Resource Planning#

Project planning is followed by resource planning. Two approaches are presented below: Graphical (line activity) planning, which is based on the budget tasks, and Resource planning (without line activities), which is independent of the budget tasks.

Graphical (line activity) planning#

Line activities (budget lines) can also be scheduled by using the integrated graphical resource planner. In graphical planning, line activities can be dragged on the timeline and onto other resources on Gantt charts.

However, before you can work with this feature, you need to make some settings on the pages described in the following.

Projects Setup#

Select Day in the Default Budget Allocation Period field.

Resources Setup#

In the Resource Planner Start and End fields, specify the period you want to copy to the chart. Choose a period that you’re comfortable scheduling with. The longer this period is, the greater its drag might be on tool performance and resource utilization.

Example
-1W / 2 M means that the data copied to the chart includes all information available for scheduling from the prior week until 2 months into the future.

Resource card#

Only resources and resource groups for which the Use in Resource Planning toggle has been turned on will be copied to the chart. To copy resource capacity, you also must specify at least a planning period.

Line activities#

Budget lines must meet the following requirements for inclusion:

• The project must have been set to Quote or Order.
• The WBS line must have a work status of Open or In Progress.
• The budget line must be of the resource or resource group type.
• The budget line must be Not Started or In Process.
• The budget line must have a starting and an ending date (and at least a 1-day difference between them).

Absences#

Absence registrations are automatically copied over, which means that additional settings aren’t required here.

Open graphical planning#

To open the scheduling tool:

1. Choose the Search icon, enter Resource Planner, and then choose the related link.
2. Alternatively, open a budget line view. On the Project Budget FastTab, choose Resources > Resource Planner on the ribbon.

Rough planning#

Graphical resource planning starts on the Initial Planning page, with multiple weeks being visible at once.

For performance reasons, resource utilization isn’t shown at this point. Instead, you see an overview of all activities related to a project. To show resource use, you need to switch to Detailed Planning and choose the refresh spinner.

Detailed planning#

On the Detailed Planning page, you can see resource utilization per week. You can also use the ellipsis in the upper-right corner to show resource deployment during other weeks.

Visual information#

On the left of the chart, you can see a list of all project-related resources, broken down by resource group. On the timeline to the right, bars in different shades of blue show the activities assigned to the related resource or group. Activities that have been started are in dark blue. Line activities in parentheses belong to a project that is still in the Quote stage.

A yellow background indicates the degree of resource utilization on a given day. An example of an event that lowers daily capacity is vacation, where yellow is filling out the day entirely.

By selecting a bar, its utilization values will be shown in a FactBox on the right-most side of the view. Areas of overscheduling are displayed in red.

Hovering the mouse over an activity bar shows a FactBox that describes the activity.

Reschedule#

To reschedule activities, you can drag them on the timeline or move them from one resource line onto another.

Reduce / extend activity time#

You can also use the mouse to reduce or extend the time that a resource will spend on an activity by dragging the ends of the relevant bar to the left or right.

Filter project#

By using the right mouse button on an activity bar, you can open a context menu to set a filter on the activity, limiting the planning view to a certain project.

Split lines#

The Split Line action works in the same way on the chart as it does on budget lines.

Resource planning (without line activities)#

In an ideal world, resource schedules would align perfectly with the goals you have for your business. Unfortunately, experience shows that allocating the right amount of capacity can be a very time-consuming task.

This is because it might take a while before you can schedule resource hours at the budget line level, that is, at the level of line activities, and it can take even more time to update these plans regularly.

To provide you nevertheless with a reasonable degree of control over the time that you have available, you can use an alternate project-based plan that is decoupled from individual activities.

Requirements#

Before you can schedule in this way, you must have

• set capacities for the required resources.
• created one or more projects on which you want them to work.

Setup#

Besides the requirements already mentioned, only a few settings might need to be made before you can work with project-level resource planning.

Resource Planning Setup#

On this card, you can specify which fields must be filled in before you can schedule resources for a project. You can also turn on one or more toggles on the Filter FastTab to set filters on the Resource Planning page. Additionally, you can choose if you or the resource who will work on a resource request should be notified by email when the request is completed.

