Time Blocking and Resource Planning

Two pages in the Planning group help you fit work into real time. Time Blocking puts your tasks into your calendar week. Resource Planning shows whether each person has enough hours for the work assigned to them.

Both depend on estimated minutes on your tasks. A task with no estimate can't be scheduled and doesn't count toward capacity.

Time Blocking

A time block is a slot in your week reserved for one task. NevaPlan can suggest blocks for you, and you confirm them before anything is saved.

What you see

1. A Preview schedule button.
2. A foldable section called My working hours.
3. Week controls: arrows to go to the previous or next week, the date range, and a This Week button.
4. Summary cards: Blocks This Week, Focus Hours, Max/Day and Break.
5. A grid with one column for each day, Mon to Sun. Each block shows its title, start and end time, and its length in hours. Empty days say No blocks.
6. A trash icon on every block to delete it.

How to set your working hours

Do this first, so suggestions land in the hours you really work.

1. Click My working hours to open it.
2. Click Add.
3. Under Repeat, choose Every week or Date. For a weekly slot, pick the Day. For a one-off slot, pick the date.
4. Set From and To. The end must be later than the start.
5. Under Status, choose Available or Unavailable / leave.
6. Click Save. Click Cancel to throw away your changes.

Use Unavailable / leave for days off and holidays. The times use your account time zone, shown above the form. If you leave this empty, NevaPlan uses your project working days from Settings, from 09:00 to 17:00.

How to schedule a week

1. Use the arrows to open the week you want to plan.
2. Click Preview schedule.
3. Read the proposed blocks. Tasks that can't be placed appear in a second list with a reason: Plan dependencies in Gantt first, or No available time in this range.
4. Click Confirm schedule to save the blocks, or Cancel to discard them.

The preview says it plainly: no time blocks are saved until you confirm. If every task already has a block, the preview shows No new blocks to schedule. The button is off when the week is already over.

What the preview uses

The preview takes your open tasks that have an estimate, in order of priority and then due date. It places each task in the first free working time. It respects your breaks and the maximum number of blocks per day, which are the Break and Max/Day figures on the page. Tasks that depend on other tasks are left unplanned, so set those dependencies up in the Gantt chart first.

Resource Planning

Resource Planning compares each person's available hours with the hours assigned to them, for four weeks at a time.

What you see

1. A Recalculate button at the top right of the page header.
2. The Capacity Heatmap title with arrows to move to the previous or next four-week period.
3. Three figures: Avg Utilization, Over-Allocated and Under-Capacity.
4. A table with a Person column and one column per week. Each cell shows a percentage, with the allocated hours and the available hours underneath.
5. A colour key: 0–50%, 51–80%, 81–100% and over 100%.
6. A Bottlenecks panel listing people above 100% and the weeks where it happens. A link takes you to your tasks.

How to read it

• A cell compares allocated hours with available hours. Over 100% means the person has more work than time.
• Over-Allocated counts people with at least one week over 100%.
• Under-Capacity counts people whose every week is under 50%.
• A warning triangle marks a week over 100%.

The page explains how it counts: effort is spread across available working hours, skipping holidays and dated leave. If a person has set personal hours, those are used. Otherwise it assumes eight hours per working day.

Two extra notes can appear. Unassigned effort is work with no person. Without a working date under a person's name is effort that has no date to place it.

How to use it

1. Open Resource Planning.
2. Use the arrows to look at the weeks you care about.
3. Type in the Search box to find a person.
4. Check the Bottlenecks panel. For each person listed, open their tasks and change due dates or assignees.
5. Click Recalculate after you make changes.

If the table is empty, the page says to assign tasks with estimated minutes and due dates.