The Staffing board

How the board reads#

People down the side, weeks across the top. Every number starts as your firm's real CORE allocations; the board adds a planning layer on top so you can sketch the future without touching CORE until you decide to.

123456

Enlarge ⤢

1. 1LensesFive ways to read the same plan: People, Projects, Heatmap, Capacity, and Triage. Your choice is remembered per firm.
2. 2Publish to COREPlanning is local until you publish. Review pending changes, then write the plan back to CORE as real allocations.
3. 3Capacity heatThe colored line under each week reads that person's load: green is comfortable, yellow is near capacity, red is overbooked: rebalance or extend before the week arrives.
4. 4Unpublished changesPlanned hours CORE hasn't received yet: each carries a blue dot, and this chip counts them. Review lets you keep or hold each one before publishing.
5. 5The legendEvery mark decoded: load colors, group pools, PTO, dashed tentative weeks (penciled in, out of firm commitments until confirmed), and the blue unpublished dot.
6. 6Milestone weeksAmber-tinted weeks carry a milestone — a review, a gate, a deliverable — with its diamonds under the date. Hover to see what lands that week; the same flags show in every lens.

• This week is marked by date, and about eight past weeks sit to the left, read-only: scroll left to see history.
• Each person's utilization bar compares planned hours to their standard capacity: green is comfortable, orange is near capacity, red is overbooked.
• The hours ⇄ dollars toggle re-prices the same plan instantly using each person's rates.

Editing is for principals, studio leaders, and project managers (plus firm admins). Everyone else sees their own week in My Schedule instead.

Plan a week#

• Type hours into any week cell, or nudge by quarter hours with the cell's tiny ▲▼ arrows. Expand a person to split the week across projects, phases, and activities.
• Drag the fill handle — the small blue square on a selected cell's corner — across the coming weeks to repeat those hours (like filling in a spreadsheet). The weeks it will fill highlight as you drag; it works on phase cells and activity sub-rows alike.
• Mark a week tentative when it's a maybe: tentative cells render dashed and stay out of firm commitments until confirmed.
• Add people, phases, or placeholder roles (a future hire, an unnamed consultant) from the row menus, or create a new phase in CORE without leaving the board.

Nothing you type here reaches CORE yet. Unpublished cells carry a blue dot so you always know what's local.

Publish to CORE#

Your edits collect as pending changes. Publish opens a review list: keep, hold, or discard each item, then confirm. COREboards writes the plan to CORE as real allocations and shows exactly what was created, updated, or retracted, reconciled so nothing double-counts.

• Held items stay local and keep their blue dot for next time.
• Publishing is per firm, so two planners never overwrite each other silently: last write wins per cell, and the review list shows what changed underneath you.

Five lenses, one plan#

The lens control re-reads the same plan five ways. Your pick is remembered per firm.

• People: who is booked on what, with capacity heat per person.
• Projects: the same weeks grouped by project, with fee-burn bars (estimate at completion vs. contract) and per-person weekly load bars. Each phase's row also carries its CORE schedule as a striped bar drawn to the day: green spans the scheduled dates, red marks hours planned outside them, and milestone diamonds sit on the bar at their exact day. Hover the bar for the phase's real numbers; editors can click it to change the start or end date, publish the new dates to CORE, and manage the phase's milestones.
• Heatmap: every cell colored by load (hours, percent, or both) to spot over- and under-booking at a glance.
• Capacity: the 12-month outlook: when do we run out of room, and when do we run out of work? Toggle tentative pursuits in and out to see what winning them does.
• Triage: every flag your team has raised, gathered for Monday.

Milestones on the board#

A milestone is a dated marker on a phase — a client design review, an approval gate, a deliverable going out, an internal pin-up — set in the project's Fees & Schedule tab or right here on the board. Weeks with one are tinted amber in the week headers of every lens, with the week's milestone diamonds underneath; hover them to see what lands that week, on which project and day. Load-up weeks read at a glance while you allocate.

123

Enlarge ⤢

1. 1Milestone weeksWeeks with a milestone are tinted amber, with the week's diamonds underneath. Hover to see what lands that week — which project, which phase, which day.
2. 2Diamonds on the schedule barEach milestone rides its phase's schedule bar at its exact day, in its own color — here Design Development carries a deliverable this week (pink) and an internal pin-up in August (slate). Editors click the bar to add, rename, redate, recolor, or ✓ one — the same editor as Fees & Schedule.
3. 3Staff up to meet itSmart rebalance is right there — the toolbar button, or the per-week button in any header — so a thin milestone week is one click from being leveled.

• In the Projects lens each milestone also rides its phase's schedule bar at its exact day. Click the bar to add or edit milestones in place — rename, redate, retype, recolor, mark done with the ✓ — the same editor Fees & Schedule uses.
• Every week header already carries the per-week Smart rebalance button, so staffing up a milestone week is one click from seeing it.
• Publish a schedule change and the phase's open milestones move proportionally with the new dates; done milestones stay put as history.
• The same milestones reach everyone: each teammate sees their projects' milestones in My Schedule, leaders get the next two weeks' worth in the weekly staffing digest email, and the AI Advisor reads them alongside the plan and flags a milestone week that's thin on hours.

Flags and triage#

Anyone can flag their own week (from My Schedule); editors can flag any cell. A flag becomes a CORE to-do for the phase's manager and lands in the Triage lens, so problems surface in one place instead of hallway conversations.

• Resolving the to-do in either app clears it everywhere, and the person who flagged is emailed when it's resolved.

Smart rebalance#

Smart rebalance proposes a leveled version of a week: it moves hours from overloaded people to teammates with room, within the same phase. You review every move before anything publishes; it never writes on its own.

• Set Give to: Same role to keep moved hours on people who share the overloaded person's CORE title — the review then groups everyone by role, so you can see who sheds and who covers within each skill set. People without a title in CORE only cover for each other.

What counts as capacity#

Capacity counts active employees by default. In Settings, a firm admin can also count vendor resources: contract employees are on by default, outside consultants are off. Ghost records (people no longer in CORE) are always excluded.