Working with Placeholders

⏱️ 5 minute read

Placeholders offer a practical way to plan resources ahead of a project kick-off. By enabling early allocation without the need to define every task in detail, they give teams more flexibility, streamline planning, and lead to more efficient use of time.

This article covers:

• What is a Placeholder?
• Creating a Placeholder
• Allocating Project Hours to a Placeholder
• Editing a Placeholder Allocation

What is a Placeholder?

A placeholder represents the need, or demand, for a specific role or skill within a project and is a key component of capacity planning and high-level project planning. A placeholder is defined at the role level, allowing project managers to account for staffing needs without assigning specific team members. Once a project is confirmed, its placeholders are updated to reflect actual allocations for team members.

A placeholder:

• Refers to a role.
• Defines a skill set.
• May represent a team or department.
• Belongs to a project.
• Displays a tentative booking.
• Is not an actual team member or employee.
• Does not have working hours.
• Does not impact utilization.

Creating a Placeholder

Placeholders can be created either in bulk from a project’s Baseline or individually within its Timeline. They are defined by role and may represent a single person or an entire team. Note that the ability to create placeholders depends on your permissions.

• See About Permission Profiles for more information. 

Bulk Creating Placeholders from the Baseline

This is a one-time action. Repeating it will result in duplicate placeholders.

1. Open the project’s Baseline.

2. Click Create Placeholders and carefully review the pop-up message.
   

3. Click Confirm.

4. A banner will appear showing how many placeholders were created, along with a link to the Demand page where you can view them.

Creating a Placeholder in the Timeline

1. Open the project’s Timeline.

2. Hover over Placeholders and click the + icon when it appears.

3. In the Create Placeholder window, select a role from the dropdown menu.

4. The name will default to the selected role—keep it or rename it as needed.

5. Fill in any optional fields if desired:

   Skills, Team, and Department can help with filtering and matching placeholders to suitable resources later.

   Adding these details also improves AI-driven suitability suggestions when using “Find available team member.”

   You can assign one Department, and multiple Skills and Teams.

6. Click Create to finish.

Allocating Project Hours to a Placeholder

Once a placeholder is created, its demand is defined by allocating project hours.

Project hour allocations are added:

• Immediately after a placeholder is created in Timeline;
• Within a project's Timeline;
• As derived from Time Estimates in the Baseline;
• Or, from Resourcing > Demand.

To allocate directly after placeholder setup

In Allocate, complete the details of the allocation or Skip to create the placeholder allocation later. 

To create a placeholder allocation from Timeline

1. In Timeline, expand Placeholders on the left side panel.
2. Identify the placeholder for the allocation.
3. Click into the timeline in the row for the placeholder.
4. Drag your mouse across the timeline to display the purple bubble and release. 
   
5. In Allocate, define the duration and details of the allocation. 
   • % of day: Placeholders use your company's default working hours are used for placeholders.
   • If you prefer to distribute the allocation hours by day of week, expand Distribution and enter daily values in hours.
     
6. Add Notes as needed. 
7. Click Allocate.
8. The placeholder allocation will immediately appear in the timeline depicted by a slightly lighter shade of the project's colour and a dotted line border.

Editing a Placeholder Allocation

If demand changes, placeholder allocations need to be updated to reflect the new demand.

To edit or update an existing placeholder allocation

From Demand or within a project's Timeline:

1. Identify the placeholder and allocation to update. 
2. Click on the allocation.
3. In Allocate, update the allocation details. 
4. Click Save.

Allocation actions

Demand and Timeline include additional functionality for managing placeholder allocations.

• Drag start/end date to adjust the duration of an allocation.
• Click, drag and drop the allocation to a different day, week, month or other time period.

• The allocation actions menu is accessible by right-clicking on an allocation.

Assign to team member

Updates the placeholder allocation and assigns it to a team member. 

To Assign to team member

1. In Timeline or Demand, right click on the placeholder allocation bar.
2. Select Assign to team member
3. Choose the team member from the Assignee dropdown.
4. Set the Allocation type.
5. Select Keep empty placeholder after assigning all allocations to retain the placeholder for use in the future.
6. Alternatively, use Find available team member to identify which resources you have available based on their role and availability. 
   
7. Click Assign.
8. The placeholder allocation is removed and a project allocation for the assigned resource appears in its place.

Divide allocation

Use this feature to divide the original placeholder allocation. 

To Divide an allocation

1. Right click on the placeholder and select Divide allocation.
2. Enter the number of hours or % by which to divide the allocation by 2
3. Or, use + Divide further. 
4. Click Save.
5. The original placeholder adjusts based on the division and one or more additional placeholders appear on the Timeline.

Split allocation

Split a placeholder allocation in half at a specified point within its original time range.

To Split an allocation

1. Hover your mouse over the allocation.
2. Right click on your mouse.
3. Three dots will appear indicating where the split will occur.
4. Click Split.
   
5. The placeholder allocation splits into two allocations based on the position of the three dots. 

Duplicate allocation

Create a copy of the placeholder allocation. 

To Duplicate an allocation

1. Right click on the placeholder allocation.
2. Select Duplicate.
3. A copy of the placeholder will appear on the Timeline just below the original.

Delete allocation

Remove a placeholder allocation.

To Delete an allocation

1. Right click on the placeholder allocation and select Delete. 
2. The allocation will immediately be removed from the Timeline. 

Related articles

• Staffing Placeholder Allocations
• About Capacity Planning