Workfront Wednesday: Did You Know? Understand the Power of your People through Resource Management

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Does your organization want to gain insight into the capacity of your resources? Or easily visualize the total scope of your workload? 

Workfront offers feature-rich solutions to help managers focus on the visibility they need into how and when their people resources are scheduled. However, if you plan on using Workfront’s resource management solutions, you’re going to need a properly configured Workfront system.

This blog will focus on the planner — the resource management tool that works top-down to show availability and how allocating resources impacts availability on lower-priority projects. To ensure a proper configuration, make sure the following four setups are in place: 

MANAGER SETUP

To utilize the resource planner, a user must: 

• Be assigned a Workfront Plan license
• Be designated as a resource manager in the project details

Learn more about resource managers on the experience.workfront.com website. 

USER SETUP

In order to use the resource planner to understand which users are available and when, certain user setups are required.

• Assign users a Workfront schedule
• A schedule designates which days of the week and which hours of the day users are available for work. The goal with schedules is to capture the number of available (AVL) hours for actual work.
• Learn how to set up a schedule at Creating Schedules.
• Assign users a job role
• Job roles represent the skill sets across your organization, defining what work users are able to perform and what work you can assign them.
• Learn how to create and assign job roles at Creating and Managing Job Roles.

RESOURCE POOLS 

Resource pools are collections of users that are needed at the same time to do work on a project. Protect the time and talent of your people by putting them in resource pools that are associated with approved projects across your organization. 

The resource planner will not show user or job role availability unless the users are in the resource pools attached to the project. 

Learn how to create resource pools at Working with Resource Pools.

PROJECTS 

Three components must be set up on projects in order to accurately leverage the resource management solutions.

• Durations assigned to tasks
• Durations define the time frame in which a task should be completed. Setting a duration establishes the planned start and completion dates for the task.
• Planned hours assigned to tasks
• Planned hours are the best estimate for the amount of time it will take to complete the work.
• Job roles assigned to tasks
• Job roles define the skill set needed to complete the work.

Make sure to “Like” this post if you find it helpful! If you have any questions regarding the resource planner, please post the details in the comments section and we will reply back, or if you are available, attend our upcoming Ask the Expert webinar (details below) to ask a resource management expert directly! 

To learn how to use resource management to anticipate future problems, needs or changes, register for the 1-hour Ask the Expert: Take Control with Proactive Planning—Resource Management Essentials webinar, scheduled for Wednesday, March 18 at 8 am PT / 4 pm GMT (London).