Overview
Ever feel like you're juggling projects and team schedules like a circus act? We know how difficult it can be for a project manager to handle several projects at the same time with a limited workforce.
The Workload Management Calendar in Nutcache can be your secret weapon. It gives you a clear, visual overview of your team's capacity, so you can avoid overloading anyone and ensure everyone's working to their strengths. Drag and drop tasks to create a flexible schedule that keeps everyone on track and lets you prioritize projects based on skill sets. Say goodbye to last-minute scrambling and hello to a happy, productive team!
Who can use this feature?
Members with the status of manager or higher can use the workload management calendar tool. Regular members can view their own workload and edit planned dates and estimated times if the settings permit.
Where can you find this feature?
The workload management feature is accessible from the main menu on the left side of your screen.
How does the calendar work?
The Workload Management Calendar is designed to help you visualize your team's workload, not based on projects, but on the individual team members. It's divided into two main sections for easy navigation:
Members Section (1): This section provides an overview of each team member's workload.
Workload Calendar Section (2): This section gives you a visual representation of your chosen timeframe.
From the members section, you can see:
Member workload percentage: Quickly see how much of each team member's time is allocated.
Project and task visibility: Easily identify which projects and tasks each member is working on.
Unassigned task management: View and drag-and-drop unassigned tasks to assign them to specific team members. (We'll cover this process in more detail later.)
From the Workload section, you’ll be able to visualize the period of time you selected and have a better picture of the workload your team members are facing for each project/task at any given time. Here’s what you need to know about the color scheme:
Yellow: 0 to 70% of the member’s workload is being used, which means this person still has available hours left to work.
Green: 70% to 100% of the member’s workload is utilized, indicating that this person's time is almost fully occupied, with few or no free hours remaining.
Red: More than 100% of the member’s workload is being used, meaning this person is overloaded and needs to have some of their hours reallocated.
The project managers aim to keep everyone maximally engaged in projects, so green is the ideal status. If a team member is in the yellow zone, they should be assigned more projects to increase their engagement. On the other hand, if a team member is in the red zone, it indicates that they are overburdened, which is not ideal as they have reached their maximum capacity.
The Members’ section
The Members section is your central hub for understanding your team's workload. It provides a quick snapshot of each team member's workload percentage or hours, the projects they're assigned to, and the tasks they're tackling.
Need a more detailed view? Simply click the down arrow next to a team member's name. This expands the view to show all their assigned projects and tasks - and the calendar will be responsive when you do that, showing the tasks on the timeline.
At the bottom of the Members section, you'll find all the unassigned tasks from your projects. This makes it easy to identify work that needs to be allocated. Once you've expanded a project to see its tasks and define the planned dates, assigning them is a breeze. Simply drag and drop each task onto a team member's name on the top section. Just drop it on the desired start date for that task.
The Members section also offers flexibility. Need to see more or fewer unassigned tasks? Just drag the bottom section up or down to adjust the view as needed.
⚠️ IMPORTANT: This feature considers subtasks as tasks, so you'll see them listed along with regular tasks. To ensure a clear and accurate view of workload, define estimated time either for the entire task or for each subtask, but not both.
The Workload calendar section
The Workload calendar section provides a dynamic view of your team's workload for a chosen timeframe. It empowers you to manage tasks and assignments with ease through its powerful drag-and-drop functionality.
Need to reassign a task? No problem! Simply drag and drop the task from one team member's name on the Members section to another. This intuitive action automatically updates the assignment for everyone involved, streamlining your workflow.
Want to remove a task from a team member's schedule entirely? Drag and drop it back down to the Unassigned tasks section at the bottom of the calendar.
⚠️ IMPORTANT: When you unassign a task this way, it removes the assignment for all team members previously assigned, not just the one you're viewing. Keep this in mind to avoid any confusion.
The Workload calendar also offers flexible scheduling. You can adjust planned dates for tasks directly on the calendar timeline. Simply click and drag the end of the task bar to extend or shorten it, setting a new deadline as needed. You can also hide weekends using the top menu toggle to prevent scheduling tasks on days off.
NOTE: Regular members can view their own workload from the workload calendar. They can check their workload without seeing data from other members. Rest assured, they can only modify the data they are authorized to edit in the project settings, such as planned dates and estimated time. This means there's no risk of your carefully planned schedule being accidentally changed!
How to manage the workloads
Clicking on any task bar within the Workload calendar opens a detailed pop-up window for managing that specific task's workload. This window displays the following information:
Project and task names
Open task popup (for accessing the task details page)
Planned dates
Time spent on the task vs time estimated for the task
Task allocation method
Understanding the hours displayed
1. Task hours that have been allocated to members
2. Task's estimated time
3. The sum of the estimated times of the task and its subtasks
Allocation method
As a project manager, ensuring tasks are completed on time often involves balancing allocated time with estimated workload. The Workload Management Calendar offers three allocation methods to help you divide the effort efficiently:
Estimated Time Remaining (as seen above): This method divides the remaining estimated time for the task equally across its planned duration and the number of assignees.
Percentage: This method allows you to allocate a specific percentage of a team member's daily working time to the task across its entire duration. For example, a 20% allocation for John means he'll dedicate 20% of his daily working hours to this task until it's complete.
⚠️ IMPORTANT: This is based on daily work hours, not the task's estimated time. John will be working on the task for 20% of his day, not necessarily completing 20% of the total work required.
Custom: This method gives you the flexibility to manually define the daily allocation of hours a specific team member spends on the task throughout its duration.
Vacation, leaves and holidays
Note that the workload management calendar takes into account the vacations, leaves, and holidays for each member.
Filters
Inside the Workload calendar, you can use filters to optimize your view. You can filter by Members or per Project and, after selecting one of them, you’ll have to choose the members/teams or the projects you want to see inside the Workload calendar.
Customizable options
You have a few customizable options inside this feature, let’s check each of them:
Today button: will bring you to the current day inside the calendar.
Filters: as mentioned above, use it to optimize your view.
Calendar view: you can manage your calendar from 3 different time filters:
Day: here, each column is a day, and you can visualize two weeks at the time.
Week: here, each column is a week, and you can visualize 3 months.
Month: in this one, each column is a month, and it lets you visualize the entire year.
Left and Right arrows: use it to move forward or back in time.
Display: choose the best way to view your workload calendar:
Percentage/Hours: using this toggle, you can choose if you want to see the workload in percentage or hours worked.
Show weekends: turn it on or off if you want to see the weekends inside the calendar, but only when using the weekly calendar view.
Unassigned tasks: choose whether you want to show or hide unassigned tasks.