Workload Balancer overview

Access a clear visual mapping of resource overallocation and underutilization which is transparent to all stakeholders.

As a people manager, you can protect your people from burnout and empower them to do their best work with better focus, quality, and engagement. You can ensure their full utilization, break silos, and enable alignment of work across teams.

When you assign work at the task or issue level you don’t have visibility into how busy a user might be. When you use the Workload Balancer, you can view which users have availability in their workload to complete the task or issue on time. This includes their time off and schedule exceptions details.

For more information, see Overview of assigning work in the Workload Balancer.

You can also assign work items in bulk which makes it easier to distribute many work items at one time, across multiple projects. For more information, see Assign work in bulk using the Workload Balancer.

Executives can make timely staffing decisions through transparency into how people in their organization are utilized.

Team members benefit from better collaboration, as they can all view what their coworkers are working on at any given time. For information about the access needed to view or manage resources in the Workload Balancer, see Access needed to manage resources in the Workload Balancer.

Share it with anyone who does not have Resourcing in their Main Menu by embedding a link to it in a custom tab. For information, see Share the Workload Balancer with a link.

Visualize and manage people’s workloads and demand in one view at the global, project, or team level, depending on your role. When managing projects, this includes not only resource allocation for the project, but also visualizing the allocation of resources from the Adobe Workfront Scenario Planner. People managers use the Workfront Scenario Planner to manage job skills across the organization. The Scenario Planner is only available in the new Adobe Workfront experience.

NOTE

The Scenario Planner requires an additional license. For information about the Workfront Scenario Planner, see The Scenario Planner overview.

As the user who schedules work for others, you must have the correct access and permissions to schedule resources for work.

For information about the access needed to manage the workload of your resources in the Workload Balancer, see Access needed to manage resources in the Workload Balancer.

The users whose workload you want to manage must meet the following criteria so that the information about their availability and skills is accurate:

• Have Schedules and Job Roles associated with their profile.

  For more information about associating Schedules and Job Roles with users, see Add users

• If a user is not associated with a Schedule, the Default Schedule of your Workfront system is associated with the user by default, for the purposes of resource management.

• Have Schedule Exceptions updated in their schedules.

  For more information about creating schedules, see Create a schedule

• Have their Time Off calendar updated in their profile.

  For information about updating a user’s Time Off calendar, see Configure personal time off.

The Workfront administrator must determine how Workfront calculates user availability. They can decide whether Workfront uses the System Default Schedule, or the user’s schedule to calculate the time that the user is available to work by adjusting the Resource Management preferences in the Setup area of Workfront.

For more information, see Configure Resource Management preferences.

Parent tasks are not assigned to users or roles. Parent tasks do not display in the Workload Balancer.

Tasks and issues have a value for Planned Hours which is greater than zero.

Tasks and issues have a value for their Duration which is greater than zero.

The Planned Dates of the issues are within the timeline of the project.

Review the following articles before you start using the Workload Balancer:

• This article walks you through how to navigate the Workload Balancer to perform these actions: Navigate the Workload Balancer.

• The following articles walk you through how you assign work and manage user allocations:

  • Overview of assigning work in the Workload Balancer.
  • Manage user allocations in the Workload Balancer.

The Workload Balancer can be found several different areas of Workfront. For information about where you can find the Workload Balancer, see Locate the Workload Balancer.