Workload Charts

Workload charts are a part of the Wrike for Professional Services package and Wrike Resource add-on. Business and higher accounts can trial and purchase Wrike for Professional Services and Wrike Resource. Once the package or add-on are enabled in the account, regular and external users can use Workload charts.

• Overview
• Important Information
• How to Use Workload Charts
• Create a Workload Chart
• Navigate Workload Charts
• Customize Workload Charts
• Share Workload Charts
• Edit Workload Charts
• Delete Workload Charts

Overview

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

An essential part of the Workload charts is Backlog Box, which contains tasks that you can assign to users on a Workload chart. Please visit the Backlog Box page to learn more about it.

This page contains an overview of Workload charts, how to use them, and how to set them up. To learn more about working with tasks on the Workload charts, please visit the Manage Tasks on Workload Charts page.

Important Information

• Only scheduled assigned tasks appear on Workload charts.

How to Use Workload Charts

Workload charts display tasks from the location you select when you create a chart. Your team members’ capacity is affected only by the tasks that have effort, so choose one of the following options that works best for you:

• Build a chart with tasks from a specific folder, project, or space: This option will work if all your tasks are included within a specific location. To apply it, select a folder, project, or space in Step 3 of creating a chart.
  
• Build a chart with tasks from the whole account: Choose this option if tasks that your team is working on are spread across different folders, projects, and spaces. To apply it, don't select anything in Step 3 of creating a chart.
  
• Build a chart with tasks from several folders or projects: Select this option if your tasks are spread across several locations. To use it, first create a new folder in a space, include all necessary folders and projects in that new folder, and then select this new folder in Step 3 of creating a chart.
  

Create a Workload Chart

To create a Workload chart:

1. Click the “Workload” tab (at the top of the workspace).
2. Click “Create Workload chart.”
3. In the pop-up that opens:
   
   • Specify the chart’s title.
   • Select users or user groups whose workload you want to view on the chart:
     • Select the "Custom list" option if you want to add users to the chart manually.
     • Select "Account members" to link the workload chart to the list of all users in the account (including collaborators). You won't be able to edit the list of users manually, but if users are added to the account, they’ll be automatically added to the list of users for this Workload chart. The same is true for when you delete a user from the account.
     • Select “Current user” to make the chart show only the workload of the user that opens the chart.
     • To see all users (including collaborators) and edit the list manually, click "Unlink" at the center of the pop-up. Note that if you choose this option,, you’ll have to add/delete users from the Workload chart manually.
     • To remove all users from the Custom list, click the "Clear all" button.
   • (Optional) Select a folder, project, or space to pull tasks from. Click “Advanced settings” and “Select Folder or Project.” Select a folder, project, or space from the list (or start typing its name and select it once it appears).
4. Click “Create.”

Your chart is created and you can see the selected users and tasks from the selected location assigned to these users. Now you can proceed to configure the Backlog Box which will contain the tasks that need to be allocated to users on the Workload chart.

🖐 Note! Folder-, project-, or space-based Workload charts display tasks from the selected folder/project location as well as tasks from all subfolders and subprojects.

Navigate Workload Charts

To open a chart:

1. Click the “Workload” tab (at the top of the workspace).
2. Select the chart from the list.

What you see on the chart

1. User list

• Users selected during the chart creation appear on the left side.
  

2. Calendar grid

• On the grid you can see the total daily or weekly amount of allocated effort per user.
• Drag the grid to the left to see previous time periods or drag right to see the future ones.
• Today’s date is marked with a red vertical line on the grid.
• Gray cells represent non-working days. On weekly view, weekends are visible only when you drag and drop tasks or create new ones.

3. Allocated effort

• The calendar grid part of the chart shows a user’s workload. Wrike adds up effort required for all tasks assigned to a person and scheduled for a particular day or week and shows the number in this day’s or week’s column and this user’s row.
• Wrike uses a color-coding system to show how busy a person is. If the daily effort of a user is:
  • 0 hours: The cell is white.
  • 0-8 hours: A portion of the cell representing the occupied time is colored pale blue.
  • 8+ hours: The cell is red.

You can also set a custom allocation limit for each user on the chart whose workdays differ from 8 hours. In this case, the cell color will depend on the individual settings.

4. Tasks

• Click on the caret icon to the left of a user’s name to display the tasks assigned to them on the calendar grid.
• Tasks are represented by bars that extend from the task’s start to end date.
• The bars are color-coded based on the task’s status. Tasks with specified effort have brighter colored bars than tasks without it.
• 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.
• Note: You can create and edit tasks directly from a Workload chart. Visit the Manage Tasks on Workload Charts page to learn how to do that.

Customize Workload Charts

Group tasks by their projects

Click the “Add grouping” button 1 in the upper-left corner of the chart and select “Project.” Each user’s tasks are automatically grouped by the projects that they are housed in.
The tasks are grouped by the closest parent project. For example, if a task is housed within a folder that’s housed within a project, the task will be grouped with other tasks from that project.
If a task doesn’t have any parent projects, it’s grouped under “Non-project tasks.”
Note: You won’t be able to create new tasks on the Workload chart if grouping by project is enabled.

Group users by job role

Click the “Add grouping” button 1 and select “Job role.”
All users on your chart are automatically grouped by their allocated job roles. Users without a job role are grouped under the “No job role” section.

