Resource Constraints table and timeline

The Resource Constraints area of the view provides important status information. In addition, availability or unavailability information is rolled up to provide, at a glance, the information you need about how the resource constraints are affecting task scheduling. You can expand a resource constraint category to investigate individual resource constraints and determine exactly how they are affecting scheduling. The Resource Constraints chart is empty if no task is selected in the Gantt chart.

Resource constraint status

Each row in the Resource Constraints table has a status. The first Resource Constraints row has a green status if the task has an available time; if the task does not have an available time, the Resource Constraints status is blank. If the Resource Constraints row has a green status, a green bar in the first row of timeline indicates an available time for the task. If you cannot see the green bar in the timeline, you can zoom out to display more time in the timeline.

Each individual constraint category also displays status. If a constraint status is green, that indicates that the constraint defines time windows that are available; for example, a change window is an available time for scheduling a task. A red status indicates that the constraint defines time windows that are not available for scheduling, such as blackout periods.

Resource constraint roll-ups

The first Resource Constraints row of the table rolls up information from the constraint categories displayed in subsequent rows. If Resource Constraints is displayed in bold, that indicates that at least one constraint category beneath the first row is affecting scheduling of the selected task.

Each constraint category row also rolls up information from the rows beneath. If an individual constraint category is displayed in bold, that indicates that there are child nodes beneath that category name. For example if Blackout Periods is in bold, you can expand the category to view the specific blackout periods that apply to the task; if Change Windows is bold, you can expand the category to view the change windows that apply.

With the exception of the Owner Groups constraint category, each category rolls up subsequent rows to display the combined available or unavailable time periods for that category. For example, the main Blackout Periods row displays, in the timeline, red bars to indicate all of the blackout periods in the child rows; the main Change Windows row displays green bars to indicate all of the child change windows; the Owner row displays green bars to indicate all of the times when the task owner is free to perform the task, if the owner has defined work shifts; and so on.

If an Owner Group is specified for the task, rollup occurs differently. When you expand the Owner Group category, each member of the owner group is listed, with red bars in their respective rows to indicate times when they are not available. However, if one or more person is available for the task, the main Owner Group row shows an available status. If all of the people are unavailable, the bar in the main Owner Group row shows time when nobody is available.

Both the Owner and Owner Group categories display status information only if the owners or owner group members have work shifts defined in the People application.

Investigating resource constraints

After you expand a resource constraint category to view individual instances of that constraint, you can launch directly to the application in which the constraint is defined. Click the arrow for the name of the constraint to launch to the application. For example, to view details about a particular change window constraint, select the row that contains the constraint, and click the arrow for the name of a change window to launch to the Change Window Calendars application. After you have viewed the details that you want to see, click Return to return to the Graphical Scheduling application.