Work Effort overview
As a project manager, you can decide how you want to estimate the amount of work needed for tasks to complete in a project. Estimate the amount of work needed to complete tasks using one of the following indicators:
- This field is available only for tasks with a Simple Duration Type.
- You can enable the use of this label and define the percentage of working time associated with it at the project level.
This article describes what Work Effort is and how you should use it when estimating the amount of work for your tasks.
NOTEAccess requirements
Expand to view access requirements for the functionality in this article.
You must have the following access to perform the steps in this article:
*To find out what plan, license type, or access you have, contact your Workfront administrator. For more information, see Access requirements in Workfront documentation.
Considerations for using Work Effort
- When the project tasks have 0 Planned Hours and you enable the Use Work Effort to automatically calculate task Planned Hours setting on the project, the default level of Work Effort associated with them will be Medium. The Planned Hours automatically update for Simple Duration Type tasks. For more information, see the section Levels of Work Effort in this article.
- When the project tasks have Planned Hours that are more than 0 and you enable the Use Work Effort to automatically calculate task Planned Hours setting on the project, the level of Work Effort updates according to the amount of Planned Hours without changing the amount of the Planned Hours for Simple Duration Type tasks. For more information, see the section How Workfront calculates Work Effort based on Planned Hours in this article.
- When the project tasks have 0 Planned Hours and you enable the Use Work Effort to automatically calculate task Planned Hours setting on the project, then update the level of Work Effort from Medium to Small or Large, the Planned Hours also update. For more information, see the section How Workfront calculates Planned Hours based on Work Effort in this article.
- When you inline edit tasks and modify both the Planned Hours and Work Effort field for task at the same time, the Planned Hours will be updated with the value you specify, whereas the Work Effort value is calculated based on your updated Planned Hours.
- When you update the Work Effort value of a task, the Duration no longer auto-calculates based on the Planned Hours. For more information about how Duration calculates for Simple Duration tasks, see Duration Type overview: Simple.
- When you change the Duration Type of a task from Simple to any other type, the Work Effort field is hidden on the task. The Planned Hours remain unchanged.
- You cannot update the Work Effort level on a parent task. The Work Effort level for a parent task is automatically calculated based on the number of Planned Hours for the tasks which is a rollup of all the children tasks. For information about parent tasks, see Create subtasks.
Enable using Work Effort instead of Planned Hours
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Go to a project and click the More menu
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Click Task Settings, then select the option Use Work Effort to automatically calculate task Planned hours. This is deselected by default.
For more information about enabling the use of Work Effort on a project, see the “Tasks Settings” section in the Edit projects article.
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Click Tasks on the left panel , then click the name of a task to access it.
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Click the More menu
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In the Overview area, click the Work Effort drop-down menu to correct the amount of effort needed to complete the task.
For more information about updating the Work Effort field on a task, see the following articles:
- The “Overview” section in the Edit tasks article
- Manage task information in the Task Details Overview area
Levels of Work Effort
As a project manager, you can identify three levels of Work Effort for your projects. Each level of effort equates with a percentage of daily time that users need to complete the task.
When setting up the level of Work Effort you have to ask yourself the question: “How much time should a user assigned to this task spend on it daily to get it done in time?”
The following table illustrates the possible levels of Work Effort and their default corresponding percentages. As a project manager, you can update the percentages to suit the needs of your organization. You do this as you edit a project. For information about editing projects, see Edit projects.
As a Workfront administrator, you define the Typical hours per work day in the Project Preferences area of Setup. This is the daily amount of time considered as working time. For information about configuring Project Preferences for your instance of Workfront, see Configure system-wide project preferences.
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