If you want to copy absences to planning, you need to fill in the Resource Absence Project Name field on the Planning FastTab. You can enter any name in this field. The name of an actual project isn’t required, as the label is only used to group absences on the Resource Planning page.

Planning Types#

Planning types help you distinguish between different kinds of resource scheduling. For example, you can use them to separate the hours budgeted for internal projects from those spent on customer projects.

They also make it easy for you to spot absence, such as the time a certain resource will be on vacation, immediately. You can specify in which order entries appear on a resource schedule and assign a style to a type on the Planning Types page.

The styles you can choose on the page serve the same function as elsewhere in the system.

Copy absence to resource planning#

Resources’ sick time or time off can be copied to scheduling with the help of the Planning Type field, which can be found on the Causes of Absence page.

Each cause set up with a planning type is copied to the schedule. A shared type is often enough. You only need to create more than one if, for example, absence due to vacation must be separated from other causes.

On the Resource Planning page, you can then use a ribbon function for the retrieval of non-working time.

Overscheduling Setup#

On this page, you can specify the resources for whom you want to display a warning message in the case of overplanning, that is, if the work hours scheduled are greater than the resource capacity remaining. You set up the warning for every department to which resources are assigned.

Resource Planning page#

The core element of project-level resource scheduling is a matrix that shows the number of hours budgeted per week. On the lines, a schedule can be broken down by project and planning type. The types are shown in different colors (and styles) to make it easy to differentiate between them.

Options#

For a better overview, filters can be set on the schedule. If the user who opens the Resource Planning page has been linked to a resource, the department assigned to that user is filled in automatically, based on the assumption that schedules created by one’s own department are of the most interest in this situation.

You can also turn on the No Date Filter field on the header if you want the system to show what resources aren’t included during the selected period but have been in the past or will be in the future.

Values#

This FastTab initially shows one line for each resource scheduled for a project. You can, however, expand the lines section to view a more detailed breakdown of employees’ work schedules. The columns on the right indicate the number of hours allocated to the resource for tasks per week.

Resource lines#

The resource-type line represents the upper-most level of the section. At this level, the fields on the right show the quantity and total capacity set for resources during the week specified in the relevant column. This helps you gain a quick overview of their availability and detect overscheduling.

Planning types#

The second level in the hierarchy covers scheduling by planning type. Ideally, these types can be distinguished by their color and style (see Setup).

Projects#

The lowest line level contains schedule items related to individual projects. The lines are in the same color as the planning type to which they have been assigned.

Requests#

The Requested By, Requested On, and Request Type fields at the bottom of the page can be used as a template to create more schedules.

Actions and overview#

Insert Absence Registrations#

Before you start planning your next project, we recommend that you use this action to copy all current absences to the Resource Planning page.

New#

Before you choose this action, you need to ensure that you have selected the correct line on the page, as the resource related to that line will be suggested for scheduling.

When you run the function, the values in the Default FastTab fields are copied to the new schedule automatically. The default planning period is the current week.

You can then enter a number or a starting date to specify the week during which you want to add the resource to the schedule; an ending date isn’t relevant here. You can also turn on the Fixed Date toggle if the starting and ending dates that you specified on the tab should be included when you reschedule project activities. However, the fixed dates can be changed later if necessary.

On the Base Data tab, you must enter a type and project number; filling in the other fields is optional. A new schedule that leads you to allocate too much work to a resource in a week will prompt a warning message if you chose this option when you entered the resource’s department in Overscheduling Setup

Distribute#

On this page, you can create several schedules at once. The total budget needs to be entered in the Distributable Hours field. These hours are then reduced by the amount of time planned on the lines, and the result is shown in the To Distribute field.

Overplanning on this page will prompt a warning message. However, you can choose Yes on the dialog that appears to raise the value in the Distributable Hours field.

Show Time Available#

This function displays for each resource the available capacity per week, calculated by subtracting a resource’s total capacity from the hours scheduled for the resource in that time.

(Planning) Overview#

On this page, you can not only filter planning entries according to your requirements, but you can edit them as well, which provides you with a quick and easy method for changing more than one entry in resource planning. You can also choose New on the ribbon to draw up another schedule.

