Configure user Time-splitting

In some cases, users may regularly split their working time between two or more projects (sometimes called time sharing). The Live Plan project planning engine can account for this and factor such splits into the live project plan, provided the user's split time between projects is configured in his/her user account. This topic explains how to configure user time splitting between projects.

Accessing the Time-split configuration

  1. While in the Administration interface, select Repository, or any project in the Open Project or Project Group dialog box.

  2. In the Navigation panel, expand User Management and select Users. The table of users for the selection appears in the top pane of the Content Pane.

  3. Scroll or use Search to locate the user whose time is to be split between projects, and select the relevant row in the table. The user's detail appears in the lower part of the Content Pane.

    In the table, the Time-split Assignments column displays the current split time assignments, if any, for the selected user.

  4. Click the Edit button in the user detail pane to place the user detail form in edit mode.

  5. Scroll down, if necessary, and locate the Time-split Assignments section. This is where you assign the percentage of the user's time for each project.

Assigning split work time

Each row in the Time-split Assignments section lists a project for which the currently selected user has Work Items assigned. (You cannot split a user's work time into a project for which the user has no assigned Work Items.) You use the % of Total Time column to assign of percentage of the user's total working time to two or more projects.

Warning:

The values you enter in % of Total Time must be integer values (and you do not need to enter the % sign). For example: 25 is a valid entry, while 33.3 is invalid and results in an error message when you save changes.

It is not possible to save the configuration if the sum of all time-split assignments is more than 100.

The configuration splits the user's total working time between the different projects. That time is a combination of the Global Working Calendar configuration and the selected user's Personal Working Calendar configuration.

Effect on Live Plan

When a user has working time shared between two or more projects, this is reflected in the Live Plan chart. In the Repository and Project Group scope, the chart shows additional lines for a user with time splitting configured, if there are Work Items assigned to user in the configured projects. The lines are labeled by the user name followed by the configured percent in parenthesis. For example: Jan Almsman (20%). If the sum of configured time-split assignments is less than 100, then an extra line is shown for the remaining percentage if there are Work Items assigned to user in other projects for which for which no time-split assignment is specified in the configuration. The estimate of the Work Items for planning is multiplied by the ratio of the configured percentage. (So 20% means then the estimate is multiplied by 5.)

In the project scope, one line for the user is shown if there are items assigned to this user and there is some percent of time-split configured. If the total time splitting configured for specified projects is 100, and there are unresolved items assigned to the user in other projects, those items are not planned, nor are they displayed in Live Plan, and the warning is logged.

Planning of the Work Items from the different rows in the Live Plan which belong to the same user is independent — planning engine does not compare things like priorities except for items with a depends on link.