Overallocation Notification / Warning
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Overallocation Notification / Warning

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Article ID: 125631

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Updated On:

Products

Clarity PPM On Premise

Issue/Introduction

Is there a way to be notified when resources are overallocated? If so, when would users receive an Over allocation prompt?

Environment

Release: All
Component: Resource Management

Resolution

There is an overallocation prompt that comes up, but only in some instances.  This behavior cannot be changed. See below for examples of when it will be displayed or not. 

Here is an example of when it would come up

  1. I create a week long project (10/3-10/7).
  2. I allocate Role1 to the team at 50% (20 hours)
  3. I assign Role1 to a task on that project for 20 hours of ETC
  4. I replace Role1 with a resource, Jane Doe
    • All of the allocation and ETC gets transferred to Jane as expected. No overallocation prompt, since Jane is still underallocated for that week.
  5. I create a second week long project for the same week (10/3-10/7)
  6. I allocate Role1 to the team at 100% (40 hours)
  7. I assign Role1 to the task on this second project for 40 hours of ETC
  8. I select Role1 and try to replace him with the same resource, Jane Doe
  9. Here I will get an overallocation prompt:

Remaining Availability Confirmation
Alert: The following resources would be overallocated if booked for the full amount you requested. Do you want to overallocate them or to book only their remaining availability?

  • Resource: Jane Doe
  • Remaining Availability: 20
  • Role Name: Role1
  • Role Allocation: 40

 We are given an option to Overallocate or Remaining Only.
 
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In a slightly different scenario, this prompt will not appear:

  1. I create a week long project (10/3-10/7).
  2. I allocate Role1 to the team at 100% (40 hours)
  3. I assign Role1 to a task on that project for 40 hours of ETC
  4. I replace Role1 with a resource, Jane Doe
    • All of the allocation and ETC gets transferred to Jane as expected. No overallocation prompt, since Jane is not being overallocated for that week yet.
  5.  I create a second week long project for the same week (10/3-10/7)
  6. I allocate Role1 to the team at 50% (20 hours)
  7. I assign Role1 to the task on this second project for 20 hours of ETC
  8. I select Role1 and try to replace him with the same resource, Jane Doe

 Here, Role1 gets replaced with Jane without prompting to overallocate. This is because any amount (>0) that we decide to replace the role with, Jane will be overallocated.
 
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There is another factor that is taken into account for the allocation prompt, and this is the team dates. Here is an example taking the team dates into account:

  1. I create a project, Project A with a whole year duration (1/1-12/31).
  2. I allocated Jane to Project A for 20 hours only on the week of 3/28- 4/1 . The allocation for the remainder of the year is 0 for this resource. (For this example, this is the only project that Jane has been allocated so far.
  3. I then create a second project, Project B. This project is only a 3 week project.
    • Week 1: March 21 - 25
    • Week 2: March 28- April 1
    • Week 3: April 4 - 8
  4. I added a role, Role1, to the team with the following allocations:
    • Week1: 0
    • Week2: 40
    • Week3: 0
  5. If I then try to replace the DBA with Jane, the only way that I am going to get an Overallocation prompt is if I do the following:
    • On the team list, first edit the Start and Finish dates of the DBA role to be 3/28-4/1.
    • Then when you click on the magnifying glass to replace the role, once you select Jane from that list, and click on Replace, you'll notice that the remaining availability is still calculated as 100 hours (40+20+40 … in this example, Jane would have 40 available hours for Week1, 20 hours left for Week2 and 40 hours for Week3.) This will always show the availability for the entire project duration. However, depending on the team start and finish dates, this availability will not always be the one that is being used to determine overallocation.
    • Once you click on Yes on the Booking Confirmation page, the Remaining Allocation Confirmation prompt will come up. Here you'll be able to select Remaining Availability (20 hours) or to Overallocate.
    • If you do not change the Start and Finish dates on the team list for the Role, you wont get this prompt, as the entire 100 hours of availability are being used to determine if the resource will be overallocated or not, and 100 hours of availability is greater than the 40 hours that we really need the resource for.
    • This works for when there the role is allocated to the team for any continuous length of time that does not have any gaps. So if you had a 4 week long project, and the role only had a non-zero allocation to week 2 and week4, these same steps wouldn't work as well. The Overallocation prompt would most likely not come up then either, as the availability that is being used to determine if you would be overallocating the resource or not, is calculated only between one Start date and one Finish date.

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In summary:

  • We would expect the prompt if, we have an option of to overallocate or not to overallocate the resource by either fully replacing a role’s allocation or partially replacing that role’s allocation. We would not expect the prompt if:
  • Replacing the any of the role’s allocation (any amount over 0 hours) would overallocate the resource. The resource’s availability for between the team start and team finish date exceeds the amount of allocation hours that we are trying to replace, even if this would overallocate the resource for some periods between those two dates.