Allocated Time % versus Duration

J. Craig Williams

Dave F,

 

This would require more effort on the PM's part.

There are so many variables here that the designers have to make decisions.

We may not like them, but they hopefully provide a shallower learning curve than MS Project or other PM software.

 

You are exactly right -- to do what you want, we need another column (effort or actual duration).

But having which ones are which depending on what is selected in the Project Settings will be a pain to keep straight.

 

Craig

Jeffrey Schoengarth

Currently evaluating SmartSheet as a replacement for a different software (Clarizen).

 

I agree with the above posts that the resource managment is very lacking.  One of the features I liked about SS is the ability to create custom formulas/calcualtions that are useful to the project.  However, all columns that are used for scheduling and reource allocation are locked.  I think a quick fix/bandaid would be to open up the % allocation column for use with formulas rather then locking it down.

 

For my projects, we define when we need something done and how long we believe it will take. i.e. 4 hours engineering time, need it complete in 5 days.  We would then add a formula to calulate that engineer is allocated is 10% alocated over those 5 days.

 

A static % allocated field is useless and may prolong my search for a usable project management tool.

 

Jeff

David Murallo

This is a really big short coming of Samrtsheet. I agree with everyone else. Adjusting the allocation percentage should dynamically adjust the end date IMHO. This functionality has been in Mircosoft Project for years.

JoonasJ

This is a pity, I allready got a little excited with Smartsheet. Unfortunately this is a no-go for me, without the ability to schedule based on allocation % I see very little added valua compared to manuall excell. With this scheduling agile team with partial resources would be a breeze. 

David Bochenski

It would be great to see this funcationality added.

Rainer Leisky

Hi Travis,

 

I'd appreciate the development team looking at this as well. So, if I have a gantt chart scenario where a task spans a certan number of days and I only have a limited amount of budgeted hours to spend on the task, I'd like to show the budgeted hours rather than % allocated.

Mark Johnson

A bit late to this party being a newcomer to smartsheet, but to keep this thread alive, I would like to see this functionality also.

J. Craig Williams

It isn't too late Mark.

We need all the votes we can get.

 

Craig

Travis

Thanks everyone, your votes have been tracked! 

Tom Kingsley

I'm a very experienced project manager with too many hours on a variety of tools including Project.   A key value I'm after in using SmartSheet is resource management including allocation management and calendar calculation based on the duration, and resource allocation %, and the availability of the resource, e.g. hours per week if not FTE.  I consider these both essential tools for any project managment software.  I'm trying to do what people use these tools for: plan and track calendar duration and cost.  For the project I'm now managing, I can live with the disconnect between duration and resource Allocation %, but the lack of availability for part time resources is problematic.  both problems.  I have yet to see if SS calculates cost based on allocation, duration, and cost.  To do that, a resource needs to have a cost whic I have not gotten to yet.  For sure, the inability to set each resource's working hours per time period for part timers to manage allocation will severly liimit my use and force me back to consider using other tools.  I'm not done yet, but had to post this as there was nothing in the documentation or videos and this was the first and only thread that popped up when I searched for "part time".  That alone seems a bit of a red flag.  Perhaps I can create formula cells for this, but that seems quite clunky and difficult.  I'm currently a Team account.  Perhaps this is available in the Enterprise edition?

Englebip

Found this thread while evaluating Smartsheet for a team of ~15 people. We have projects with defined tasks that each have a budget associated to it. Tasks can be performed sometime during a week, but as people work in many different projects at once (maybe 1-8h a week on each project) we would like to track the allocation of each team member to see how it adjusts the planning, per week.

 

Having the "% allocation" column in the Resource management accept a formula could solve this issue for us, as we can easily input the budget for the task (in hours) and define the duration (in days); then allocation = [budget (h)]/ ([duration (d)] * 8). We could define one additional column with the formula and copy and paste this to the actual %allocation column, but it's a pain and error-prone...

 

Why can't the % allocation not take a formula?

Victoria Rollins

Agreed - I understand why the Allocation % works the way it does, and have accepted that I will need to manually calculate and update the Allocation% for each task. But - being able to enter this standard formula would be HUGELY helpful and timesaving.

Dean Feegrade

Hi 

is there any further update on adding this functionality or a workaround as this is a feature my customers require from Smartsheet.

 

many thanks

 

Dean

Will Kilbreth

Voting up this functionality as well.  We are just starting to use the product and need the abilty to estimate delivery dates based on resources and hours they have available.  Allowing for the end date to dynamically adjust based on % Allocation seems like it should just work - as others have noted, a standard feature in MS Project.

 

Thanks.

Tom Theado

I have just starting learning how Resource View works.  I think the % Allocation should work in the other direction also.  If a task only takes 2 hours then the % Allocation should be 25%.  This means other projects could use that same resource for 75% of that day.  There should be a way to have the calculation complete automatically