Change the zoom level of the calendar grid

Change zoom to see the daily or weekly effort total assigned to each user. Click on the drop-down menu icon 2 in the upper-right corner of the grid and select days or weeks.

Change the way allocated effort is displayed on the grid

Click the drop-down in the upper-right corner of the view (to the left of the "Backlog Box" button) and select one of the three options:

• Hours: The total allocated effort of each user for the day/week/month is displayed in hours. This is the default option.
• Percentages: The total allocated effort is displayed as a percentage. E.g., if a user's daily capacity is 8 hours, the total allocated effort of 4 hours will be displayed as 50% for that day in the daily zoom.
• Full-time equivalents (FTE): The total allocated effort is displayed as a decimal number. E.g., if a user has a daily capacity of 8 hours and a 5-day workweek, 1 FTE = 8h/day or 40h/week. If that user has 4 hours of allocated effort for a day, it'll be displayed as 0.5 FTE in the cell on the daily zoom. If the user has 30 hours of effort allocated in a week, the cell will show 0.75 FTE on the weekly zoom.
  Note: When grouping by job role is enabled, the FTEs of all people who are grouped together are added up. If three grouped users have an 8-hour daily capacity, two of them have 8 hours of allocated effort, and the third one has 4 hours allocated, the cell of the job role under which they are grouped will display 2.5 FTE.

Change display density

You can choose between compact or standard density modes depending on your preferences:

1. Click the toggle button. 3
2. Select “Compact" or "Standard."

Note: The default display density for Workload charts is standard.

Filter tasks on Workload chart

Apply filters to see only the tasks that match the criteria you select:

• Click the filter icon in the upper-left corner of the chart and select one of the quick filters: "All tasks," "All active tasks," and "Active tasks with Effort."
• Click "Add more filters" to open the filter panel with additional filtering options.
• Click "Clear filters" to remove all filters and see all tasks from the location you selected when creating the chart.

Daily allocation hours

You can choose whether or not the total daily effort for each user should be based on their filtered-out tasks in the Workload chart.

1. Click the toggle button.
2. Select one of the following options from the list beneath “Daily allocation hours”:
   
   • “Ignore filters” – This will add up effort for all tasks assigned to a person and scheduled for a particular day or week, whether or not those tasks are displayed in the chart.
   • “Displayed tasks only” – To exclude effort in filtered-out tasks from being added to the daily or weekly total for each user.

If there's a dashed underline for the total number of daily allocated hours, this means that the person has other tasks planned for this day with more allocated effort. These tasks aren't displayed on the chart because they’re filtered out by the “Displayed tasks only” option.

Focus on particular users

You can select which users should be shown on the Workload chart without editing the list of users. To do so:

1. Click the user icon on the panel at the top of the Workload chart.
2. Select the person whose effort should be displayed from the list that appears or use the search bar.
3. After you have selected all the necessary users, click anywhere outside the window to save the changes.

Note: You can select only users from the Workload chart you're viewing.

Focus on task assignees

Use this option only for tasks with more than one assignee to see the allocated hours of all assignees of a particular task:

1. Click the task on the Workload chart.
2. Click the three-dot menu in the pop-up that appears.
3. Select “Focus on task assignees.”

Only the task assignees will be shown on the Workload chart.

Expand or collapse chart rows

You can quickly expand or collapse all rows of your Workload chart to display tasks. To do that, click the “Expand all” or “Collapse all” buttons in the upper-right corner of the chart.
Note: The expand or collapse action also applies to rows in the horizontal Backlog Box.

Share Workload Charts

By default the new Workload chart is private and only available to its owner. Start collaborating by sharing it with members of your team.

1. Click the “Workload” tab (at the top of the workspace).
2. Open the Workload chart that you want to share with members of your team.
3. Click the "Share" button in the upper-right corner of the workspace.
4. Start typing the name of the user or user group with whom you want to share the Workload chart in the search bar and select them from the dropdown list.
5. Select the access role for the user*:
   
   • Full – All user rights are available, including editing and deleting the Workload chart.
   • Editor – User can edit the Backlog Box and share the Workload chart with other users.
   • Read Only – User can view the Workload chart but isn’t able to make changes to its settings or share the chart.
6. Click "Save."

User(s) you have shared the Workload chart with will see a notification in their Inbox containing a link to the chart.
Users on Enterprise accounts can create and customize access roles and add/delete permissions for the Editor role. Note that external users can't share the Workload chart, even if they have a Full or Editor role.

*Keep in mind that this setting controls only the user’s right to make changes to the Workload chart itself and not to the tasks displayed on the chart.

Edit Workload Charts

Edit Workload charts created by or shared with you.

From the chart list:

1. Click the Workload tab (at the top of the workspace).
2. Right-click the title of a chart that you want to edit.
3. Click "Settings."

From the Workload chart:

1. Click the three-dot menu button in the upper-right corner of the chart.
2. Select "Settings."

You can:

• Rename a chart.
• Add or remove users to and from a chart. If you want to add all account users to a chart, first remove all users and user groups from the "Users" field, then click "Add all account users" at the bottom of the pop-up.

Delete Workload Charts

Delete Workload charts created by or shared with you.

From the chart list:

1. Click the “Workload” tab (at the top of the workspace).
2. Right-click the title of a chart that you want to delete.
3. Click "Delete."

From the Workload chart:

1. Click "Delete" in the chart's upper-right corner.