Resource view

The Resource View in Gantt provides a clear and interactive visualization of how work is distributed among resources. It helps project managers monitor workload, track overallocation, and ensure efficient team utilization. This article consolidates all essential information about how the Resource View works, how to configure it, and how to tailor it to your team’s needs, including capacity calculations, custom filtering, and visual customization.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• What does Resource View represent
• How to enable Resource View
• Resource Load Calculation
  • Leaf Items Count
  • Estimate + Spent
  • Remaining estimate
  • Assignment Allocation
• What resources are shown 
  • 1. Show only users with tasks assigned
  • 2. Show assignees by role
• What items are counted
  • Count all items in the Resource load
  • Skip some tasks in the calculation
  • Calculate Resource Load globally, show project timeline only
• Effort calculation
  • Split the effort between multiple assignees
• Cell colors customisation 
  • Dynamic approach - define via Gantt Config Script or Configuration Properties
  • Static approach - define via Script - Block Widget

What does Resource View represent

The Resource View is a must-have when you need to track a team's or an individual's effort. It shows how individual resources – typically users – are allocated over time. It displays a horizontal bar chart where each row corresponds to a resource, and each cell represents its workload over time. 

Each resource row also displays the # of items (Work Items assigned). 

The values inside the cells indicate the effort assigned to that user. The cell values are described later in the calculation section. Hovering over the load cells reveals tooltips with WI IDs or detailed information about capacity, based on your calculation.

How to enable Resource View

A lot of aspects of the Resource View are set in Parameters:

• Firstly, there is an option to show Resource View altogether.
• Items per resource represents how many WIs each Resource can handle - if the number of assigned WIs is higher than the limit, the cell turns red to indicate overallocation. This option is relevant only when using the Leaf Items Count calculation.
• View Height sets the default height of the view. You can later adjust it directly in the widget by dragging the horizontal divider line between the timeline and the Resource View.
• Resource Field determines which field is used to identify resources. By default, it points to 'assignee', but you can reference any custom field (e.g., enum, string, user) - based on the setup.
• Resource Label sets the title of the column that stores Resources.
• Show Unassigned enables a row that stores all WIs that have no Assignee. It allows you to easily spot unallocated work that might otherwise be overlooked during planning. 
• Resource Load Calculation allows you to select the calculation in cells according to your needs. See the information below.

Resource Load Calculation

There are four available modes to calculate a visualize Resource Load - each suited to different planning strategies:

Leaf Items Count

This Resource Load counts how many leaf-level WIs are assigned to each resource over time. This is a simple, task-based view - each item counts as “1”, regardless of its estimated effort.

Let's see the example - parent WI NPMT-479 assigned to Steve Developer; child WI NPMT-542 assigned to Robert Project; child WI NPMT-543 assigned to Mart Test. Since both NPMT-542 and NPMT-543 are leaf-level items (they do not have any children), each one is counted as one unit in the load calculation. Each green cell marked with “1” represents one leaf-level item assigned to the Resource on that specific timeframe:

Estimate + Spent

Estimate + Spent sums the Remaining estimate and time already spent on each item. This provides a complete picture of both planned and actual effort. The calculation offers a comprehensive workload overview, showing what has been completed and what is still pending, making it easier to spot overloaded team members.

In this case, the calculation adds 80 hours of Time Spent (10 days) and 16 hours of Remaining Estimate (2 days), resulting in 96 total hours of effort. This total effort is then distributed evenly across the 10 scheduled days of the task. When we divide 96 hours by 10 days, we get 9.6 hours per day. As a result, the Resource View shows a daily load of 9.6 hours for the assigned user, accurately reflecting the combined past and future effort. 

Remaining estimate

The Remaining Estimate calculation considers only the effort that is still required to complete the task. It ignores any time that has already been spent. Polarion takes the value from the Remaining Estimate, which equals the Initial Estimate minus Time Spent, and spreads it evenly across the days the task is scheduled.

This means that only the future effort is shown in the Resource View, giving you a focused picture of how much work is left for each Resource. This mode is especially useful for planning and forecasting remaining workload without including what’s already been done. 

This calculation distributes the effort starting from today (the current day) and across future days only.

In this example, the task has a Remaining Estimate of 6 days and is scheduled across 10 calendar days. Gantt distributes the 6 days of effort through the scheduled days. This results in a workload of 4.8 hours per day in this example.

Assignment Allocation

Assignment Allocation uses team-based Assignment proportions to calculate each user's effort. Users are assigned a percentage of work within each team/project, and these percentages determine their total workload. The Resource View shows each user’s combined allocation across all teams and projects. If a user’s total allocation exceeds 100%, it indicates overallocation and may require workload redistribution.

In the example, Mark is assigned 35% effort in Team Alpha and 10% in Team Beta, resulting in a total workload of 45% during that period.

For more information about the Team Assignment, please check this article.

What resources are shown 

Once you set parameters according to your needs, the Resource View occurs. By default, it shows Assignees, which represent standard Polarion Assignees. However, depending on your Gantt structure, you may want to show different kinds of resources. This is defined by the Resource Field setting in the Parameters, where you specify which field should be treated as the Resource identifier in the view. 

The following sections describe different filtering options for limiting visible users in the Resource View.

Show only specific users 

In some cases, the Resource View can become cluttered with users who have no tasks assigned or are not actively involved in the current project. You can show only users with tasks or a specific role. There are multiple ways to filter users:

1. Show only users with tasks assigned

Starting from version 24.1.1, there is a new "Hide No Task Resources" button on the Gantt toolbar.

