Blog
Assigning tasks isn‘t just about getting work onto someone‘s plate. It‘s about making the right decision at the right moment. When projects evolve, and new activities are added, project managers often have to pause and ask: Who actually has the capacity to take this on without creating a bottleneck elsewhere?
Until now, unassigned tasks were “invisible” on the Workload view, making it difficult to answer that question accurately. To solve this, we‘ve introduced a significant improvement to the Workload view: Unassigned activities.
Why it matters
Without clear visibility into the total scope of work, task assignment becomes guesswork. You might assign work based on a role or simple availability on paper, only to discover later that a team member is overloaded while others have room to help.
By bringing unassigned tasks directly into the Workload view, we are enabling workload-aware task assignment:
- Eliminate guesswork: See each person‘s current commitments at the exact moment you‘re making an assignment decision.
- Prevent downstream bottlenecks: Compare capacity in real-time to identify the best candidate for a task before it impacts the project timeline.
- Complete capacity accuracy: Previously, unassigned work didn’t reflect in workload calculations. Now, you can see the true weight of a project’s requirements, ensuring your resource planning is 100% accurate.
- Streamlined rebalancing: Instead of switching between the Activity Center and Workload, PMs can now spot new work and distribute it across the team in a single, unified view.
With Unassigned activities enabled in Workload, you can spot new work immediately, assign it right away, and keep capacity planning accurate as scope changes.
How it works
You can now show unassigned activities directly inside Workload and assign them with drag-and-drop. For an activity to appear in Unassigned activities, it must have a start date, an end date, and estimated hours set. Activities missing any of these values will not be shown in Workload until this information is added.
1. Open Workload
Start by opening your Birdview dashboard and navigating to the Resource menu. From there, open the Workload tab, where you normally review team capacity and assignments.
2. Enable unassigned activities
Open the Show menu in Workload and turn on the Unassigned activities toggle. This immediately updates the Workload view to include unassigned work.
3. Review the updated layout
Once enabled, the workload is split into two sections. The top section shows the usual Workload view with users and their current assignments. A second section appears below, displaying unassigned activities grouped by project.
4. Apply filters as usual
Any filters you apply in Workload also apply to unassigned activities. This keeps both sections aligned and ensures you‘re always working with the same project and resource context.
5. Assign activities with drag-and-drop
To assign work, drag an activity from the unassigned list and drop it onto a team member in the top section. The activity is immediately assigned, removed from the unassigned list, and included in workload calculations.
6. Unassign if plans change
If you need to remove an activity from a user, open the activity details and remove the assignee. The activity will return to the unassigned list and can be reassigned at any time.
