Finding who is free next Thursday
Availability questions arrive with no warning and need an answer in minutes. Asking four leads in a channel produces four confident answers that disagree.
A client needs two days of somebody senior next Thursday. Whoever answers has to know three separate things at once.
Who is already booked. Who is on approved leave. Whether Thursday is a company holiday at all.
Those three live in one grid. Person against day of month, hours in each cell, with leave and holidays drawn on top.
The grid rewards complete entry. Allocate every person's hours and free genuinely means free. Grouping by project rather than by person shows what a reallocation would disturb, which is usually the real question hiding behind who is free.
Why one record instead of two
One question, three records, one answer. Allocated hours are a delivery fact. Approved leave is an HR fact. The holiday calendar is a company fact. They meet on a single grid because they sit in a single database. The answer takes seconds rather than a round of messages.
What is switched on
- Resource allocation
- Person by day, with under, partial, full and over bands, plus leave and holiday overlays.
- Leave
- Approved leave writes itself onto the grid, so nobody offers a day that is already gone.
- Holidays
- A company holiday is marked on the grid rather than remembered.
- Skills
- Senior developer is a skills question before it is a capacity question.
- Projects
- The grid groups by project as well as by person, which shows what would have to move.
- Directory
- Department and reporting line narrow the search before the grid is read.
What the week looks like
The question arrives
Open the capacity grid on the month and find Thursday's column.
Thirty seconds in
Cells read as under, partial, full or over. A holiday or leave marker settles it faster.
Next
Check skills, because free and suitable are different questions.
Then
Group by project to see what a reallocation would disturb.
Answer
Reply with a name and a caveat, not a guess.
After
Allocate the hours so the next person to ask sees Thursday as taken.
Questions people ask
Does the capacity plan know about approved leave?
Yes. Approved leave and company holidays appear as overlays on the grid, so an approval in the leave module changes what the planner sees.
Can the grid show a whole project rather than a person?
Yes. It groups by users or by projects, and switches between a timeline view and a data table.
Does it warn when somebody is overbooked?
Yes, on the grid itself. Cells are banded against the expected day, and anything past a full day reads as Over, so an overbooked person stands out.