Create More Powerful Project and Resource Views

For project and resource planning, Views can be a powerful tool. Acting as “snapshots” of the bigger picture, they can help you discover a different side and story to your projects and resources. Learn all about Ganttic’s Views and how they can help you get the most out of your planning.

Project Resource Planning Your Way

Planning resources with Ganttic should start with thinking about what you need to see. Is it the resource allocation of each department of your organization? Is it the utilization of specific teams? Is it the allocation of engineers in different locations and the pieces of technology they use? Is it all the different projects and portfolios? Or is it something else?

The key to achieving these goals is adding your data to Ganttic via custom data fields.

The planner’s capabilities increase with every custom data field you add. After you have added list-type data fields to resources, you can group them. Making it easier to find resources with the right skillset for your projects. After you have added user-type data fields to projects, you can filter projects by the project manager assigned to them. After you have added numeric data, you can use calculations in reports.

But what happens when you have all this info? Create a new View, that’s what!

What are Views in Ganttic?

Ganttic views are snippets or “snapshots” of your general resource plan. Views are a way to divide a complicated schedule into more manageable bits. Examples are Views for each department, location, team, skill group, etc. You create Views that are private and which only you can see. Or you can assign Views to other users.

Or do both! The best part is you don’t have to choose if you want one thing or another. You can have it all by creating views with different settings. Plus, since the number of Views you create in your planner are unlimited, there’s no need to be shy.

With Views you can:

• Filter extraneous data out for better decision making
• Simplify complex plans
• Create different Views for specific people, projects, or departments
• Color code plans according to different criteria

Using Views in Ganttic

Each view in Ganttic now has customizable visibility settings in addition to all the grouping, sorting, filtering, etc options. You can decide what Ganttic will and won’t display for every view you have created. Some settings – Utilization and Dependencies – can be turned on and off from General Settings. If these settings are turned off, they cannot be turned on for a specific View.

The visibility settings are available for both resource and project views.

You can choose from the following settings:

• which chart row height is used for the view,
• if Ganttic displays the tasks of archived projects,
• if Ganttic displays the tasks that are not assigned to resources,
• how Ganttic displays the placeholders (the tasks which don’t meet the filter criteria of the View),
• if and how to display the resource availability;
• if or which resource utilization graphs are displayed.

Placeholders are the tasks that are not meeting the filter criteria. For example, if you open a project in a single project view and the placeholders are enabled, you can see if the resources are allocated to other projects in the same timeframe. Placeholders are displayed as grayed out taskbars with or without taskbar information.

How Do Views Benefit You?

Only the Essentials

Ganttic’s View feature comes with several benefits. Firstly, it gives you more options to choose from. Helping you to not only get more creative in your planning, but providing you with and unlimited array of ways to test out project planning workflow.

Let’s take dependencies as an example. Dependencies work well in a project setting. If there aren’t too many resources involved, you can easily see which tasks are dependent on each other. However, if you want to see the big picture, dependencies may be nothing but noise. For clients or stakeholders, they make the information more difficult to comprehend and add clutter to the planner.

Counteract that by only enabling dependencies for Views where they make sense (single project views, smaller team views, etc). And disable them for the Views where they are in the way (general resource views, views for departments, etc).

Perfect for Large Teams

Views are also handy when you want to par down on your options. If you’re resource planning with hundreds or even thousands of resources, you need to get specific to do it right. By creating Views of only certain branches or departments, you can hone in on the right workforce from the get-go. Eliminating the risk of accidentally scheduling someone for a job in Bangkok when they’re located in London.

Furthermore, shareable Views can be built and specially customized with specific users in mind. For example, if you are working with freelancers, create a View where you only display the tasks that they need to see, hiding all the others. Make it easier on them by excluding all the information that’s not necessary for them to complete their assignments.

Are You Even Tracking Resource Utilization?

Resource capacity utilization is a great thing if you are using it. However, if you are not using it, it’s just an abstract percentage. For those of you that deal with projects, clients, and project portfolios, available time and busy time might be easier to comprehend. Even more so considering Ganttic is keeping track of the over hours.

If you are still not convinced, there’s also an option to hide any utilization related percentages, graphs, and numbers altogether.

Smoother Experience

Another bonus of more powerful views is the fact that if there are some views, where you don’t want any of the bells and whistles, you can turn them off. You can get the kind of overview you need, the planner may load faster, and the overall experience will be smoother.

That’s the beauty of Ganttic. It’s the resource planning tool you need it to be.

Transform Your Planning with Ganttic’s Views

Views give project managers a new way to play with their data. Leading the way for stronger insights and more powerful project plans. Questions about using Views for your own planning needs? Contact us for a free demo and walkthrough. We’ll show you how to turn better plans into better results.