'Allocate from Estimates' calculation for Allocation

Products

• Clarity PPM On Premise

Issue/Introduction

How does 'Allocate from Estimates' calculate Allocation? We are showing particular week(s)  that have the Allocation field missing or blank in the grid. 
We configured the 'Resource Availability' field into the grid view and saw it was also blank. We have tried reslice the resource availability time slice ID.

Environment

Release:  All
Component: CLARITY PROJECTS

Resolution

When the 'Allocate from Estimates' button is clicked, the allocation for each selected team member is updated to reflect the current estimates-to-complete on that team member's task assignments. The allocation is only modified for days that are after the latest 'Actuals Thru Date' on all of the team members' task assignments. The allocation for earlier days remains unchanged.

This is the logic for the new allocation for the days that are modified:

1. The sum of the estimates on that day is divided by the availability of the resource on that day.
2. This value is then rounded to determine the allocation rate (rounding is determined by the value entered in the Round Allocations To Nearest % field), which is then set for that day.
3. After the allocation rates for all the days are determined, allocation segments are created from each set of consecutive days with the same rate.

NOTE: The time-of-day is not considered when determining the daily allocation rates. Allocating from Estimates will never produce allocation segments that are shorter than one day.
One subtle side-effect of this can be experienced by MSP users that have manually entered actuals that end in the middle of a day. They will see that the allocation for that entire day is replaced with the estimates for that day.

If a resource has explicit allocation start or finish dates, then 'Allocate from Estimate' will ignore any ETC outside of those dates.

The Allocate from Estimates button is active whether the project was created as a fast plan or a power plan.

If Round Allocation to Nearest % is set to zero or 1, then no rounding is done. This setting will produce a remaining allocation that is as close to the estimate as possible.

Note: If allocation is not appearing for specific weeks, configure the grid to show 'Resource Availability'. If 'Resource Availability' is blank, set the Resource > Properties > Availability to a value greater than 0, e.g 8 hours per day. Once Resource Availability is set,  allocation can then be calculated.

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Example for Logic used for Allocate from Estimates with Rounding to Nearest % 

When using this value the rounding calculates the 'Ceiling' value based on the percentage entered.

To see how this works 2 examples will be used

The Project and task will each be set to 1 week (40 normal hours)

First example (1) is when the ETC matches the Allocations  (40/40)

Second example (2)  is when ETC is half the Allocations (20/40)

 

The Round Allocations to Nearest %

To determine the allocation rate, the sum of the estimates is divided by the availability of the resource for a day. The allocation rate is then rounded based on the value in this field. 

Example 1 value = 1 (8/8)

Example 2 value = .5  (4/8)

Example 1

Rounding in PM Settings		ETC	Formula Result (ETC/Avail)		Calc Alloc %	Result Alloc Hours
20%		40	1		100	40
25%		40	1		100	40
30%		40	1		120	48

In the above example, when the rounding is set to 20% and the formula Result = 1 the hours remain 40 because 20% can go into 100% evenly with no remainder.

Same when the Rounding is set to 25%.  

When the Rounding is set to 30%, 30% cannot go into 100% evenly so the next 30% after 100% is used, which is 120%.  (30%, 60%, 90%, 120%)

Therefore when the rounding is 30% the allocation % gets reset to 120% or 48 hours.

 

In example 2 where ETC = 20 we see

 

Rounding in PM Settings		ETC	Formula Result (ETC/Avail)		Calc Alloc %	Result Alloc Hours
20%		20	0.5		60	24
25%		20	0.5		50	20
30%		20	0.5		60	24
40%		20	0.5		80	32

 

20% cannot go into 50% evenly so that is moved up to the next 20% which is 60% for the calculation and 24 hours.

25% can go into 50% evenly so that remains the same.

30% cannot go into 50% evenly so that gets bumped again to 60% making the hours be 24 again.  (same as 20%,  as 20% and 30% cannot go into  50% evenly)

40% would need to bump to 80%, since 40% cannot go into 50% evenly.  Making these hours = 32  (40%, 80%, 120%)