Planning Ahead With Generic Resources
Generic resources offer a solution of mapping resources to project tasks early before actual resources are identified. This feature is available in Planner and is extended to Tempo teams. Resource managers can benefit from this feature, where generic resources can be managed in Planner and in teams.
You can use generic resources as placeholders for actual resources in the following scenarios:
For projects in the early planning stages and until the actual team members are identified and allocated to work on those projects.
When a team member working on a current project is no longer available, their planned tasks can be assigned to a generic resource until a replacement is found.
When an actual resource is available, a previously assigned generic resource can be replaced by a team member now identified and available to work on the allocated tasks.
Generic resources are included in the Planned Time report and in the User Capacity report. However, generic resources cannot be assigned to a workload scheme or holiday scheme.
Generic Resources in Planner and Tempo Teams
Generic resources are managed in Planner and in Tempo teams. A project owner with the required permissions can create a generic resource and add it to fill a certain role in a team. Project tasks that are planned in advance can fill the gaps with generic resources. When replacements are found, plans are reassigned to actual team members. This is described in the general workflow:
Create a generic resource and assign plans to it in the Resource Planning view.
Once created, a generic resource is available to be added to one or more Tempo teams. You can also create a generic resource directly in a Tempo team: it's then available to be used for planning in the Resource Planning view, or added to another Tempo team.
When an actual resource is allocated, reassign plans to another resource in the Resource Planning view.
As generic resources can be assigned to multiple teams, they can be removed from teams but still remain in others with their plans intact. However, deleting a generic resource from Planner will delete it from all teams and all plans.
You have the ability to manage and plan the generic resources as follows:
How to | Planner | Teams | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
Create a Generic Resource | ✓ | ✓ | Create a generic resource in Plan form, Reassign Plans or Teams. |
Edit a Generic Resource | ✓ | ✓ | Edit a generic resource's name in Planner or in Teams |
Delete a Generic Resource | ✓ | Delete generic resources (permanently) in Planner only. | |
Add a Generic Resource to a Team | ✓ | Add generic resources to any team or multiple teams in Teams. | |
Remove a Generic Resource from a Team | ✓ | Remove generic resources from current teams in Teams. The generic resource remains available to other teams and for planning. | |
Create a plan | ✓ | Create a plan for generic resources in the Resource Planning View. | |
Edit a Plan | ✓ | Edit, drag, or split plans for generic resources in Resource Planning View. | |
Reassign a Plan | ✓ | Reassign plans of a generic resources to another generic resource, or to another user. Also reassign plans of a user to a generic resources. | |
Include Generic Resources in Reports | ✓ | Filter by Generic Resources and run Planned Time Report or User Capacity Report. |
Required Permissions for Managing and Planning for Generic Resources
With the integration of generic resources with Tempo Teams, permissions are now validated across Planner and Teams.
For example the View Plan permission controls what generic resources a user with this permission can see in the Resource Planning view, the same way it controls what users can be seen in the Resource Planning view.
In this topic, the required permissions can be expressed by the permission name and the role's access to resources, combined to describe the scope of the permission and the access to resources. For example, Manage Plan/All Resources (Full) implies that the required permission is Manage Plan with the role's access to All Resources (Full) as described in Tempo Team Permissions.
The following permissions are required when managing and planning for generic resources in Planner and in Teams. For example, planning a generic resource is only available in Planner for users with the Manage Plan permission.
Managing generic resources
When creating a generic resource in Teams or when assigning an existing one to a team users must have Manage Team/All Resources (Full) or Tempo Team Administrator permissions.
To create generic resources in Planner, a Manage Team/All Resources (Full) or Tempo Team Administrator permission is required.
To delete a generic resource in Planner where it is not assigned to any team, a Manage Team/All Resources (Full) or Tempo Team Administrator permission is needed.
If the resource is assigned to a number of teams, then a Manage Team permission for all teams is needed to remove it from all those teams. Having a Manage Team/All Resources (Full) or a Tempo Team Administrator permissions means that you have Manage Team permissions on all teams.
To view generic resources (or users) in Resource Planning view, you need to have View Plan permission in teams where those resources are team members of. To view generic resources (or users) that are not members of any team, you need the View Plan/All Resources (Full) permission.
Planning generic resources
To create, edit, delete or reassign plans for a generic resource (or user), you need the Manage Plan permission in all teams that the resource is a member of. When the generic resource (or user) is not a member of any team then you need the Manage Plan/All Resources (Full) permission.
The required permissions are validated and actions are granted or denied.
Special consideration and workarounds
It is worth mentioning that it is a possible to grant permissions for generic resources without granting them to users. In this workaround you can create roles that only grant access to team(s) that exclusively have generic resources as members.
To do so, create a team with members that are generic resources only and give the users you select the ability to plan/view/manage generic resources as the required permissions for that team.