Top 10 Resource Scheduling Tips
Power up your Float experience with these top tips.
When we visit with our customers, we’re always pleasantly surprised to see the different approaches they take in scheduling their teams with Float. Observing this process allows us to uncover lots of fascinating insights, clever workarounds, and helpful scheduling tips.
Below, we’ve compiled a top 10 of our customer’s favorites — and a few of our own — to help power up your Float experience!
1. West Coast office have a half day on Friday? Allocate time off to a department or group.
The new time off feature includes a handy option that allows you to apply time off to just one person individually or many people.
Simply filter the schedule by a set of departments or tags, allocate time off to one of your members, and change the assignment to ‘all viewable.’
2. Updating your team’s schedule? Save time with keyboard shortcuts.
The Float right-click menu allows you to edit scheduled tasks using a range of powerful tools. However, it’s also possible to bypass this menu entirely thanks to keyboard shortcuts!
Need to split a task? Click ‘S’ and split the task with one click, then return to adding tasks by clicking ‘A.’ Want to insert time off between an extended set of tasks? Click ‘I’ and schedule the time off; all other tasks will be moved back the equivalent days.
3. Deadline change? Multi-select and move tasks together.
Creating ‘dependencies’ is a standard project management technique used to link between tasks. Float makes this possible with its multi-select feature.
If a deadline changes, you can move multiple tasks at once by holding ‘Shift,’ selecting the impacted tasks, and dragging one of them to a new start date.
Now they’ll all move together; click ‘Escape’ to deselect.
4. Setting up a team from scratch? Multi-select to assign departments and tags.
When it comes to grouping team members into departments or by locations and skills, some things are simply better in bulk.
Both the People and Projects sections allow for multi-select actions.Hold ‘Shift,’ select the relevant users/projects, and then click ‘Actions’ from the multi-select menu.
Options include the ability to assign departments, adding and removing tags, and moving to another location.
5. Schedule a mess? Clean up the clutter with the Split tool.
Float uses clever calculations to present your team’s tasks as clear (and gap free) as possible. But what about that one annoying task that is overhanging?
That’s where the split tool comes in handy.
Select ‘split’ from the right-click tools (or the ‘s’ keyboard shortcut), and click to break up into smaller allocations. The newly split tasks will stick to the top and your schedule and remove those unsightly gaps!
6. The team needs to request resources? Create a special ‘request’ project.
While Float doesn’t have a dedicated workflow for approving time allocations, that hasn’t stopped our customer from coming up with their own!
First, create a project called ‘Request’ (you can give it a unique color that’s easy to identify), and mark the project as ‘Tentative’ so the tasks can be excluded in Reports if you choose.
Next, set the requester as the Project Manager of this project. This is the only project they can schedule. The PM is now free to schedule their resource requirements, adding task notes for additional guidance.
You can filter the schedule by the ‘Request’ project to view requests, reassign the tasks to a confirmed Project, and update or delete the request.
7. Planning a project without the full team? Create unassigned people.
It’s common when planning a new project not to have the full team in place. You may need to hire new members or call on a previous contractor, etc. Creating unassigned people on the schedule lets you plan ahead.
First, create a new person and call them ‘X Unassigned.’ The X will ensure that they appear at the bottom of the schedule when sorting alphabetically.
Next, mark the person as a ‘Contractor’ so you can exclude their hours from your employees in Reports. Add the proposed job title and any relevant department or skill tags so that you can track these requirements later on.
Finally, schedule the proposed hours and tasks and drag the tasks to the assigned team members as they’re confirmed.
8. Have numerous offices that don’t share resources? Create multiple Float teams.
When it comes to teams, departments, and tags, Float offers a flexible approach to managing your time. For larger teams, setting up the right hierarchy is crucial.
If you don’t plan on sharing resources across groups (perhaps you operate in different offices, time zones, project teams, etc.), then it’s best to create a new Float team for each.
Multiple teams mean the schedules will be separate and allow for individual time zones, account settings, and billing setup. To manage the teams, you can use the same email address for each account and simply switch between team views using the selector in the top left corner of Float.
9. Tired of double-entry across apps? Let Zapier do the work for you.
Zapier is a smart service for sharing data between apps that you already use. It has virtually limitless combinations and can save you the hassle of entering the same team or project information over and over again.
Some example ‘zaps’ include:
- Create Float projects from Trello boards
- Create Basecamp projects from Float projects
- Send new Harvest projects to Float
Or create a unique zap all on your own! Learn more about what Zapier and Float can do together here.
10. Typing in the same search over and over? Save your favorites for quick recall.
Let’s say you regularly view your schedule by a department (Creative), tag (NYC Office), and people (Chris and Sarah — creative directors of the department).
Repeatedly typing these keywords can get tiresome quickly. Instead, type the search once, hit the bookmark icon, and save the search as a short name, e.g., ‘NYcreate.’
The next time you type ‘NYcreate’ into the search box, the same team will display! Unlike tags, saved searches are for your eyes only, so feel free to customize them however you like.
That’s it for our top 10 tips list! We hope you found these helpful. We’d love to hear your favorite Float tips in the comments below.
Spending too much time buried in spreadsheets trying to manage your team’s schedule? Power up with Float. Start a free 30-day trial: www.float.com.
