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Workload Charts in Wrike

TL;DR

Workload charts help eligible users manage team capacity, prioritize tasks, and plan assignments. You can access them from the More menu or directly from a space’s Tools section. Charts show users or projects on the left and a time-based grid on the right with allocated effort by day, week, or month. Colors indicate workload status: blue = within capacity, red = over capacity, and gray hatching = work outside the current chart. You can view tasks as bars on the timeline, create tasks directly in the chart, and use the Backlog Box to organize unassigned work and plan ahead.

Table 1. Availability - Legacy plans

Wrike Resource Wrike for Professional Services Wrike for Professional Services Performance

Table 2. Availability

Free Team Business Pinnacle Apex
Availability: Business, Pinnacle, Apex. ; Unavailability: Free, Team;

Overview

All users, except for Collaborators, Contributors and Viewers can use Workload charts.

Use Workload charts to manage your team members’ capacity, prioritize tasks based on their capacity, and plan work allocation.

The Backlog Box in Workload charts helps you organize tasks that aren’t assigned yet, so you can plan ahead and see if your team has enough capacity for upcoming work. 

Please visit the Backlog Box page to learn more about it.

How to Navigate to Workload Charts

To open the Workload charts section of your workspace:

  1. Click on More menu 1 in your sidebar and select Workload 2.

    Navigate to Workload charts 1.png
  2. You’ll see a list of all your available Workload charts. Click any chart to open it, or click the Create a workload chart 3 button if you want to to create one.
  3. Workload charts are available as tools in spaces, so you can open a specific chart directly from the space where it’s added. If you don’t have any charts yet, create one by clicking the + 4 next to Tools in your sidebar and selecting Workload charts 5.

What You See on Workload Charts

  1. User or project list
    1. People Mode: By default, all Workload charts are set to People mode. This means you see the list of users selected during the chart creation on the left side.
    2. Projects Mode: If you set your chart to Projects mode, the left side of the chart will display the list of projects from the location you selected as the source when creating the chart.
  2. Calendar grid
    1. The grid shows the total daily, weekly, or monthly 1 amount of allocated effort per user.
    2. Gray Cells: Represent non-working days 2. In the weekly view, weekends are visible only when you drag and drop tasks or create new ones. In the monthly view, weekends are not visible.
    3. Today's Date: Marked with a red vertical line 3 on the grid.
    4. Navigating the Grid: Drag the grid to the left to see previous time periods or drag right to see future ones. Alternatively, use the < and > 4 buttons in the upper-right corner of the chart to navigate through time periods. Use the Today button 5 to quickly return to today's date.
       
  3. Allocated effort
    1. The calendar grid part of the chart shows a user’s workload. Wrike sums up the effort required for all tasks assigned to a person and scheduled for a particular day, week, or month, displaying the total in the corresponding column and row 1.
    2. You can also group people by job roles or skills.
    3. Effort Display Modes: You can choose to display total effort in hours, percentages, or full-time equivalents 2.
    4. Full Workload View: See a user’s full workload at a glance - any effort assigned outside the current chart appears as a diagonal stripe or hatching pattern in their cell.
    5. Click the Legend button 3 in the upper-right corner to understand the color meanings, and click on a cell for detailed information about the allocated effort 4.
  4. Color Coding and Overload Indicators : Wrike uses colors to show your workload at a glance.
    1. Blue: Indicates time allocated up to your daily capacity (8 hours by default) 1.
    2. Red: Highlights when you’re over your daily capacity 2.
    3. Gray diagonal hatching: Shows extra allocation outside of what’s displayed in this chart (like work on other projects or filtered-out items) 3.
    4. In weekly or monthly zoom, or in groupings (like job roles, user attributes, or Project mode), you might see a small red dot.
    5. This dot 4 means that at least one user in the group went over their daily capacity on at least one day, even if the total capacity for the period isn’t exceeded.

      A cell can be red even if the number shown is below your daily capacity. This happens when your total allocation, including work outside this chart, goes over your limit.
      Example: Your daily capacity is 8 hours. The chart shows 2 hours, but other projects add 8 more hours. The cell displays 2 hours with a grey diagonal hatch and is colored red.

Tip

You can set a custom allocation limit in a user’s work schedule if their workdays differ from eight hours. The cell color will adjust based on these custom settings. When grouping by job role or fields in user profiles, cells are color-coded according to the total effort allocation of all users with that role.

5.  Tasks

  • Show tasks: Click a user’s or project’s name to display their tasks on the grid 1.
  • Task bars: Each task appears as a bar stretching from its start date to its end date 2.
  • Color coding: Tasks with set effort show brighter bars than tasks without effort specified 3.
  • The horizontal red line above some tasks means that these tasks have the flexible effort type and the total effort is different from the sum of allocated hours 4.

Tip

You can create new tasks directly on a Workload chart. You can drag and drop tasks or projects from the Backlog Box onto the chart to assign them to users.

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