Track User Capacity

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Prerequisites

• The Teams Service must be configured for your project. See Set Up Teams Service.
• Your board must use the Users (Assignee) swimlane assignment type. See User and Assignee Swimlanes.
• Each team member must have a calendar entry in the Teams Service so total capacity can be derived from working hours.
• Work items must have remainingEstimate or initialEstimate values set (or a custom capacity field configured).

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How User Capacity Is Calculated

1

Enable the Teams Service Integration

In your board’s widget parameters, locate Capacity settings and enable the Teams Service integration by setting the useTeamsService flag. When enabled, Planningboard uses team calendar data to populate totalCapacity for each user rather than a static plan capacity value.

The exact widget parameter name for enabling the Teams Service integration should be confirmed against your installed version. See Configure Capacity Tracking for the full parameter reference.

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2

Configure the Capacity Load Mode

Enable per-user capacity tracking by setting the capacity parameters in your widget configuration. These are separate boolean parameters — not values of a single parameter.For per-user capacity display (where each swimlane cell shows that user’s own capacity progress), enable both capacityLoad and userCapacityLoad:

capacityLoad=true
userCapacityLoad=true

Capacity configuration parameters are whitespace-sensitive. Do not add spaces around the = sign or trailing spaces after the value. An incorrect entry silently disables capacity tracking.

If you need each swimlane row to show its own capacity bar independently (rather than an aggregate column bar), enable multiCapacityLoad alongside capacityLoad:

capacityLoad=true
multiCapacityLoad=true

Use userCapacityLoad=true when the swimlane assignment type is Users (Assignee) and you want per-person total capacity drawn from the Teams Service. Use multiCapacityLoad=true when you want a separate capacity bar rendered inside each individual swimlane cell. Both require capacityLoad=true to be active.

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3

Verify the Swimlane Assignment Type

User capacity tracking requires swimlanes grouped by individual users. In the widget parameters, confirm:

• Swimlanes (Rows) > Assignment Type is set to Users (Assignee)
• User Role is set to the Polarion role that identifies team members (for example, project_user)

Only users holding the specified role in the current project will appear as swimlane rows. Users outside the role are excluded from both the board view and capacity calculations.

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4

Read the Capacity Display

Once configured, each user row on the board shows a capacity bar in the plan column summary cell. The bar visualizes:

• Filled portion — allocated capacity (hours assigned to this user in this plan)
• Total bar width — total capacity from the team calendar
• Overallocation — when allocated exceeds total, the bar overflows or changes state to signal the overallocation

Summary cells for user rows aggregate the user’s load across all work items in that plan column. Available capacity values that go negative indicate overallocation and signal that work should be moved to another plan or reassigned.

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5

Balance Workloads

With capacity visible per user per plan column:

1. Identify swimlane rows where allocated capacity exceeds total capacity (overallocated users).
2. Drag one or more cards from the overallocated user’s row into a future plan column or into the unplanned sidebar.
3. Observe the capacity bar update as you move cards — allocated capacity recalculates on drop.
4. Repeat until all user rows show available capacity at or above zero.

Items dragged off the board return to the unplanned sidebar with their estimates intact. This lets you stage work that cannot fit this iteration without losing the effort values.

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Verification

• Each user swimlane row displays a capacity bar in every plan column header.
• The bar shows allocated vs total hours derived from the team calendar.
• Moving cards between columns or between users updates the bars immediately.
• Users without calendar entries show 0.0 total capacity — address these in the Teams Service configuration.

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Limitations

• No multi-assignee support — effort is not distributed across co-assignees.
• No sub-item rollup — capacity is not calculated from child work item estimates.
• Users not covered by the team calendar default to 0.0 total capacity.

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See also

• Configure Capacity Tracking
• Set Up Teams Service
• Track Team Capacity
• Visualize Capacity Load
• Normalize Capacity Across Swimlanes
• User and Assignee Swimlanes
• Capacity Calculation Issues