How to Staff Smarter with the Position Availability Insights

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You’ve just landed a new project — the kind that requires precision, the right mix of skills, and a fast start. You open Jira, scroll through your team list, and start the mental math:

• Who’s available next month?
• Does our UX designer still have bandwidth after that sprint? Is the QA team free, or are they buried in testing?

What starts as a quick check turns into a guessing game. The truth is, you don’t really know.

And that uncertainty? It’s one of the biggest hidden costs in project management.

That’s why we built the Position Availability Report in ActivityTimeline — a forecasting tool designed to turn staffing guesswork into data-backed confidence.

Instead of reacting to resource gaps as they happen, this report helps you see them before they occur — so you can plan smarter, allocate more strategically, and always know who’s available and when.

Seeing the Full Picture: What the Report Actually Does

The Position Availability Report gives you a role-based view of your team’s future capacity. Unlike traditional workload reports that just show how busy everyone is, this one dives deeper — grouping your workforce by position or skill.

It’s not just about hours or tasks; it’s about the people and roles that make your projects possible.

Whether you need a frontend developer, QA engineer, or UX designer, the report shows you exactly when each role will become available — helping you spot bottlenecks and balance workloads long before deadlines approach.

The insights are powered by remaining time estimates from scheduled Jira tasks and planned work. That means your forecast isn’t theoretical — it’s grounded in real, evolving project data.

Setting It Up: Simplicity Meets Strategy

Creating a Position Availability Report feels like building a clear window into the future.
Here’s how it works:

1. Define Your Criteria – Choose whether you want to analyze by Position or Skill, and decide how you want to visualize the data — by day, week, or month.

2. Select a Timeframe – Pick the period you want to forecast, typically the next 10 weeks.

3. Refine Your Inclusions – Decide whether to include placeholders or bookings for a complete picture of planned work.

4. Choose the Output Format – View it right in your browser for quick insights or export it to Excel for detailed analysis and presentations.

The result is a clean, visual table that lists your positions on the left, with availability numbers spread across your chosen timeline. One glance tells you exactly where your capacity is strong — and where you’re about to hit a shortage.

Turning Insights into Action: Real-World Use Cases

1. Spotting Resource Gaps Before They Hurt

Imagine a new product launch coming up next quarter. You need a UX designer to lead the user testing phase — but your Position Availability Report shows zero availability for that role in the next eight weeks.

That’s your early warning.
You can start planning recruitment, outsourcing, or upskilling right now — instead of scrambling when the project starts.

2. Building Dynamic, Skill-Based Teams

With Functional Teams in ActivityTimeline, you can create flexible groups that automatically update based on skills or positions. Need a “Designers” team? Just define it once — every user with a “Designer” tag is included automatically.

No more manual updates or missed teammates. Your teams evolve as your organization does.

3. Finding the Perfect Match for Every Task

From the Planner view, you can perform advanced searches to find exactly who you need. Looking for someone with “Java” skills in a specific department? Type it in — and the right person appears.

It’s like having a built-in search engine for your internal talent.

4. Avoiding Overbooking and Burnout

Specialized roles — like QA engineers or DevOps — often become bottlenecks. The Position Availability Report helps you track their workload weeks in advance, so you can distribute tasks evenly and prevent overloading critical team members.

That means fewer last-minute surprises, fewer missed deadlines, and a healthier, more sustainable workflow.

From Reactive to Proactive Staffing

Most teams spend their time fighting fires — reallocating people after issues arise, rather than planning to prevent them. The Position Availability Report changes that mindset.

It gives managers, PMs, and HR teams the clarity to:

• Align projects with available talent

• Forecast hiring needs

• Maintain balanced workloads across teams

Instead of hoping the right people are free, you’ll know they are.

The Future of Smart Resource Planning

The difference between an on-time project and a delayed one often comes down to who’s available when you need them.

The Position Availability Report in ActivityTimeline transforms staffing from a manual chore into a strategic advantage.

By turning Jira task data into actionable insight, it helps you ensure that every project starts strong — with the right people, in the right roles, at the right time.