All about Resources

The Resources pane on the right side of the Project Scheduling view lists all Employees, Skillsets and Placeholders available to Project Planning tool projects. This lengthy topic details these 3 components. Assigning resources to a project's task is covered in the assigning resources topic.
 

The complete Resources pane, or its sub panes, can be hidden or re-sized using the or buttons, or by dragging the frame borders.

 

Employees

Skillsets

Placeholders

Employees

 

The employee list contains all employees that are available for Project Planning tool projects. By default, all employees that have their Software Access fields set to at least 'Time & Expense Entry only' are shown in the Project Planning tool's Employee pane. Individual employees can be removed by marking them as 'not bookable' using the Project Planning tool's Working Time tab. New employees cannot be added to the database from the Project Planning tool. They can only be added using the Project Assignments view.

 

Allocation %: The Allocation % column next to each employee shows how occupied the employee is, and can be useful before assigning an employee to new tasks. The Allocation % is the employee's approximate workload for the open project and all published projects.

Important: The Allocation % is calculated for the duration of the opened project (Start to Finish dates) and not the span of time displayed in the Gantt area's calendar. This is different from the information displayed in the Heat map.

By holding your mouse over an employee, the Allocation % breakdown is displayed. In the example below, Rob's overall allocation between October 4th and October 26th is 55%. This means that 45% of his time is available for additional assignments in this date range.  
 

 

Tip: You can sort the list by employee name or Allocation % by clicking on any of the column headers in the list.

 

 

 

 

Employee pane toolbar functions

 

The Employee Replace Resource button is used to replace the project's assignments from one employee to another.

 

Select the new Employee to assign and optionally modify the assignment's wage and charge out rates:

Default Employee - Use the replacement employee's rates.

Existing employee rates - Keep the existing assigned employee's rates.

Specify rates - Manually enter new hourly rates. If enabled, select the currency applicable for each rate. For example, 50.00 USD or 30.50 GBP. Time entries and estimated hours are stored using these rates (and currencies) to calculate the project's actual and budgeted company and client costs.

Leave rates - Leave the rates already applied. An assignment's rates can be viewed via the task's assignment properties.

 

 

Employee Target Allocation % button is used to establish a new default allocation % for an employee's assignments in the opened project. Because the Project Planning tool uses all of an employee's working time for the current project, this feature is useful when a manager wants to leave an employee some free time to work on other, simultaneous projects.

 


 

Example: Zina is working at full capacity on Project A. Project B is new and Zina must work on this one at the same time as Project A. When planning project B, Zina is shown as already 100% allocated (on Project A). To free up some time, Project A is opened and Zina's allocation percentage is changed from its default setting (100%) to a lower value. When Project A is re-leveled and re-published, this creates some free time for Zina to work on Project B.

 

Check the 'Update existing assignments for this Project' box to update all existing and future assignments for this employee. If not checked, only new assignments will use this new Target Allocation percentage.

 

 

See the Adding Multiple Concurrent projects topic for a thorough example.

 

 

Use the Filter toolbar button to filter the Employee list by Team or skillset. Use the button to remove the applied filter.

 

 



Use the Update Rates button to modify the company or client hourly rates applied to existing assignments in this project. The initial rates (and currencies if enabled) applied to each assignment are based on the assigned employee's default Rate of Wages and Rate Charged values as defined in the employee's profile. Note that this function only modifies the rates for assignments that already exist. If new assignments are created, the default employee rates are applied against these new assignments, and these will have to be modified using this option again.

If editing the Company Cost or Client Cost rates, then the link to the original source information for the rate is broken, and any updates to the source rate information is not transferred to the edited assignment.

Example: Bob is assigned to a task and his Rate of Wages (as established in his employee profile) is 35.00/hour. You manually adjust the rate for this assignment to 40.00/hour using Update Rates. Bob's Rate of Wages is later changed in his profile to 45.00/hour. This new rate will not be applied to any assignments manually edited using Update Rates.




Select one or more Employees, check one of the Cost fields and enter the hourly rate. If enabled, optionally update the currency applicable for the updated rate.

 

Company Cost: The hourly Rate of Wages for the employee

Company Cost Currency: The currency linked to the employees' Rate of Wages.

Client Cost: The hourly Rate Charged for the employees

Client Cost Currency: The currency linked to the employees' Rate Charged.

 

 

 

Employee Availability   

 

For the Project Planning tool to accurately schedule work, the software must know when employees are available and what their work limits are. Along with the data from other published projects, the Project Planning tool uses employee Working Time and Vacation settings to schedule a project's work.

 

 

The Working Time tab establishes the following settings for each employee. Double click on the employee name to adjust settings.

Work Days: The days per week worked (Monday, Tuesday, etc.).

Hours Per Day: Number of hours worked each day. Note that this value can also be set using the Working Hours field in each employee's profile.

Bookable: Whether the employee is available to be assigned to tasks in the Project Planning tool. When not bookable, the employee does not appear in the Resources Pane.

Admin %: The percentage of time allocated per day to non-project or Administrative work. The remaining percentage is used as available time for scheduling work and is considered the effective (defacto) 100% availability for scheduling.

