Resource Leveling
What Is Resource Leveling?
Resource leveling is a process that helps resolve resource overload by redistributing tasks based on specified criteria, such as user assignments and start dates. This feature ensures that tasks are balanced across available resources without exceeding capacity.
How to Enable Resource Leveling
Resource leveling is only available under certain conditions:
Constraints must be enabled: Ensure that constraints are configured and active in the chart settings. See Task Constraints
Resource Assignment: Resource assignment must be selected as resource leveling cannot be performed in case team assignment is configured.
User Permissions: Only chart managers can initiate resource leveling. Chart security roles.
Only for Standard Charts: Resource leveling is not available for Agile charts. Chart scheduling mode.
Workload Distribution Mode: Resource leveling is not available if the chart is in "Remaining Work Distribution" mode. You can check or modify this setting in the Chart Configuration under the Extended Settings tab. Workload distribution setting.
Initiating Resource Leveling
To start resource leveling:
Click the Resource Leveling icon in the toolbar.
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This opens a dialog where you can specify criteria for selecting tasks to level, such as:
"Level tasks since": Defines the date to start leveling. Tasks that finish before the selected date will be ignored. This allows you to level tasks starting from today, for example.
"Level for resources": Allows you to level all tasks or only those assigned to specific resources.
"Include" section: Lets you filter tasks by unscheduled status, progress, or task type (e.g., Jira task or internal app task).
"Firstly place all tasks on the start": Moves tasks to the "Level tasks since" position before starting the leveling process. This is useful for leveling tasks that were already leveled. Without this option, leveling for each task starts from its current date, meaning tasks will only be moved to a later date.
"Clear leveling values before start": Applies to tasks previously leveled in this scenario. Tasks will be reset to their original position before the first leveling. For instance, if a task was originally scheduled for 01-01-2025, moved to 02-01-2025 during the first leveling, and leveled again, it will either start from 01-01-2025 or 02-01-2025 depending on the state of this option.
"Change task duration if needed": Applicable only to "Fixed duration" tasks where duration and work differ. If a task has an overload, this option allows increasing the task duration to reduce the daily load. For example, a task lasting 2 days with 24 hours of work may be adjusted to 3 days (8 hours per day).
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After configuring the criteria, click Start Leveling to begin the process.
How Resource Leveling Works
Once initiated, the app redistributes tasks based on the specified criteria to resolve resource conflicts.
Leveling Changes Storage: All changes made during resource leveling are stored in a scenario (app storage). These changes are not directly saved to Jira.
Note: If you start leveling while in "Live" mode (indicated on the toolbar), the app will prompt you to create a scenario to store the leveling changes. If you are already working in a scenario, the changes will be saved in the current scenario.
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Reviewing and Saving Leveling Changes
After leveling, you can review the changes and decide whether to save them to Jira:
Switch to Scenario Mode:
After leveling, the chart will automatically switch to Scenario Mode, indicated by the scenario name appearing on the toolbar instead of "Live."
In this mode, all changes are saved only in the scenario and not in Jira.
Review Changes:
To save changes to Jira, follow the standard scenario merge process:
Click the scenario name in the toolbar.
Click the “Review changes” icon next to the scenario name.
This opens the Review Changes dialog, where you can select the changes to merge.
Save to Jira:
Click Save Selected in Jira (Live Chart) to apply the selected changes to Jira.
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Discarding Leveling Changes
If the leveling changes are not acceptable:
You can remove the scenario entirely, discarding all the changes.
Use the "Clean All Leveling" button to reset tasks to their initial positions, just as they were before the first leveling was performed.
Important Notes
Switching Back to Live Mode: Once you are done with leveling and have reviewed or saved changes, switch the chart back to Live Mode using the toolbar. In Live Mode, changes will be directly applied to Jira.
Scenario-Only Changes: While in Scenario Mode, any changes you make will remain in the scenario and will not affect Jira until you explicitly merge them.