Create and manage schedules

Transcript

It’s important to set up schedules and assign them to users or projects because they help define when work can or can’t be done in Workfront. To find any schedules created in Workfront, go to the Setup area and scroll down until you find the Schedules section. Once you click the section, the screen refreshes to show a list of schedules created in the system. In Workfront, there’s always at least one schedule created called Default Schedule, and that schedule is initially applied system-wide to all users and projects. It indicates that work is done Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, in the Pacific Standard time zone. In addition, there are no holidays, so work can be done every working day of the year. Now, if you’re based in the Pacific time zone, this schedule may work. However, even then, it’s recommended that adjustments for holidays be made. You can either adjust the default schedule to suit your organization’s needs and then add new ones, or leave the default schedule as is and create all new schedules. Here will work. In this case, let’s create a brand new schedule. Workfront generally recommends creating schedules based on the different time zones your company covers. It’s the easiest way to determine when users can work on and complete various tasks or requests. So here, we’re going to create a schedule for users in the Eastern United States time zone. To do that, click the New Schedule button. The screen refreshes and shows several tabs. It would also be good at this point to name the schedule. When creating a new schedule, there are a couple of things to consider. The hours of operation, meaning the times and days of the week to do work, the time zone for the schedule, and any company-wide holidays where no one works. Hours of operation. Any new schedule starts with a default of Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. That’s indicated by the blue shading in the calendar grid. However, those can be adjusted with a drag and drop. For example, let’s say your U.S. East Coast teams work Sunday to Thursday with Friday and Saturday off, and work later hours so there’s more time to collaborate with coworkers in later time zones. So let’s say they work 10am to 6pm. To add the Sunday 10am to 6pm schedule, click and hold your mouse at the 10am line on Sunday. Then, drag your mouse down until you reach 6pm. Then let go of your mouse. You’ll notice that everything between 10am and 6pm on Sunday is highlighted in blue. And the hours of operation have been added to the left. Now we need to adjust the other days and remove Friday as well. To do that, go to the specific day, click and hold the mouse from the beginning of the blue highlight, and drag it down to where the blue highlighting ends. This removes the highlighting. Then do exactly what you did for Sunday, in this column, and for any other day needing to be adjusted. You can also do half days, days with breaks in them, etc. However, it’s recommended to keep schedules as simple as possible. This way they can be used on a broader scale. Time Zones The Details tab is where you determine the time zone for the schedule. In addition, consider these two other options. Group with Administration Access and Groups with View Access Group with Administration Access If you’re a system level administrator, this field is optional, and it’s recommended that this be left empty. That means no one but a system level administrator can modify the schedule. However, if you’re creating schedules for specific groups instead of time zones, this would be a good place to mark the specific group administrator that can make modifications to the schedule for their users. As a group administrator, this field is required, and the drop-down menu shows all the groups you manage. However, only one option can be selected. Groups with View Access This section determines who can view and apply this schedule to either their users or their This way, as other administrators, projects, and or team leads look through a list of schedules, they only see those that apply to them, making it easier and cleaner for you and your users. Whichever settings are set, these options allow administrators to control who has access to what based on their needs and roles. Holidays The last tab is Exceptions, or what we might call Holidays. Here is where you can enter any company-wide holidays where everyone has the day off and no one should be working. For example, in the United States, the 4th of July is a federal holiday and traditionally a day off. So, to mark this as a non-working day in the schedule, find the designated month, click on the day the holiday starts, and you’ll get an exceptions box. From here, determine when the holiday starts and ends. If it’s just one day, leave the days the same. If the holiday spans several days, select the end date as well. When done, click Save, and the day, or days, will be highlighted. Here’s a best practice. It’s recommended to add a calendar reminder to update the exceptions area to your schedules at a set time each year. Since any days marked as company-wide days off do not automatically carry over to the next year. Once these options have been selected, click the Save Changes button at the bottom, and the schedule is now listed. At this point, any schedules created can be applied to users or projects in Workfront.