Team Management
Your team’s structure directly affects how Plenar schedules work. This guide covers adding members, configuring their capacity, and assigning them to projects.
Adding members to your organization
- Go to Settings > Members
- Click Invite Member
- Enter their email address and select a role (Admin or Member)
- They receive an invitation email and join the organization upon accepting
Organization admins can invite and manage members. Regular members can view the team but cannot change roles or remove people.
Assigning members to a project
Adding someone to the organization does not assign them to any project. You must explicitly add them:
- Open the project from the dashboard
- Go to the project settings or team panel
- Add the member to the project
Only members assigned to a project appear in the scheduling pool for that project. If auto-assignment is enabled, Plenar only considers assigned members when distributing tasks.
Configuring skills
Skills let Plenar match the right person to the right task. See Skills and Assignment for the full guide.
Quick setup:
- Define skill types at the organization or project level
- Assign skills to each team member (binary: has the skill or does not)
- Set skill requirements on tasks
- Enable skill-based scheduling in project settings
Availability types
Availability types define how different kinds of time off affect capacity. Configure them in Settings > Availability Types.
Built-in types
| Type | Capacity | Description |
|---|---|---|
| PTO | 0% | Full day off — vacation, personal days |
| Sick | 0% | Sick leave |
| On-Call | 50% | On-call rotation — can do some planned work |
| Conference | 0% | Conferences, offsites, training |
Custom types
Organizations can create custom availability types with:
- Label — A human-readable name (e.g., “Interview Duty”, “Hack Week”, “Management Overhead”)
- Capacity percentage — How much of the day is available for scheduled work (e.g., 75% for interview duty, 25% for hack week)
- Color — Visual indicator on the availability calendar
Custom types appear alongside built-in types when logging time off from the dashboard or via Claude Code.
When Plenar considers a member available
A member is available on a given day when all of the following are true:
- It is a working day — Monday through Friday by default
- No time off is logged — No PTO, sick, conference, or custom type with 0% capacity
- Partial capacity is accounted for — On-call or custom types with partial capacity reduce available hours but do not make the member fully unavailable
A member is unavailable when:
- It is a weekend (Saturday or Sunday)
- A time-off entry with 0% capacity exists for that date
- They are not assigned to the project
Partial availability (e.g., 50% on-call) means the member works at reduced capacity. A 3-day task takes 6 calendar days at 50% capacity.
Capacity and scheduling impact
When you add or remove a team member from a project, or change their availability, Plenar recomputes the schedule. The preview shows:
- Tasks that move earlier (more capacity available) or later (less capacity)
- Tasks that get reassigned (if auto-assignment is on)
- Goal ETAs that shift
This is especially impactful when:
- A key team member takes extended leave — their tasks cascade to others or push later
- A new member joins — Plenar can redistribute work to them (if using Fresh assignment mode)
- A member leaves the project — their assigned tasks need reassignment
Best practices
Keep availability current. The schedule is only as accurate as the availability data. Encourage team members to log time off promptly, or enable Google Calendar sync for automatic updates.
Use custom types for recurring patterns. If your team has regular interview duty, sprint planning days, or management overhead, model these as custom availability types rather than ad-hoc PTO entries.
Start with auto-assignment. For new projects, let Plenar distribute work. You can override individual assignments later. This is faster than manually assigning every task.
See Availability for detailed time-off management.