Is a specific employee available to be assigned additional work?
There are 2 ways to get a general answer to this question:
Go to the Project Scheduling view and set the Gantt area's timeline to the period you are interested in. In the Employee list pane on the right, click on the employee to review. The Heat Map at the bottom of the screen will show the selected employee's allocation/workload on this project plus all other published Project Planning tool projects and any Project Assignments view project that has an estimate for the period covered in the timeline. The center line represents 100% allocation.
Go to the Resource Utilization view, click on the employee to review and adjust the view's calendar timeline. Each employee's workload is represented by a color coded timeline bar. Color codes represent the allocation level; red for over allocated, blue for under allocated, etc. The color legend is displayed at the bottom of the view.
You can drill down to reveal more details by project and task by clicking the "+" graphic in the left side pane. You can also mouse over a timeline bar to reveal additional details.
There are several ways to get detailed information on exactly which projects and tasks an employee is scheduled to work. These are detailed in the All about Resource Availability topic.
Do I have under allocated employees?
Go to the Resource Utilization view. Any timeline bar segment shown in blue indicates that the employee is under allocated for that period of time.
What is causing an employee to be over allocated?
An employee will normally appear as over allocated while a project, its task and assignments are being created and edited. This is corrected automatically when the project is leveled.
If an employee is assigned to other projects and these have not been leveled, then the employee may show as over allocated. You can review allocation details by either clicking on the specific problem area in the heat map or by using the Resource Utilization view. These are detailed in the All about Resource Availability topic.
Another possible cause for over allocation are a Start constraint or a Start and Finish date constraint manually set on one or more task assignments. When a constraint is set, then the Project Planning tool will not move that task's start or finish dates to a time when the assigned resource is free.
How do I correct over allocation problems?
Leveling a project normally allocates the workload to ensure the employees are not over allocated. Employees will normally appear as over allocated while the project, its tasks and assignments are being created and edited. Once the project is leveled then the issue is normally resolved.
If after leveling there is still over allocation, then one or more other projects is the likely cause. You can review the allocations to other projects by clicking on the specific problem area in the heat map or by using the Resource Utilization view. These are detailed in the All about Resource Availability topic.
Remove any manually set Start constraint or Start and Finish constraints on task assignments. When a date constraint is set, then the Project Planning tool will not move that task's date to a time when the resource is free. When leveling, if any task Start constraints exist, you are offered the option to clear all constraints.
You can assign additional resources to the problem tasks.
Replace the assigned resource with one that has more available time.
Which projects is an employee scheduled to work on now, and in the future?
Go to the Resource Utilization view, move the calendar timeline to the period in question and select the employee from the list. Expanding the employee displays all projects and tasks scheduled to be worked.
Progress view: Why is a project projected to finish late even though everything seems to be on track?
This situation can occur when an assigned resource becomes over allocated (overbooked) after your project has been published. In the Progress view, a project's projected finish is determined not only using the task's planned start date and its estimated hours, but it also considers other scheduled projects. This can have the effect of showing a task's projected finish date being late even when the scheduled and projected hours are on track. This over allocation situation may occur when publishing a new project without leveling it, altering an employee's Admin % or adding Time off after publishing your project.
Example: Project A is planned, leveled and published. Later, Project B is created for the same time frame as project A. Project B uses some of the same resources as in project A, and is published without it being leveled. This means that resources are now likely overbooked. While the Project Planning tool never automatically levels or adjusts a project's schedule, the Progress view recognizes these conflicts and attempts to forecast Project A's likely finish date. In this situation, it is up to the project administrators to correct the overallocation issues and republish the projects.
This situation can occur if the project doesn't use ETCs and an employee enters an ETC value against a task. See ETCs in Progress view for more details.