By default, all the resources are shown:

Once you toggle the button, all resources with no tasks are hidden from the Gantt page:

It is also possible to configure the behavior in a way that Resources with no tasks are hidden, and the button is toggled by default.

To do so, you should add the following snippet into the Polarion Administration (Global or Project) -> Configuration Properties:

nextedy.gantt.resources.hiding=true

2. Show assignees by role

There is also a possibility to show only users with a specific role. To do so, use the following script in Configuration Properties:

gantt.assignee.role=project_role_id

• By default, it points to project_assignable user role.
• With this script, you can filter any other user role you use in your project
• Once you do this, Gantt will show:
  • All the users who have some tasks assigned in the Gantt;
  • All users who are in this specific project role

If you want to display only users who have at least one task assigned in the current Gantt project, add the following line to Configuration Properties:

gantt.assignee.role=fake_role

• The value fake_role doesn’t need to exist - this effectively hides all users without tasks, as none match the given role, and only those with actual assignments remain visible.
• To do so, you should put a nonexistent role after the "=" sign. 

For more information about filtering in Gantt, refer to this article. The article describes various methods to filter Gantt widget for example by Resources or Allocation bubbles.

What items are counted

By default, only last-level child items are counted as a load for assignees in the Resource load. This ensures that only real, hands-on work is counted for each user, and parent items aren’t counted twice. 

Here's how it works - only Tasks and Work Packages that don't have any child items are counted:

Count all items in the Resource load

You may find it useful to have higher-level items counted in Resource Load. This can be useful when you track and allocate effort at multiple levels intentionally.

To make all Work packages count in the Resource view, you should put the following script in Widget Properties -> Gantt Config Script:

nextedy.gantt.config.onlyLeafTasks=false

Note: only WIs with Item Gantt Presentation Mode may be loaded currently. 

All Items are counted on the Resource view:

Skip some tasks in the calculation

If you want to skip calculations for any Work Item based on any specific condition, you can set task.load=0 in the Item Script. You might consider using this approach when task-level planning is tracked elsewhere. For example, if you want to keep only Work Packages to be counted on the Resource View, you can add the following script into the Item Script:

if(wi.getType().getId()==="task") {
      task.load=0;
}

Calculate Resource Load globally, show project timeline only

Sometimes you want to show the project plan in the timeline, but in the Resource View, the system should count items from other projects as well.

You can achieve this by querying Items from multiple projects:

and filtering out one project on the timeline pane of the Gantt chart. To filter the items out from the timeline pane, you need to use Item Script. Here is an example script block that filters out every Item from the project different from "gantt2":

task.filter = true;
if(wi.getProjectId() === "gantt2"){
    task.filter = false;
}

Effort calculation

Effort calculation in the Resource View is directly linked to either the calendar of each Assignee (e.g, Working hours), Team Assignment configuration, or their Work Item calendar. This means that the system distributes effort only on the days when the Assignee is available to work, for example, taking into account working days, public holidays, or individual part-time schedules. If a task is assigned to a team, the calendar of the team or the specific member taking ownership determines how the effort is spread across the timeline. 

Here are a few specific cases that might be helpful in your setup.

Split the effort between multiple assignees

There are 2 possible ways to count a task's effort if it has multiple assignees. By default, the effort is shown equally for all assignees. So, for example, if a task has an initial estimate of 4 days in the resource view, it will be shown as 4 days for all assignees.

But in some cases, you may find it more useful to divide the effort equally between the assignees. To do so, you should add this line to the Administration -> Configuration Properties:

nextedy.gantt.multiAssignmentSameEffortForAll=false

Cell colors customisation 

By default, Gantt uses two colors for allocation cells (bubbles), which store calculation in Resource view - green for acceptable allocation and red for overallocation. However, there is a possibility to customise those bubbles, which creates a more intuitive, efficient, and visually clear resource allocation tracking system.

Default colours:

Customised colours:

Dynamic approach - define via Gantt Config Script or Configuration Properties

Starting with Gantt version 25.3.2, you may use a more dynamic approach to customising the bubble colors. This approach depends on the allocation and applies to Resource Load Calculations of the types 'Estimate + Spent' and 'Remaining Estimate'.

Add the following code snippet to Advanced > Gantt Config Script

nextedy.gantt.config.resourceMarkersColorConfig = {percentages: [50,100,150], colors: ['lightgreen','#51C185','orange','#FF8686']}

Please make sure to follow these requirements to ensure the script works:

• less than or equal to 50% → lightgreen
• more than 50% and less than or equal to 100% → #51c185
• more than 100% and less than or equal to 150% → orange
• more than 150% → #ff8686

Since version 25.4.1 this approach now also works the same way when defined via Configuration Properties for project or global level configuration

Static approach - define via Script - Block Widget

This method replaces the default colors with any custom ones. To use this approach, add a Script - block widget on the page where your Gantt chart is displayed and insert the following CSS code:

<style>.resource_marker .marker_ok {     background-color: black !important;    color: red  !important; } .resource_marker .marker_over {     background-color: #FF8686;     color: orange;}</style> 

• marker_ok: Overwrites the marker that indicates allocation as OK (default green bubble). 
• marker_over: Overwrites the marker where allocation is overloaded (default red bubble).

By changing background-color and color, you can apply any color combination that suits your needs. 

For any assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out by submitting a ticket here.