{{tl-dr}}
An urgent task lands on your desk. The deadline is tight. The first question you ask is, "Who can take this on?" You start the mental gymnastics of resource planning: Is Alex free this week? Is Sarah already overloaded after that last big push? Making the wrong choice leads to team burnout, missed deadlines, and a project that starts to wobble.
This guesswork is where projects fail. Without a clear Jira reports of your team’s real-time capacity, you are planning in the dark. This is where a clear availability report becomes your most essential tool. It’s the difference between proactive leadership and reactive fire-fighting. ActivityTimeline provides the definitive answer with its Person and Team Availability Reports, giving you a precise, real-time view of your team's available bandwidth.
What Happens When You Don’t Have an Accurate Availability Report?
When you can't accurately see who is available, you expose your projects and your team to significant risks. The success of a project depends on the health of its entire body of work, not just the head and shoulder of the initial plan. Overlooking the details of your team's capacity is like ignoring the foundation of a building—eventually, cracks will appear.
Here are the consequences of guessing team capacity:
- Team Burnout: Constantly overloading your top performers is the fastest way to lose them. You might think you're maximizing efficiency, but you're actually creating an unsustainable work environment. When there is no slack in the system, a single unexpected illness can derail an entire project timeline, forcing others to pick up the slack and pushing them closer to burnout.
- Missed Deadlines: Assigning a critical task to a team member who is already at 110% capacity means something has to give. Deadlines become questionable, and stakeholder trust begins to erode. Without a clear view, you can't see the traffic jam of tasks you're creating.
- Inefficient Resource Allocation: You almost certainly have team members with available hours who are ready for a new challenge. Without visibility, however, they remain underutilized while their colleagues are swamped. This imbalance is not only inefficient but also demoralizing for the entire team.
- Poor Forecasting: You cannot confidently commit your team to new projects if you don’t have a data-driven understanding of their true available capacity. This leads to a cycle of overpromising and under-delivering, which can damage your reputation.
{{rich-cta-1}}
Gaining Clarity with ActivityTimeline's Availability Reports
ActivityTimeline cuts through the fog of resource planning by offering two distinct, powerful reports designed to give you clarity at both the individual and team level: the Person Availability Report and the Team Availability Report.
The Person Availability Report is a document that focuses on an individual, displaying the number of available hours (or a percentage) for a single person. It answers the tactical, day-to-day question: "Can this specific team member handle one more task this week?" This report calculates availability by taking a person’s defined capacity and subtracting the remaining estimates of all their scheduled Jira tasks and custom events like meetings or vacations.
The Team Availability Report provides the big-picture, strategic view. It is a consolidated report that shows the team's overall available capacity over a selected period. It helps you answer the crucial long-term question: "Does our engineering team have the collective bandwidth to take on a new major initiative next quarter?" It’s an essential tool for high-level planning, helping you align your resource strategy with your business goals.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Generating an Availability Report
ActivityTimeline makes it simple to generate report data on your team’s bandwidth. In just a few steps, you can get the insights you need to make informed decisions. Here’s how to create your desired report.
Step 1: Navigate to the Reports Page
First, Maps to the main reporting section of the application. From the top navigation bar in ActivityTimeline, click on the "Reports" icon. This will take you to the main reports page, where you'll find a list of Featured reports and an option for 'Other reports'.
Step 2: Find the Right Report
You will find the Person Availability Report and Team Availability Report under the 'Other reports' tab, located in the Forecasting Reports section. Select the report type that fits your needs—individual or team-wide.
Step 3: Configure Your Report Parameters
Once you select a report, a configuration screen appears. This is where you tailor the report to get the exact information you need.
- Select the Team or Person: Choose the specific team or person you want to analyze from the dropdown list.
- Define the Period: The default period is one month, but you can choose any number of months from 1 to 12 or set a custom date range to match your planning cycle, whether it's a two-week sprint or a quarterly forecast.
- Choose the Format: Decide whether the report displays data in hours or as a percentage. To
- show availability in the selected format, simply check show availability with the percentages checkmark option.
Step 4: Generate and Analyze the Report
With your parameters set, click "Generate Web Report" to view the results instantly. You can also export the data to an Excel format for sharing or further analysis.
The generated report is designed for clarity. It shows available hours for the selected period. The color-coding helps you spot issues instantly: green corresponds to full utilization, while negative numbers, often shown in red, indicate an overloaded person or team. This analysis isn't just about the high-level head of the project; it allows you to drill down into the lower body of the data. You can see the detailed leg work required for each initiative, ensuring every component, from foot to thigh, is accounted for. This level of detail prevents the project from developing a weak ankle and keeps it moving forward steadily.
Plan with Confidence, Not Guesswork
Guesswork in resource allocation is a high-stakes gamble that often leads to stressed teams and delayed projects. You can't build a successful project on a foundation of assumptions. ActivityTimeline’s availability report features replace that uncertainty with data-driven confidence.
The Person Availability Report gives you the tactical clarity to make smart, on-the-fly assignments, while the Team Availability Report provides the strategic foresight needed for long-term success. Together, they empower you to build a resilient, productive, and sustainable team that can confidently tackle any challenge.
{{rich-cta-2}}
