Set up Your Projects Calendar in BigTime Foresight

Table of Contents

Projects Calendar Location in Foresight
The Difference Between the Team Members and Projects' Calendars
Setting Up the Projects Calendar
Using Filters
Managing How Scheduled Hours are Calculated on the Calendar
Saving Calendar Settings for Future Use
Understanding the Grouping Disabled Option
Managing Assignments in Calendars
     Overview of Tools
          Creating and Editing an Assignment with the Cursor
          Cutting an Assignment
          Copying an Assignment to Another Staff Member
          Cloning an Assignment
          Connecting an Assignment to a Demand
          Removing an Assignment
FAQ: What’s the difference between Clone Assignment and Copy Assignment?

Projects Calendar Location in Foresight

The Project Calendar window gives you a bird's eye view of your assignment schedule, your staffers’ time off, and other aspects of resource management. You can access this calendar from BigTime by clicking on the Resourcing navigation bar tab and then clicking Project Calendar. This will redirect you to the Project Calendar in Foresight.

If you’re already in BigTime Foresight, you can get to the Project Calendar by clicking the Calendar tab in your main navigation sidebar and then clicking the Projects tab below.

In this article, you will learn how to set up a Project Calendar. Remember that because Foresight is intended for future resource planning and predictions, it will only pull select historical data logs from January 2023 onward to the present day. These data logs will include customer, staff, project, and client details. Any data before January 2023 will not be pulled into Foresight, regardless of in-flight or active project status.

The Difference Between the Team Members and Projects' Calendars

Setting up a project calendar is exactly the same as setting up a people calendar, except for a few differences. First, it is impossible to filter by the time frame in the Project Calendar. No bars in the Project Calendar aggregate data by availability, capacity, or other fields. Finally, in the Project Calendar, you will find assignments for specific staffers, but you will not see a summary of their completion.

Setting Up the Projects Calendar

You have many options when it comes to customizing your Project Calendar view. You can set filters so it only displays certain data types, or you can change the date range you’d like to see. You can set: 

1. Filters: Apply Filters if needed. To learn more about how filtering in Foresight work, go to the “Using Filters in Foresight” 

2. Types of Assignments: Adjust the types of assignments you want to see in the calendar: 

3. Grouping: Select grouping. You can group by person, Deliverable, or disable it:

Grouping is enabled by default, as described above, but you can adjust it based on your workflow needs.

4. Custom options: Configure Custom View to adjust the calendar view to your specific needs: 

5. Data granularity: Select the data granularity - you can choose Days, Weeks or Months:

6. Number of Results per Page: Select the number of results per page: 

Using Filters

One element of this view is the search bar, which allows you to filter the data you need. Read the article to learn more about how filtering in Foresight works.

Managing How Scheduled Hours are Calculated on the Calendar

Suppose you'd like to change how the calendar bar graph summarizes the status of scheduled hours. In that case, you can open My Settings and check off the appropriate boxes in the Scheduled Utilization Settings section.

Check the exact flow of changing these settings below: 

Saving Calendar Settings for Future Use

If you’d like to save certain calendar settings, you can do so by adding them to your “favorites”. To do this, click the Save icon in the upper right corner of your screen.

Understanding the Grouping Disabled Option

If you select the “grouping disabled” option in your calendar, all assignments will be organized by date from the oldest to the newest. The calendar will fill in one line with as much data as the calendar view will allow, considering the order in which assignments were created. 

Managing Assignments in Calendars

Left-click to create an assignment for any staffer. To learn more about managing assignments, check out the complete guide: Manage Assignments in BigTime Foresight

Overview of Tools 

You can manage your team’s assignments using the convenient toolbar in the calendar's top-left corner:

The table below provides a quick overview of what each tool does:

All icons include tooltips. Changes are saved only after you click Apply or Apply and Close.

Creating and Editing an Assignment with the Cursor

To create a new assignment, follow these steps:

1. Click the Cursor icon.
2. Hover over an empty spot in the calendar.
3. Left-click to open the list of projects.
4. Select the project you want to assign.
5. Click Create Assignment to open the assignment details.

To edit an existing assignment, click the cursor and then on the assignment tile. The same assignment window will appear as when creating a new one.

Cutting an Assignment

1. Click the Cut icon.
2. Hover over the assignment tile you want to split.
3. A vertical dashed line shows where the cut will happen.
4. Left-click to split the assignment.
5. The tile will be divided into two assignments at that point.

Copying an Assignment to Another Staff Member

1. Click the Copy icon.
2. Click the assignment you want to copy.
3. A list of staff members will appear.
4. Select the staff member you want to assign it to.
5. Click Schedule to apply the copied assignment with the exact details.
6. To open that staff member’s calendar, search their name in the Staff List.

Cloning an Assignment

1. Click the Clone icon.
2. Click the assignment you want to duplicate.
3. A copy of the assignment will instantly appear in the same staff member’s calendar.

Connecting an Assignment to a Demand

1. Click the Connect to Demand icon.
2. Click the assignment you want to link.
3. A list of available demands will appear.
4. Select the demand you want to connect.
5. Click the Connect icon to link the assignment.

Removing an Assignment

1. Click the Remove icon.
2. Click the assignment you want to delete.
3. A confirmation window will appear.
4. Click Remove to confirm.
5. The assignment, including any related financial data, will be deleted from the calendar.

FAQ: What’s the difference between Clone Assignment and Copy Assignment?

Both options help you reuse existing assignments, but they serve different purposes:

Tip: Use Clone Assignment when you’re creating a sequence of similar assignments. Use Copy Assignment to… when you’re distributing the same task across multiple team members.