Assignments layout

Flowtly Editorial Team3 min

The Projects tab of Resourcing has two layouts, and the switch above the grid moves between them. Capacity is the coverage grid described in Capacity by project: how well each role is covered, week by week. Assignments answers a plainer question: who is on which project, in which role, and for how many hours on each day.

Both layouts read the same bookings, so they never disagree. Assignments is for reading the plan; bookings are made and confirmed in the Capacity layout and from the bench.

One row per person on a role

Each row is one person on one role of one project, with Project, Role and Person frozen on the left while the dates scroll. A role with a seat nobody fills yet has a row of its own, marked Open role.

Choosing the range

Unlike the Capacity layout, Assignments is not tied to a zoom level. Choose any range:

  • From and To set the dates, up to 366 days. The presets This month, This quarter and Rest of year fill them in.
  • Days shows one column per day; Weeks shows one column per week. Switching between the two keeps the range.
  • The period row moves the range back or forward, and Today brings it back to the current date.
  • Search project, role or person narrows the rows.

The range is kept in the page address, so a link to the page opens the same range and layout. Choosing a range here does not change the period of the Capacity layout.

Reading a cell

A cell shows the person's confirmed hours on that day, or a letter for anything else:

Cell Meaning
hours Confirmed hours on that day.
R Reserved: requested through a staffing request, not confirmed yet.
D Draft: proposed, not confirmed yet.
H The person is on leave.
! Conflict: across all their projects, the person's confirmed hours on that day are more than they have. Worth a review.
? Open role: nobody is assigned.
hatched A non-working day.
blank No booking is shown, and the person's capacity is unknown.

R and D are left out of every total, as they are everywhere else in Resourcing: only confirmed time counts. In the Weeks view a week's cell totals the confirmed hours and still shows any letter that applies to a day inside it, so a single conflict or leave day is not hidden by the weekly figure.

Select a cell to see its date, hours and status in the line under the grid. The grid can be moved through with the arrow keys.

When the plan is large or incomplete

  • If the range and filters would produce a very large grid, only part of the rows is shown, with a line saying how many of how many. Narrow the range or the filters to see the rest.
  • If some leave could not be loaded, a notice says so, because leave may then be missing from the plan.
  • If nothing matches, the grid says so and offers Clear filters. If the assignments could not be loaded, it offers Retry.

On a narrow screen, and on a phone, each row becomes a card with the person's bookings in the range and their confirmed total.

Example use cases

  • See at a glance who works on a project on which days this quarter, without expanding role after role.
  • Check a person's day-by-day hours across a month before agreeing a delivery date with a client.
  • Find the days marked ! in the rest of the year and fix the double bookings behind them in the Capacity layout.
  • Spot the ? rows to see which roles still have nobody assigned.
  • Share a link to a fixed range with a project manager, so they open exactly the same plan.

Connection map

Derived fromPart ofRefers toFulfilsUses upPlanned vs actual
Documented hereDocumented elsewhere
job-size sizes capacity. project needs role. role drawn from position. role declares demand. booking fills role. booking books person. absence reduces capacity. booking consumes capacity. bench derived from capacity. booking planned vs actual time-entry.sizesneedsdrawn fromdeclaresfillsbooksreducesconsumesderived fromplanned vs actualJJob Size — The employment capacity an agreement commits to, in hours and minutes per week. The FTE percentage is calculated from it rather than entered: someone whose hours per week equal their job size is full-time.Job SizeCCapacity — A person's contracted week, less absence. Bookings are measured against their own contracted week, so 20 hours fills 83% of a 0.6 FTE and not 50%. Labels describe the visible period, show a range when contracts change, and identify assumed capacity.CapacityPProject — The core organizational unit for a business initiative, client engagement or internal work. Everything tracked — time, cost, invoicing, profitability — hangs off one.ProjectRRole — One job to be done on a project. It may be open, partly filled, filled or over-filled, and it exists whether or not anyone is booked on it.RolePPosition — The catalogue of job titles a project role is drawn from.PositionDDemand — What a role needs, stated apart from who is doing it. Stored as one slot per full-time person, so 2.5 people is three slots. A role with none declared is treated as one full-time person.DemandBBooking — One person committed to a role, or directly to a project, for a stretch of time — at a percentage of their time, or for a number of hours on each chosen day. A booking is a plan, not a record of work done.BookingPPerson — An employee. The central record the rest of the workforce data hangs off — profile, documents, leave, benefits, rates.PersonAAbsence — Time off that counts. It arrives either from an approved request or recorded directly by a manager, which needs no approval. It removes hours from a person's week before any booking is counted against it.AbsenceTThe bench — Everyone with room left in the period on screen, most free first. Derived from capacity on every period change; never a list anyone maintains.The benchTTime entry — What actually happened — work time logged against a project.Time entry