Availability Heatmap
Overview
The availability heatmap provides Altus Resource Managers with the ability to review assignments by resource and see over / under allocations in real-time.
The availability heatmap has a number of key features:
- Hours dropdown
- Select period
- Filter by Keyword
- View dropdown
- More dropdown
- Actions
Features
Hours dropdown
The resource grid displays data in Hours by default. However, you can select from several input modes:
Days: Enter effort in calendar days. The system automatically converts days to hours using the default calendar (e.g., 8 hours/day → 10 days = 80 hours). This mode is ideal for planners who prefer to allocate resources by days rather than hours. Row and column totals will display the total hours (not averaged like FTEs), and overall totals will be suffixed with "Days". Precision is accepted as per settings, and values are stored in hours. Granularity matches the pattern for hours (scheduled or capacity days/workdays depending on resource type).
FTEs: Converts the entered hours to a proportion of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) based on the default calendar. For example, if a full-time resource works 8 hours per day, 40 hours per week, then 20 hours would be shown as 0.5 FTE. This mode is useful for high-level planning and comparing resource allocations across projects or periods. Note: FTE totals are averaged, not summed, to reflect proportional allocation.
Capacity (%): Converts the entered hours to a percentage of the resource's available capacity for the period, based on their calendar and working pattern. For example, if a resource is available for 40 hours in a week and is allocated 20 hours, this will show as 50%. This mode helps visualize how much of a resource's time is committed versus available, supporting capacity management and avoiding over-allocation. Note: Totals are not available in Capacity (%) mode because each cell and row may be based on a different capacity value, so summing or averaging would not be meaningful.
Period
By default, the availability heatmap will default to show the current month and the next two months. The user can use the period control to change the months shown in the grid:
Filters
The availability heatmap enables the user to either edit the out of the box filters or use the search box to filter the contents of the availability heatmap by keywords specified by the user.
View dropdown
The view dropdown provides the user with the following additional options:
- Period: This changes the granularity of data in the grid. Default is monthly but this can be changed as required (Year, Month, Week, and Day).
- Show/Hide: This enables the user to show/hide the columns and rows in the grid as required. Default is for all of these to be on except for "Full Column Heading".
The colour coding in the heatmap is the same, irrespective of the views/filtering applied to the heatmap.
More dropdown
The more dropdown provides the user with the following additional options:
- Refresh: Enables the data in the grid to be refreshed. This can be useful if some requests have been approved and the project manager is still looking at stale data.
- Full Screen Mode: Pops out the resource plan to take up full screen. This makes it easier to see more periods of data.
- Expand All: Enables the user to easily see all resource demand data without opening up each project/proposal individually.
- Collapse All: Enables the user to collapse all resource demand data back to the project/proposal level without doing this for each project/proposal individually.
Actions
Each row in the grid has an ellipsis next to it. This is where the following further actions can be undertaken:
- Open Resource: Enables the user to open the bookable resource record for the selected resource.
- Open Project: Enables the user to open the project record for the selected project.
- Open Details: Opens up the request details.
Colouring
The Availability Heatmap gives users a quick view regarding the resources availability with colourings to show their status:
- Blue cells show that the resource is under-utilised and available to be allocated to projects.
- Green cells show that the resource is utilised and have no remaining available hours, up to 10% overallocation would still appear as green.
- Blue/Green cells show gradient of how utilised a resource is.
- Red cells show that the resource is over-utilised (more than 10%) and will need to be reviewed and balanced.
- Red text shows on the availability cell when a resource is over-utilised (committed > capacity, no tolerance) accompanied with a clock icon. See example below:
In this example, Alexandra is overcommitted by 6% on the week of the 20th January whereas she has been overcommitted by 11% the week of the 27th January, explaining the red background, red text and clock icon.
Note
- Resources need to have an associated Enterprise Calendar for their Availability to be calculated.
- The overallocation acceptance margin (10%) is not configurable
Hover Over Dialog
When a user hovers over a cell in the Availability Heatmap, the following dialog box pops up. This provides the user with further information about the availability calculation so that they can make an informed decision about resource allocation.
- The Committed cell will be locked and show as N/A in Capacity (%) entry mode with a tooltip note and a warning icon to inform users why it has been locked.
- When a resource with no capacity is committed in the Hours or FTEs entry mode, the Committed cell in Capacity (%) mode will show as red, consistent to the other entry modes.
Named Resources
If a resource has no capacity for a period, it will be shown with an alert in the capacity field. Resources may have no capacity if they have calendar exceptions for the period.
Generic Resources
Generic Resources do not have the concept of Availability. Therefore, Availability cells for generic resources are empty. Resource Managers cannot commit on Generic Resources. Therefore, Committed cells for generic resources are showing 0.0.
