Project Permissions: Schedule Hours for Self, Scheduled Hours for Others
NOTE
The Resourcing tab was upgraded to the new experience for all accounts on October 17. To learn about transitioning from the old page to the new experience, see Moving from Legacy Resourcing to New Resourcing.
Overview
The Resourcing tab—which appears only for financial projects—allows project managers and resource managers to see both the team members assigned to a project and the resource plan in one place, as long as they:
- Are on the Provider-side of a project
- Have permissions to schedule hours
The new Resourcing tab looks and feels just like the Resource Center—with the focus being only on the project you are managing resources for. Similar to the Resource Center, the Resourcing tab gives you a comprehensive overview of the project’s resources, timeline, planned and projected budget, and team member information—including roles and hours information.
The page is divided into two sections, with the team member list on the left and the timeline on the right. When initially collapsed, each row provides a quick summary of resource and hours information. However, each row can be expanded to see additional task information. To expand all resource rows, you can use the Expand
icon above the list. ”)You can also leverage the following features in the toolbar to change how information displays:
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Filters—Hide specific projects, resources, or tasks or remove them from view completely based on the filters you apply. Click All, Unnamed, or Named in the toolbar to quickly switch between the different types of resources you want to see information for.
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Calendar Controls—Select whether you’d like to see hours within day, week, or month periods. Use the left and right arrows to move forward or backward in time, selecting the Calendar icon if you want to jump to a specific date or clicking Today to return to today’s date.
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Display Preferences—Control how EAC is calculated and how scheduled hours and allocated hours display in the project and resource rows.
Filters
If your project has several tasks and a large number of resources, filters are useful for showing only the tasks or resources you are interested in and hiding the rest. The Resource Type selector in the toolbar allows you to quickly remove named or unnamed resources from view.
Using the Filters modal in the Resourcing tab, you can combine various elements (fields and values) to create a filter that fits your needs. For example, you may want to see critical task deadlines, milestones, or other important information—such as tasks that have not yet been started.
Click the Filters button on the Resourcing toolbar to open the Filters modal and select each desired filter.
The following filtering options appear in the Fields section:
- Team Members
- Task Start Date
- Task Due Date
- Task Status
- Task Title
- Task Type
For more information about how filters work in Resourcing, see Resource Center Filters.
List
On the left side of the Resourcing tab, you’ll see the list of all resources on your project team—comprised of named and unnamed resources—followed by their total Allocated, Scheduled, and Actual hours for the project. This allows you to see how you’re tracking against your plan all the way through the project’s life cycle.
Clicking the drop-down arrow to the left of a team member allows you to view all of their assigned tasks for this project, see Estimated, Scheduled, and Actual hours on each task, and complete other task-level actions.
To learn more about the list or the actions you can complete here, see Resource Center: Resources.
To reduce unnecessary scrolling and visual clutter, as well as making it easier to manage multiple projects and team members, some information in expanded rows is shown or hidden by default. By default, the Resource Center hides resources (in the Projects tab) and projects (in the Team Members tab) when they do not have assignments, allocated hours, or scheduled hours.
Applying specific filters may completely prevent some top-level rows from displaying while hiding some secondary or tertiary rows. For more information on how filters affect what displays in the Resource Center, see Resource Center Filters.
When rows are hidden, you can click Show to reveal the hidden information and then click Hide when you are finished reviewing the hidden rows.
Clicking All, Unnamed, or Named in the Resource Center toolbar also affects what type of resources display.
Timeline
On the right side of the Resourcing tab, you’ll see a timeline that shows the workload and availability of resources. Each bar in the task row is a visual representation of how many hours per day each resource is scheduled to work on a given task in a project. The color of each bar corresponds to the project color.
You'll see different information on the timeline depending on which display preference is selected. When you select Compare Scheduled vs. Allocated as the Hours View Preference, the resource row splits to show both the total number of scheduled hours in the selected time period (day, week, or month) and the total allocated hours the resource has for the project.
Start and end date brackets appear on each task in the task row, as well as in the resource row when allocations are visible to show the earliest start date and latest due date for a resource’s tasks.
Red-highlighted cells quickly show you when someone is:
- Overallocated—In the Allocated Hours and Compare Scheduled vs. Allocated views, the red highlighting indicates that a resource has allocation hours assigned to them that are higher than the number of hours they are allotted to work in a day, week, or month based on their workweek hours.
- Overscheduled—In the Scheduled Hours and Compare Scheduled vs. Allocated views, the red highlighting indicates that a resource has scheduled hours assigned to them that are higher than the number of hours they are allotted to work in a day, week, or month based on their workweek hours.
When scheduled hours are visible in the resource row, click on a named resource’s total scheduled hours to see the following information:
- Total number of scheduled hours across projects
- Scheduled hours broken down by project—limited to a view of the projects that you have permission to see
- Details on each scheduled hours bar, including red bars that indicate a resource may be overscheduled
You can review their availability in a day, week, or month view and use the arrows to move forward and backward. This information can help you determine a resource’s current capacity for work based on the number of scheduled hours they have during a specific period of time.
The legend in the upper-right allows you to quickly reference the following information represented in the resource row:
- Hard Allocation—Solid bars indicate hard allocations.
- Soft Allocation—Striped bars indicate soft allocations.
- Overallocated—Red highlighting that indicates in the Allocated Hours and Compare Scheduled vs. Allocated views that the resource is overallocated during a time period.
- Overscheduled—Red highlighting that inidicates in the Scheduled Hours and Compare Scheduled vs. Allocated views that the resource is overscheduled during a time period. This only appears in the legend when the Scheduled Hours view is selected.
- Scheduled—A thin, blue line indicates there are scheduled hours during a time period. A thin, red line indicates that the resource is overscheduled.
- Unavailable—Diagonally-striped gray bars indicate a person is unavailable—meaning that they have all of their capacity scheduled as time off or it is a weekend or holiday. Scheduled time off is also represented by a small, gray triangle in the upper-left corner of a day when there is still some availability.
Getting Started
To start building out your resource schedule, navigate to a project and select the Resourcing tab. From here, you can see all your project resources; you can also see when—and for how many hours—people are planned to work on the project, including those who have been assigned tasks.
Once you have added resources to your project, you can select the resource to open the Resource side panel. From here, you can define and fill resource needs by Role, Skills, and Custom Fields. This information is useful when it comes time to staff those roles, especially when the person approving resource requests or staffing with Team Builder needs more context on project and staffing needs.
From the left side of the Resourcing tab, you can then estimate hours for resources on each of your tasks to indicate your resource needs.
Once ready to staff demand for the project, Resource Requests can be submitted—if enabled—or a resource manager can use the following tools to find resources that fit your needs:
When you’re ready to build out your resource schedule, you can drag and drop in the timeline to create allocations in the resource row or scheduled hours in the task row.
To quickly create hours in bulk for a resource that are based on their tasks’ start and due dates, use the following bulk actions:
- Distribute Hours—Accessible from the task row’s More menu, this option creates scheduled hours based on the resource estimated hours. You can modify the number of scheduled hours you want to create, choose how to distribute them, and determine which workweek days you want to schedule them on.
- Create Allocations—Accessible from the resource row’s More menu, this option creates project allocations based on the scheduled hours on the resource’s assigned tasks.
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