Assignment Scheduler

The Assignment Scheduler is a specialized background scheduler in Fusion Online, designed to help manage workload distribution across individual users. Unlike the Project Scheduler, which focuses on project-wide scheduling, and Fusion Pipeline, which focuses on cross-project scheduling, the Assignment Scheduler works behind the scenes to help project and resource managers reduce user overloads and create realistic task assignments.

Why does Fusion Online have three scheduling mechanisms?

You may wonder: why have a Project Scheduler, a pipeline scheduler, and an Assignment Scheduler?

The three systems serve distinct but complementary roles:

The Project Scheduler builds the project-level model, generates projected task times, identifies the critical chain, and creates buffers.
Fusion Pipeline allows you to pace your projects to reduce cross-project resource overloads.
The Assignment Scheduler looks across all projects, tasks, and individual user workloads to propose an efficient and realistic order for task execution based on user-specific availability and task priority.

This separation allows Fusion to:

Keep project status stable even when team members change assignments or priorities
Account for additional factors like non-project work, vacations, individual workload balancing, and checklist task assignments
Avoid excessive rescheduling of entire projects every time an assignment is adjusted

In short, the Assignment Scheduler acts as a dynamic, user-focused layer on top of the more stable project-level schedule.

Scope of the Assignment Scheduler

It schedules across all organizations, across all projects, and across both project and non-project tasks.
It does not schedule backlog tasks.
It is always running automatically — no need to enable it manually.
It recalculates immediately when assignments, priorities, or relevant task data change.

How does the Assignment Scheduler work?

Think of the Assignment Scheduler as creating a personal execution plan for each user. This plan suggests an efficient task order, balancing workload while preserving project priorities.

Priority determination (in order of importance):

Focus Task — The user’s designated focus task, if any, always comes first.
Manual Task Priority — As defined by the user or project manager.
Urgent Non-Project Tasks
Criticality Ratio — Tasks closer to being critical take precedence.
Projected Start Date — If all other factors are equal.

Scheduling rules:

No task is scheduled before today or before its Projected Eligible Date (calculated from the Project Scheduler data).
A checklist task is never scheduled before its parent task.
Tasks flagged as No Load are excluded.
Tasks that depend on Independent Subprojects are excluded.
Calendars still apply—tasks respect the user’s working hours and calendar.

Task constraint handling:

The Assignment Scheduler considers task constraints when building each user’s schedule:

Must Start On / Must Finish On — These are treated with the highest priority; the scheduler will attempt to place these tasks at the specified dates.
Finish No Later Than / Start No Later Than — These are treated as deadline constraints. The scheduler will attempt to keep the task within its normal sequence, but if it would otherwise miss the deadline, it may be promoted earlier in the order to meet it.
Start No Earlier Than / Finish No Earlier Than — These simply prevent the task from being scheduled before the specified date.

The scheduler always tries to honor constraints where possible, but may not be able to do so when conflicts arise with other tasks, user workload, or when constraint dates have already passed.

The Assignment Scheduler builds each user’s workload in priority order, stacking tasks sequentially. It may place lower-priority tasks into schedule gaps if that avoids unnecessary delays.

Marking a task as No Load in the Task Details view ensures it does not contribute to the user’s workload or influence the scheduling of their other tasks.

Why use the Assignment Scheduler?

It helps you:

Minimize delays caused by individual resource overload.
Manage user workload across multiple projects without destabilizing project-level schedules.
Make better short-term execution decisions by showing a realistic "to-do list" based on availability.

Assignment schedules are not strict mandates. They are useful planning aids, helping you and your team focus on what matters most without creating unnecessary multitasking or chaos.

Outputs of the Assignment Scheduler

The following information, calculated by the Assignment Scheduler, is available throughout Fusion:

Visuals

Assignment Bars (in task Gantt Charts): Colored yellow or red if the task's assignment causes it to become (or approach) critical.

Task fields

Assignment Delay — Days the task my be pushed beyond its projected time due to assignment load.
Assignment Impact — Whether the task's assignment will cause or contribute to a project delay.
Assignment Start/Finish — The user-specific execution window for the task.

Views

My Tasks — Displays a prioritized list of tasks assigned to you, based on assignment logic.
My Team — Displays user workloads and highlights overload situations.
User Tasks — Displays a prioritized list of tasks assigned to a specific user, based on assignment scheduling logic. To open this view, click a user's name from any team view.

Assignment scheduling process — step-by-step

The Assignment Scheduler waits for trigger events (e.g., task updates, assignment changes, project schedule changes).
It collects:
- User working hours and calendars
- Task priorities, remaining durations, and constraints
- Task eligibility and projected start dates
- Checklist sequences (if used)
It builds a personal task sequence for each user.
It outputs assignment-based scheduling fields and updates task views.

Key inputs that trigger the Assignment Scheduler

The Assignment Scheduler automatically runs when:

The Project Scheduler runs (reschedule, update)
A user's task priorities are changed manually
User assignments are modified
Task remaining durations or constraints change
Tasks are marked as No Load
User working hours or calendars change
It's been more than 12 hours since a user's assignments have been scheduled