ProjectManager gives you the flexibility to manage your tasks' planned hours using either the planned hours field or the assigned column on the Gantt. You can update planned hours automatically using the set default planned hours for the individual or you can manually update planned hours.
Understanding Planned and Assigned Hours
You can update a task's planned hours using the planned hours field. You can also update the hours assigned to a resource for a task using the assign people pop-up. When you assign your first resource to a task they will receive the total number of planned hours but you can make manual adjustments and split hours across multiple assignees, etc.
Planned hours and assigned hours are not the same, you can assign up to the planned hours for a task and assign the remaining planned hours later if needed.
How to Update Planned Hours Automatically
Default planned hours can be set up for everyone in the organization, or individually for specific resources. Individual default planned hours will always take precedence over global planned hours. Individual and global default planned hours can be set up on the Holidays pop-up.
Let's say you're assigning someone a task on the Gantt chart. The planned hours will automatically populate if you have set default planned hours for the individual.
Updating Planned Hours Manually
Or, you might prefer to start planning hours by assigning resources to Task A and allocating hours to each resource. If you begin this way, the total assigned hours on the assign people pop-up will populate in that task's planned hours field.
The availability box shows how many hours each resource has available over the duration of this task. Click the availability number to see what else the resource is working on.
Note that if you have set default planned hours, you can still manually update the number of hours a resource is assigned to a task.
Assignment Popup for List, Kanban, Calendar
This popup is designed to bring you more visibility to resource costs at the point of assignment. Access the popup by clicking on the "assign" column on the list, kanban or calendar view. Then, click the arrow to expand to see a more detailed version of the popup.
Use the assignment popup to find the right resource for the job by filtering by teams or skills. You can:
- View rates per resource: Each rate can have an effective date that enables multiple historical, future and current rates. View the existing rate or see if a rate is split over two periods during the task duration
- View total planned effort vs. assigned effort: As you're assigning hours, you can see the planned effort and the amount of time you have allocated in assignment in real time
- View per user and total costs of a task: See exactly how much the task will cost and how much each resource will cost at the point of assignment
Changing Planned and Assigned Hours
You can change planned hours in the planned hours field, and you can change assigned hours in the assign people pop-up. Sometimes, updates to one of these fields can cause changes to the other.
If you reduce planned hours below the assigned hours, the assigned hours will decrease; you won't be able to have more hours assigned to a task than the total planned hours for the task.
For the same reason, if you assign hours over the entered planned effort, your planned effort for the task will increase. You can't have more hours assigned to a task than the total planned hours for the task.
If you reduce assigned hours, your planned hours will remain the same. ProjectManager assumes that you will assign the rest of the task's planned hours to another resource. If you would like to reduce the planned hours for a task, you can do so directly in the planned hours field.
If you have questions, please email support@projectmanager.com.