

To be able to make accurate schedule predictions for projects, milestones and issues, Ketura needs to know when users are available to work, and which projects they are intended to be working upon. The Availability and Allocation calendars are used to provide this information quickly and conveniently. For background information on the calendars, please see Ketura Tour Step 6: Users and Contacts.

This tutorial covers:

• Using Availability calendars to determine when people are available to work;
• Using Allocation calendars to indicate which projects users should spend their time upon.

Scenario

This tutorial assumes that you have the example database installed. This database illustrates various Ketura concepts applied to a fictional firm, XYZ, Inc.

In this tutorial, the allocation and availability calendars will be used to indicate who is available to work on what projects, and when.

1. Go to the Manage Users page

• Ensure that you are logged onto the example database as Eric Samet, a partner at XYZ. Eric’s log on user id is ‘es’, and the password for this account is the same as the password for the ‘admin’ account that was provided during the installation of the Ketura server.
• Click the Users navigation tab, near the top of the page.

2. Define the organization’s normal working hours

Ketura provides a special, default, availability calendar. This is used to specify the default normal daily working hours for all users, as well as any organization-wide exceptions to these, such as public holidays. Ketura also provides an availability calendar for each user. This is used to override the default working hours to take account of employee vacations, part-time working, and so on.

• Select the Availability calendars tab.
• From the on the calendar for drop-down list box, select <default for all users>.
• Notice that the organization’s normal working hours are currently 7.5h each weekday, with no work being undertaken on Saturdays and Sundays.

When predicting schedules, Ketura doesn’t need to know when an employee does their work each day, merely how much they are expected to do.

Most XYZ employees actually work closer to 8h Monday through Thursday, so it makes sense to provide this information to Ketura.

• In the Normal daily working hours section, enter 8h in each of the entry fields for Monday to Friday (Mo, Tu, We and Th).
• Click the Apply button.
• The normal daily working hours for the organization will now be updated.

3. Record company-wide events, such as public holidays

The first Mondays in August and November have been designated a public holiday. Ketura needs to be aware of this when calculating schedules, so that it does not assume that work will undertaken on those days.

• Using the calendar, select the first Monday in August by clicking on that day. That day will then be highlighted in blue.
• Hold down the Ctrl (Option on the Macintosh), and then click the first Monday in November on the calendar. Because you held down the Ctrl (or Option) key, the second date selected is added to the first, so that both are selected.
• In the Exceptions to normal daily working hours specified above section, select the radio button for Takes the day as, and select Public holiday option from the drop-down list box.
• Click the Apply button.
• The two selected days are now recorded as public holidays. Unless otherwise stated on the availability calendar for a user, all users will now be regarded as unavailable for work on those days.

Days that are exceptions to the normal daily working hours can be recognized by having non-white background. A key to the coloured background can be found at the bottom of the calendar. Clicking on an exception day will reveal more information via the Exceptions to normal daily working hours specified above section to the right of the calendar.

4. Override the normal working hours for a part-time user

XYZ has an employee, Lyn Cubbon (user id ‘lc’), who works part-time and does not therefore follow the normal working hours of the other employees in the organization.

• From the on the calendar for drop-down list box (above the calendar), select lc [Lyn Cubbon].
• In the Normal daily working hours section, to the right of the calendar, select the These specific working hours radio button.
• In the Mo (Monday) field, enter 4h.
• In the We (Wednesday) field, enter 0h.
• Click the Apply button.
• The normal daily working hours for Lyn will now be applied.

5. Record an employee’s vacation time

Employee vacations and other absences can have a significant impact upon a project’s schedule. It is therefore vital that these are recorded as soon as they are booked.

Peter Ellis (user id ‘pe’) is an accounting student at XYZ. He has to attend a one-week residential course at the beginning of December, and will therefore be unavailable for other work during that time.

• From the on the calendar for drop-down list box (above the calendar), select pe [Peter Ellis].
• Click the first Monday in December.
• Hold down the Shift key, then click the Friday following the Monday you have just selected. Because the Shift key was held when you clicked the second date, all the days in between are also selected.
• In the Exceptions to normal daily working hours specified above section, select the radio button for Takes the day as, and select Training option from the drop-down list box.
• Click the Apply button.
• Peter is now recorded as being unavailable for work in the selected working week.

6. Allocate a user’s available time to projects

All of the above steps in this tutorial have been to tell Ketura when users are available to work. Ketura also needs to know what each user is expected to be doing on each of the days for which they are available to work. This is accomplished by using each user’s allocation calendar to specify the proportion of available working time that is allocated to each active project.

Eric Samet’s time is typically split between a number of different projects. For the second quarter of next year, Eric expects to be spending most of his time overseeing Anchor Insurance’s tax and audit work, with perhaps 20% of the remainder of his time split evenly between company administration and XYZ’s marketing campaign.

First, a proportion of Eric’s time needs to be allocated to his tax and audit work.

• Select the Allocation calendars tab.
• Ensure that the next year (not the current year) is selected in the Show year drop-down list box.
• From the on the calendar for drop-down list box, select es [Eric Samet].
• Notice that most or all of the working days on the calendar are shown in red. This is because all of Eric’s available time for next year has yet to be allocated.
• Click the April month name on the calendar. All the days in April on which Eric is available to work will be selected and highlighted in blue.
• While holding down the Shift key, click the June month name. All the days in April, May and June are now selected. It doesn’t matter that the selection now includes weekends, as the availability calendar only allocates available working time.
• In the table in the Allocation of user’s time to projects section, to the right of the calendar, notice that the bottom line of the table shows the total amount of working time represented by the selected dates, as well as how much of it has still to be allocated. At the moment, it should indicate that about 500 hours are unallocated for the three selected months.
• In that same table, enter 400 in the entry field for the row relating to project “Client ‘Anchor Insurance PLC’: Tax and Audit Work”. You don’t need to check the adjacent checkbox.
• Click the Apply button.
• The bottom row of the table now shows that about 100 hours of Eric’s time in the selected months is still unallocated.

Now, all that remains is to allocate Eric’s remaining unallocated time in the selected months between his two other activities.

• In the table in the Allocation of user’s time to projects section, check the checkboxes in the rows for ‘General’ and ‘Marketing Campaign’.
• Click the Distribute Unallocated button.
• Notice that Ketura has distributed the remaining unallocated time evenly between the selected projects.

When you are assigning unallocated time to projects, Ketura spreads the time you are allocating proportionately over all of the selected dates, according to the amount of unallocated time on each day. In the example above, this has resulted in each of his working days in April to June being divided up between his three projects in the same way. If this isn’t what you want, you can always select smaller date ranges (and even a day at a time) and divide up the time between projects however you wish.

In practice, you might well find that many users in your organization have their time devoted to one or two projects. In such cases, it can often be easiest to select an entire year at a time in the allocation calendar, and allocate all the available working time to the appropriate projects in one go.

Go to the next tutorial

• Tutorial 6: Keeping Projects on Track