Resource Contingencies and Preventing Over-Allocation

I'll start with the over-allocation question.  In the old release there is no easy way to do this, but in v6 (which launched today) you will get a warning when you assign a task that will over-allocate the resource and even get an undo option.

As for the calendars, there are a couple ways to do this.  You can either set the resource availability to 69% (5.5h/8h) for new projects. This will default their units to 69% so anything you assign them to will assume that they will not be able to work a full work-day on it.  This is typically the route I would go, but you will have to update existing projects since this setting only applies to new projects (tasks that are already assigned would also not be touched).  You can also change their physical calendar so that they can only work 5.5 hours per day, but there are some drawbacks here.  For example, if you one day would like your resources to report time on these support activities as well as projectized activities, the data would be skewed with a 5.5 hour day instead of an 8 hour day.

Thanks Josh!

My company has signed up to try out v6, guess this is motivation to get in there and try out the new version.  Also, I know there are a few apps that allow you to integrate with Outlook to pull tasks into your calendars, and to try create tasks from Outlook, however is there anything that can work with meetings?  

For example, if there is a day when I have a single one hour meeting, I am willing to just let this slightly skew my available time and not worry about it.  However, on some days we may have 4+ hours of meetings, which could start to skew the total duration.  I know I could go in and create working hour exceptions by hand, but it would be much easier if there was a process to import Outlook meetings and block these out as non-working.

Any options to achieve this?

Thanks,

Chris

I was about to type in "not yet," but I just remembered that there is a new feature in v6 (one of 800 or so) that will let you send meeting information from Outlook to Clarizen.  Let me ask around and see if I can get you more details.

Hi Chris,

Indeed, with V6, we have made our Interact feature even more powerful by supporting iCal objects.

That means you can have your Outlook meetings trigger non-working time exceptions in your Clarizen calendar ( or create Clarizen work items)

To do that you will first need to create a new Interact mailbox in your account that will process incoming iCal meetings and create corresponding calendar exceptions. Then, when creating a meeting in your Outlook calendar, "invite" the Clarizen mailbox address and there you have - immediate sync between Outlook and Clarizen calendars.

I have attached an image of a rule that demonstrates the principle (it is still not perfect). We are working on an app that would do just that, and are planning to publish it on our Apps Marketplace to the benefit of the Clarizen community. Stay tuned!

Roni