Staffing Placeholder Allocations

At some point in a project's life cycle, placeholders need to be replaced by the actual team members who will complete the work required.  In some cases you might know upfront who will replace the placeholder and in other cases you may not and need to find the right person for the job.

This article covers:

• Updating Placeholders with Assigned Resources

• Allocations Action Menu

• Assign to Team Member

• Find available team member

Updating Placeholders with Assigned Resources

Timeline and Demand offer functionality to assist in staffing placeholder allocations.

When you are ready to staff placeholders, there are three ways to manage placeholder allocations and transfer them to actual resource bookings.

Allocations Action Menu

To use Allocation actions menu

1. From Timeline or Demand, right click on the placeholder allocation.
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. Click Assign.
7. The placeholder allocation is removed and replaced by a project allocation for the assigned resource. The resource is also added to the project's Team. Use People Schedule or Timeline to review your resource bookings.
   

Assign to team member

If you know the team member who will be staffing the placeholder allocation, you can transfer the allocation to that team member using Assign to team member.

To use Assign to team member

1. From Timeline or Demand, find the placeholder in the left side panel. 
   • Timeline is project specific and lists the project's placeholders in the left side panel while Demand groups placeholders for all projects by the roles they represent.
2. Hover over the placeholder and click the three dots.
3. Select Assign to team member.
4. Follow the same steps outlined above in Allocations Action Menu.

Find available team member

Sometimes, you might not know who should fill a placeholder allocation. When that happens, use Find available team member to identify the best fit. Find available team member is available in both Timeline and Demand.

Find available team member returns suggested resources based on role sorted by:

• • Availability, where the most available team member listed first. Soft allocations are not considered when determining availability based on their tentative nature.
  • Suitability

Suitability is determined by Forecast's AI using a combination of a team member's:

• • Role
  • Skills
  • Team
  • Department

The Skills, Team and Department assigned to a placeholder directly impact the resource suggestions provided in Find available team member. Learn more in Working with Placeholders. 

To use Find available team member

From Timeline or Demand:

1. Click the three dots next to the placeholder. 
2. Select Find available team member.
   

Find available team member functionality

Find available team member includes many of the same features as People Schedule, but with additional functionality that allows you to review various scheduling scenarios before committing the changes as final. Any changes made in this page are tentative until saved enabling you to review how different staffing selections may impact resourcing and your project pipeline.

Suggested ways to find the best suited team member to staff a placeholder allocation:

• Review the suggested resources by availability. The most available resource will be listed first.
• To see all team members, open Filter and clear Role, Skills, Team and Department selections.
• Alternatively, add filters to view different subsets of your team. 

• Exclude allocations
  Soft allocations are not considered in team member availability of suggested resources using Find available team member, though they are displayed in Demand's heatmap.
  • • Use Hide soft allocations to view team member utilization without these tentative bookings.  
    • Use Hide hard allocations to view team member utilization without their confirmed bookings.

• Assign
  Assign placeholder allocations to a specific team member and review their utilization in the heatmap.
  • To assign:
    • Drag/drop a placeholder allocation to a specific team member.
    • Click Assign next to the placeholder and select the resources you believe to be best fit for the demand. Complete the Assign placeholder allocations form and click Assign. 

Once you are happy with your staffing assignments:

• Commit the changes by clicking Save and exit. To disregard changes, use Exit.
• Retain empty placeholders for future use. Or, opt to remove them.  

Related articles

• Working with Placeholders
• About Capacity Planning
• Using soft and hard project allocations