A project team rarely consists solely of Jira users. Many project managers juggle a mix of internal employees and external contractors, freelancers, or shared physical assets like equipment and meeting rooms. While Jira excels at managing tasks for its licensed users, it has long struggled to account for these external entities, leaving a significant gap in an organization's ability to plan and execute projects efficiently.
ActivityTimeline provides a powerful solution to this challenge. It introduces the ability to manage "Non-Jira Users" as resources, allowing project managers to seamlessly integrate a diverse range of project resources into their resource planning and project management workflows. This functionality extends ActivityTimeline's value beyond the Jira ecosystem, providing a truly comprehensive approach to resource management.
TL;DR
Jira's native capabilities are limited to licensed users, making it difficult to manage resources like external contractors, freelancers, or shared equipment. ActivityTimeline's "Non-Jira Users" feature allows you to create and manage these resources effectively alongside your regular team members on a single planning dashboard. This provides a holistic overview of all project resources, helping to prevent scheduling conflicts and enabling accurate resource allocation, ultimately boosting team productivity and overall efficiency.
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Creating and Managing Non-Jira Resources
ActivityTimeline's core value proposition is enabling resource planning for all your resources, regardless of their connection to Jira. This is accomplished through a simple and intuitive configuration process.
To create a non-Jira resource, you navigate to Configuration > Users and select Resources. From there, you can create a new resource and give it a name, a unique identifier, and a description. Just like with a regular Jira user, you can assign a position, skills, and even a custom capacity or working hours. This level of detail ensures that non-Jira resources are integrated into your planning process in a meaningful, human readable way.
These resources appear on the main planning dashboard alongside your Jira users, giving you a complete view of your entire workforce. You can add them to an existing team or create dedicated teams for specific non-Jira resources, such as a team of shared equipment. This holistic approach helps to avoid scheduling conflicts and provides an at-a-glance overview of all available resources for a project.
Use Cases and Benefits
This functionality offers significant advantages for resource management.
- Diverse Resource Management: This feature enables the management of various resource types that are not Jira users. For example, you can effectively manage a freelance designer who is not a Jira user, by allocating their time to specific projects or activities. It also allows you to track and manage non-human resources like shared testing environments or specialized equipment, ensuring they are available when needed.
- Holistic Project View: The ability to see both Jira users and non-Jira resources on the same planning dashboard provides a comprehensive overview of all project resources. This helps project managers accurately gauge the total workforce and adjust project timelines realistically. This holistic view is crucial for identifying and resolving potential scheduling conflicts before they impact your project's progress.
- Focused Planning: While Jira issues can only be assigned to Jira users and teams, ActivityTimeline allows you to assign custom events—like bookings or placeholders—to these non-Jira resources. This allows for detailed planning of non-Jira activities without needing to create Jira accounts for every external entity. A project manager could use a placeholder event to simulate the workload for a new event or a potential new employee before making a hiring decision. Once a person is hired, their tasks can be re-assigned from the placeholder to the actual user with a licensed Jira account.
This level of detail helps a project manager avoid common pitfalls such as miscommunication and a lack of transparency, leading to better collaboration and improved productivity across multiple projects.
Additional Information About Resources
- The number of resources that can be created is limited by the number of paid users you have in the system. If you have 130 active Jira users, you will be able to create & manage up to 130 resources in ActivityTimeline.
- You can only assign custom events to Resources, and Jira issues can only be assigned to users and teams in ActivityTimeline.
Conclusion
The need for robust resource management tools has never been greater, and this extends beyond the confines of Jira. ActivityTimeline's ability to manage non-Jira resources alongside traditional human resources is a game-changer. This plugin provides a truly comprehensive overview of all your resources, from full-time employees to shared equipment and potential new hires. It gives project managers the ability to plan and manage their budget, workload, and utilization more accurately, ultimately leading to more efficient operations and a better bottom line for the entire business.
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