TimeMaker Matrix Lesson 9 - Load Leveling Part 2 (Calendar)
TM Matrix Lesson 9 – Calendar Load Leveling
Prerequisites:
1. Study Messages and E-mails Load Leveling Lesson.
We will now go over how to work with Work Leveling by taking a look at the “Show Calendar Items” icon.
Clicking this button shows a bar display of the calendar of all selected Performers,. You can see what their day looks like in terms of their scheduling. The basic idea is to give a quick way to show the loads meetings create so when one assigns a Production Item to you or others, it is done with full view of the actual load the Performer is confronting for that day, week, etc. and so makes sure the Performer is not overloaded.
To understand how this works, before we continue we’ll need to look at the Calendar Users Legend. It assigns every user you have a right to view, a certain color. Clicking this icon automatically make a random re-generation of colors for each user. Clicking on the color to the left of the user name opens a Color selection tool where we can assign a specific color to that specific user manually.
The Matrix’s calendar view is shown as a bar display of the number of hours of work or meetings scheduled for that day for that person according to color. So voila! You can look at the Calendar Users Legend here, find a Performer and his or her color, in this case Meir’s and see on the Matrix Calendar how many hours of his day are already taken up. Cool huh? One trick if you want to hide the Calendar Users Legend is to go here to the left edge and double-click - it will hide. Moving the mouse to the side will bring the panel into view. To keep it there permanently again, just double-click anywhere on this line.
The pull down menu gives the following options:
Calendar Items Double Height – When unselecting this option (it is selected by default) the height and size of the calendar on the Matrix reduces. This can be used when working on a small screen for example.
Paint Calendar as Bars – this option presents all the day’s appointments as a bar indicating the accumulation of the overall time assigned to appointments for that day, rather than showing the appointments as blocks of time at the exact time of the appointment. In other words, you can see how much time is set aside for appointments for the day; it just doesn’t display it according to the actual time of appointment.
Join all Calendars in Group – While this option is selected, all calendars of all selected Performers will show in one box on the column for dates where things are scheduled. Unselecting this option creates one box for each Performer’s Calendar for that day in its column.