Alternatively, you can run the Overview function from a line on the Resource Planning page to filter entries for a specific week and resource (and potentially planning types and projects).

General Planning#

Creates a regular workload for resources over a longer period, for example, to offset unexpected events.

Planning Resource Matrix#

Shows resource planning from the perspective of resources, that is, how many hours have been scheduled for a resource in a certain week.

You can set filters on the Matrix Options FastTab to see, for example, only the projects a specific resource has been assigned to work on and at what time.

Project Planning Matrix#

Same, but from the perspective of projects. You can again use the filters on the FastTab to see who will work when on a project.

Plan own resource#

As a rule, all those with read/write access to resource management can see and edit resource activities in the system. Typically, however, the task of creating a plan for a week-by-week breakdown of these activities falls to one or more resource managers.

But there are also companies where at least some staff members can set their own hours. By selecting the Plan Own Resource field in User Setup, these employees not only gain read/write access to scheduling but also prevent other users from adding them to their resource schedules.

Where am I needed?#

This page, which is built into the Project Lead role center, shows logged-in users to which project schedules they’ve been added over the next three weeks.

Selecting a number on the page and drilling down will then open the planning entries related to a specific project.

Resource requests#

Requests for resources are typically created by a project manager. Each request is then forwarded to a resource manager, who will reserve the hours required based on available resource capacity.

Once scheduling is completed, an email will be sent to the resource scheduled for a project and the person who created the request (if the relevant toggles have been turned on; see the following).

Resource Planning Setup (resource requests)#

If the project manager or the scheduled resource should be notified by email after a request has been handled by the resource manager, you must use one or both of the toggles that can be turned on for this purpose in Resource Planning Setup.

Each email sent to the project manager or resource contains information about who has been scheduled to work on which project task, as well as the effort estimated for completing the activity, and the starting and ending date of work.

Create a request#

Project managers can only see requests they’ve created, whereas resource managers see all requests from every department. To create a request:

1. Choose the Search icon, enter Resource Planning, and then choose the related link.
2. Choose Actions > New Resource Request.
3. Fill in the fields as necessary.

Key fields found on the request page are described in the following table.

Once all necessary fields have been filled in, a request can be submitted through the Release Planning function on the ribbon, after which the data entered on the page can no longer be changed.

A request not yet handled by a resource manager can be cancelled by the project manager at any time through the Cancel Planning function.

Handle a request#

A resource manager (who might not yet be specified as one in the system) begins handling a request by opening it and choosing Start Planning.

This fills in the Planner field with the resource manager’s user ID and assigns the schedule immediately to the manager’s page views (by adding the plan to the relevant filter).

On the Lines FastTab, one or more resources can then be allocated throughout the requested period. One line is created per resource and calendar week.

Example
A line activity is budgeted at 40 hours of work performed by two resources over two weeks, which results in a schedule as described in the following table.

The page provides resource managers with ample information, including a resource’s current utilization status on calendar week lines.

The Planning in Requested Period FactBox on the page shows the availability of a resource in the relevant period if a resource was specified in the request. Additionally, the Show Planning action can be used to open the Resource Planning page from a request, with all lines already filtered for the staff member.

After allocating hours to resources and calendar weeks, the resource manager can choose End Planning on the ribbon to finalize the schedule. The system then creates resource budget entries from the lines and notifies the budgeted resource(s) and project manager(s) by email.

To suspend planning temporarily and take it up again later, a resource manager can choose Cancel Planning on the ribbon.

WBS and Budget Resource Planning#

The resource requirement worksheet in the work breakdown structure is the central interface between project planning and resource planning. It provides a quick overview of the resource quantities already requested, both at WBS line level and at budget line level, provided that the resource request has been made at this level of detail.

Only the WBS lines and budget lines labelled "Use in resource plan" are visible in the resource request worksheet. This field is pre-assigned from the work package master.

You can use the "Create resource request" function to create new requests for selected WBS or budget lines. In the case of budget lines, the resource or resource group is transferred directly. The new resource requests are based on the existing information in the WBS or budget line and must be revised by the requesters and released for planning.

The resource request worksheet shows three central fields for the progress of the request. Clicking on the field takes you directly to the resource request.