Resource Recommendations Overview

 
Access Groups: Resource Management
Default Account Permissions: Account Administrator

Overview

Resource managers have a difficult task for every project: staffing. They must juggle project demand with member availability and necessary skills to get the job done while keeping in mind target margins and budgets. 

With Kantata’s recommendation engine in the Resource Center and a project's Resourcing tab, you can get a head start. Whether you need a quick recommendation to staff a single resource in the Resource side panel or a more robust view with Team Builder to staff resources for an entire project, you can model a project and see what resources are available and whether there will be an impact on margins. Based on the importance you determine for skills, role, availability, and even User Set custom fields (choice or text) you want available to resources, you can quickly find the best fit.

Enable and Set Criteria for Resource Recommendations

Through Resource Management Settings, Account Administrators can determine the relative importance of criteria for all projects. Note that resource managers and those with the right Access Group permissions can override these account-level settings for project-specific needs in the Resource Center or the project's Resourcing tab.

• Resource Recommendations—Turns the feature on or off.
• Criteria Weighting—Lets you determine the relative importance of a member’s role, availability, skills, as well as any User Set custom fields (choice or text) that are Available to Resources. Zero means the attribute is not considered when searching for resources while 10 means it is most important. Another way to think of it is if Skills Match is set to five and Role Match is set to 10, then Role Match is twice as important as Skills Match.
  • Role Match—Determines the relative importance of a resource’s Account Role.
  • Availability—Determines the relative importance of whether a resource can perform work for the length of a project—based on scheduled hours, hard allocations only, or soft and hard allocations.
  • Skills Match—Determines the relative importance of a resource’s skill set.
  • Custom Fields—Only appears if there are User Set custom fields (choice or text) that are Available to Resources. You can add custom fields through Settings > Custom Fields. In this example, Employee Location, Employee Type, and Language are examples of User Set custom fields.
• Match Requirements—Lets you further filter members for all projects, based on the rules you select.
  • Role must match—Select this box if the Account Role must match. For example, if an unnamed resource is a graphic designer and you select this box, only members with the role of graphic designer are suggested. Note that Role Match in Criteria Weighting must be set to at least one.
  • 100% Available—Check if the member you want to fill the role must be available for the duration of the project. Note that Availability in Criteria Weighting must be set to at least one.  
  • Custom Fields must match—Only appears if there are User Set custom fields (choice or text) that are Available to Resources. In this example, Employee Location, Employee Type, and Language are examples of User Set custom fields. Note that these fields must be set to at least one in Criteria Weighting.
• Number of Recommendations to Display—By default, three recommendations are displayed. Use this setting to change the number of recommendations you want to show. You can select as few as one or as many as 15.
• Availability Calculation Method—By default, the availability percentage for resources is calculated based on their soft and hard allocations on projects. You can instead choose to calculate their availability based on their scheduled hours assignments on tasks or only hard allocations.
  

For information on enabling Resource Recommendations on your account, see Enable Resource Recommendations.

Override Recommendation Settings in Team Builder

Project needs can change. When that happens, you can override the account settings for Criteria Weighting and Match Requirements to better fit your project-specific resourcing needs, and run recommendations again. Select the Settings icon (“   ”) to adjust criteria for the project.