Role-Based Planning with Project Templates – Kantata Knowledge Base

Account Permissions Needed: Project Creator (or higher)

Overview

Kantata’s role-based planning capabilities allow you to assign roles to resources in your project templates. From here, you can add an unnamed resource when you create a project from a template or apply a template to an existing project.

Providing roles and assigning tasks to unnamed resources is useful when you're uncertain who will be performing the work. Unnamed resources can be assigned to a task and those tasks can be reassigned to team members who join the project at a later time.

With Kantata's role-based planning, you can:

Add roles to template resources.
Create new unnamed resources when using a template for project creation.
Create additional unnamed resources during project creation.
When applying a template to an existing project, you can map roles to current unnamed resources or brand-new unnamed resources.

How to Add Roles to Template Resources

On the Project Templates > Resources tab, you can define the role and label for each template resource in both new and existing templates.

The total number of assignments and estimated hours are calculated based on the template tasks that you add resources and hours to from the Tasks tab.

Note: Adding resource estimated hours in templates makes it easier to distribute scheduled hours to your resources within projects.

These resources can later be mapped to account members or unnamed resources during project creation or when a template is applied to a project. For more information about adding resources with roles to project templates, see the following articles:

How to Map Template Resources

You can map template resources when you:

Select a template during project creation or create a project from a template.
Apply a template to an existing project from the project's Task Tracker.

Mapping Template Resources during Project Creation

Each Template Resource can be mapped to a named or new unnamed resource when you create a project from a template. After the project is created, named and unnamed resources are added and assigned to tasks (populated from the template) based on the selections made in the mapping table.

From the Template Preferences section of the Create a New Project page, the following role-based planning options are available:

You can map a Template Resource to a New Unnamed Resource.
A member’s Account Role appears beneath their name in the template mapping table.
The Project Role can be selected for both named and unnamed resources and is automatically selected depending on the following conditions:
- When mapping to an Unnamed Resource
  - If the Template Resource has a role defined, New Unnamed Resource will be the default Map To selection and the Project Role will default to the Template Resource role.
  - If the Template Resource does not have a role (e.g., Business Analyst in the screenshot below), the Project Role selection will not be populated and Select Role will be shown.
  - If the Map To selection is left blank (i.e., Select Resource), the resource will not be added to the project and assignments in the template assigned to the resource will not carry over to the project.
- When mapping to a Named Resource (Account Member)
  - The Project Role will default to the Template Resource role.
  - If the Template Resource doesn't have a role, the Project Role will default to the member's Account Role.

For more information about mapping resources and roles during project creation, see Create a New Project.

Mapping Template Resources to an Existing Project

Mapping template resources works the same way when you're applying a template to an existing project. After selecting a template to apply to your project, you will be presented with the Apply Template modal where all of your Template Resources are shown in a mapping table.

Here, you are able to make the following role-based planning options:

Map a Template Resource to any existing named and/or unnamed resources on the project and assign them to tasks populated from the template.
Create a New Unnamed Resource; this is the default selection of the Map To field when the Template Resource has a role defined.
Note: This option is only available to those with Edit Financials Project Permissions (or higher).
Invite Other Account Members to the project; the Map To drop-down separates existing project resources from invitees.
Note: The Other Account Members section in the Map To drop-down is only visible if you have access to Invite Members to Project within the project permissions.
Change the Project Role for named (account members) or unnamed resources being added to the project.

For information about applying templates to projects, see Apply a Template to a Project.

How to View, Select, and Filter Unnamed Resources

Unnamed Resources in the Project Task Tracker Assignees Column

After applying a template, you can view and select unnamed resources that have been assigned to tasks from the Assignees column of the Project Task Tracker.

Unnamed Resources in the Global Tasks List Assignees Column

You can view and filter by unnamed resources when they are assigned to tasks across all projects from the Assignees column of the Global Tasks List.

How to Add Additional Resources during Project Creation

If the project you are creating requires additional resources beyond the resource estimate included in your template, you can use the Resource Plan table to add these resources. Within this table, you can indicate the resources you need, update the Resource Label to be more specific, and automatically create allocated hours for these resources based on the dates, allocation percentage, and hours that you enter in the table for each resource.