Example: Rudy works 40 hours a week and has an Admin % setting of 20%. This means that 8 hours per week (40 x 0.20) cannot be scheduled for Rudy. The remaining 32 hours is now considered by the Project Planning tool as full allocation. This means that when you book Rudy at 100% for a project, he is scheduled for a maximum of 32 hours per week on the project.

 

Over/Under Allocation %: Used as general gauges to see if an employee is over or under scheduled. The values are used for reporting purposes and are not used when scheduling projects.

 

Tips:

  • You can sort the list of employees by name, bookable, etc., by clicking on any of the column headers in the list.

  • You can filter employees by Team using the drop-down list at the top of the window.

 

Notes:

  • If you uncheck a Bookable employee, existing assignments for the employee are not lost.

  • Use the Set as default for new Employees to make the existing Working Time settings the default values for future employees added to the system.

 

 

 

The Vacation tab establishes planned time off for employees. These can be vacation days unique to each employee or common days off for all employees such as bank holidays. Use the toolbar buttons to create or edit Vacation time.
 

Employees: Select one or more employees for this planned time off period. When [ALL] is selected and a new employee is later added to the database, then the new employee is automatically assigned to the time off period.

Type: Vacation, Holiday or Other.

Half day: To set if the planned time off is for a full or half day.

 

Tip: The 'Other' option for Type can be useful for unplanned leave such as a lengthy illness. Example: If an employee missed 5 days work, you could add this time off as 'Other' and then re-level the project to see the impact on the planned schedule. Any other projects the employee was scheduled to work on during this absence would also have to be re-leveled.

 

Notes:

  • Holiday or Vacation time planned is not entered into the user's Time Entry tool. The period is simply made unavailable for project scheduling.

  • Time off cannot be set for any amount less than 1/2 day.

  • Vacation time cannot be booked over Holiday time.

  • Recurring Holidays cannot be created in this release.

 

 

Assigning an employee to a task: In its easiest form, you assign by dragging and dropping the employee on top of the task. More detailed instructions and options for assigning employees to tasks can be found in the Assigning Resources topic.

 

 

Skillsets

 

The Skillset list contains all skillsets available to assign to tasks. Skillsets are created, associated to employees and assigned to tasks.

Skillsets are temporary resources useful in project scheduling when the type of work to be performed can be reasonably defined (Mechanical Engineer, Interface Designer, etc.) but the exact employee to assign to the work cannot be finalized. Using skillsets in lieu of actual employee assignments does not diminish the cost planning aspects of project scheduling as hourly rates can be defined for each skillset.

 

Skillset pane toolbar functions  

 

New : Enter a unique Name, hourly rate of Wages (Pay rate) and hourly rate Charged (Billing). If enabled, select a currency for each skillset rate.

Edit : Edit the existing skillset.

Delete : Delete the skillset and all Placeholder assignments created using the skillset.

Skillset assignments : By associating skillsets to specific employees, you are able to easily update assignments created using skillsets with employees. From the skillset assignment pop-up, check the skillset in the left side pane, select the employees on the right and click the Assign button.

 

Assigning a skillset to a task: Drag the skillset on top of the task in the Gantt area. Notice that when you assign a skillset to a task, a placeholder is automatically created. The reason for this, and other details are explained in the Placeholders section (below).

 

Note: The rate values are hidden from users who do not have Read access to skillsets.

 

 

 

Placeholders

 

The placeholders list contains all the placeholders automatically created when skillsets are assigned to tasks.

 

When you assign a skillset to a task, a placeholder is automatically created (in the lower right pane) and the placeholder is assigned to the task instead of the source skillset. The creation of placeholders is important when the time comes to replace these temporary assignments with employees or to make specific wage and charge rate changes. The placeholder's name is automatically created using the skillset's name plus a sequential number. For example, the first time the Web Designer skillset is assigned to a task, Web Designer 1 placeholder is created. Web Designer 2 placeholder is created the second time the skillset is assigned. You have the option to always use the first placeholder created (Web Designer 1) by dragging and dropping it on tasks instead of assigning the skillset.

 

 

Placeholder pane toolbar functions  

 

Placeholder allocation : Permits the manager to modify a placeholder's Target Allocation for the project - this function is very similar to the Employee Target Allocation described previously. By default, placeholder target allocations are set to 100%. Check the 'Update existing assignments for this Project' box to update all existing and future assignments for this placeholder. If not checked, only new assignments will use this new Target Allocation value.

 

Replace Resources : Used to select the employee and rates to replace the placeholder. By default, only the employees associated with the original skillset are displayed in the Employee drop-down list. Checking the Show all Employees box will list all.
 

Select the Employee to assign and optionally modify the assignment's hourly rates:

Use default Employee rates - Use the employee's rates.

Use skillset rates - Keep the existing skillset's rates.

Specify rates - Manually enter new rates. If enabled, select the currency applicable for each rate.

Leave rates - Leave the rates already applied. An assignment's rates can be viewed via the task's assignment properties.

 

Delete : To delete the placeholder and its project assignments.
 

Note: A project can be published with placeholders. However, the placeholder assignments will not be displayed in other Dovico Planning & Timesheet views. The same applies to budgeted time and costs for placeholder assignments.