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Managing assignments

How to create and manage assignments

Nicole avatar
Written by Nicole
Updated over a week ago

Adding assignments

Creating assignments and planning out work in Runn is easy. After adding a person to a project on the Planner, simply click into the timeline to choose the start date, then drag your mouse across the planner to create an assignment for that person.  

One-day assignments

To create a one-day assignment, simply click on a cell on the Planner in the Month or Quarter view. Hit enter to quickly save the assignment with the default settings or make edits on the quick editor, then save.

One-week assignments

When you're in the Half Year view, assignments are created for an entire week by default, making it really quick and easy to plan out weekly work and sprints.
Click into the cell on the Planner and hit enter to save the assignment with the default settings or make edits on the quick editor then save.

Managing assignments - the quick editor

When you create or click to edit an assignment on the Planner, Runn shows you a quick editor so you can review and change assignment details, including the hours per day and the overall duration of the assignment. 

From here you can also change an assignment from billable to non-billable, add a note, or open the calendar.

Quick editor fields

Effort

The Commitment field defaults to your employee's working hours, which you set-up in their employment contract. See Managing employment contracts

You can choose between the following units:

Unit on Summary:

  • Available Hours per day

  • Available Hours per week (the "week" here refers to a 5-day work week, which is Runn's default number of work days in a week)

  • Available FTE

  • Utilization %

Unit on Assignment:

  • Hours per day

  • Hours per week (the "week" here refers to a 5-day work week, which is Runn's default number of work days in a week)

  • FTE

  • Capacity %

Weekly Summary:

  • Disabled: When 'Hours per Day' is selected

  • Enabled: When 'Hours per week' is selected

  • Optional: For other effort units, you can choose to enable or disable the weekly summary

People can have assignments of up to 24 hours per day or 1FTE.

Placeholders have no time limit on the number of hours per day.

The unit you schedule assignments in will match the units shown in the planner. You can switch between different units at any time.

Work Days

Working days is the duration of your assignment, excluding weekends and time off. 

Use the up and down arrows next to the working days field to lengthen or shorten the assignment by one day. Alternatively, type a number into the field to update the duration of the assignment from the start date.

Changing the number of working days of an assignment updates the total hours (total effort), but won't affect the hours per day (effort).

Total Effort

The total effort of an assignment are the hours per day, multiplied by the working days. 

You can update the hours per day using hours:minutes format, or decimal format, e.g. 7:30 and 7.5 both mean 7 hours and 30 minutes. 

Changing the total hours of an assignment updates the Hours per day (effort) but won't affect the Working days.

Effort and Total Effort calculation

Our calculations on Effort and Total Effort are based on the unit 'Hours per day', calculated down to minutes per day (we round to the nearest minute and do not display seconds).

Formula when entering Effort:

Effort in Hours per day * Work Days = Total Effort

Work Days = calendar days - weekends - public holidays

Public Holidays exclude scheduled leave and rostered days off

When you enter the Effort to multiply across the available Work Days, you might notice an adjustment in the Total Effort. This adjustment depends on the number of available Work Days in the chosen period.

For scheduled leave and rostered days off, Runn will automatically split assignments into separate parts: before and after the leave or day off.

Formula when entering Total Effort:

Total Effort in hours / Work Days = Effort

When you enter the total effort to divide across the available Work Days, you might notice an adjustment in the total hours. This adjustment depends on the number of available Work Days in the chosen period.

Phase

If you have created phases for the project, select the project phase that the assignment corresponds to. See Project Phases for more information.

Non-billable

Tick this box to make the assignment non-billable. For more information, and the difference between billable and non-billable assignments, see Managing non-billable work

Delete

Deletes the assignment, including notes. 

Repeat

Only applicable when creating a new assignment. Select how often the assignment will repeat, and what date the repetition will end or after how many repetitions.

Notes 

Expand to add notes to assignments. See Assignment notes 

Calendar

Click the calendar icon to open the calendar for more scheduling long-term assignments that span over several months.

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