Allocating resources to your project
Resource management is only available with the RepliconPSM, RepliconPPM, Professional Services Automation, and Project Portfolio Management products.
When planning a project, you can schedule each team member’s work using allocations. When you allocate a team member, also called a resource, you specify when and how long they will work on your project.
Allocation can help you:
- Develop better estimates
Without allocation, estimates and work dates are entered for the project or task as a whole. When you allocate, you enter estimates and work dates for each resource individually. The project estimates are then automatically calculated based on the resource allocations.
- Avoid conflicts
With allocation, you essentially reserve the resource’s time for your project. As a result, when you are staffing a project, you can see which resources are available and other project managers can see the same. This reduces the risk of multiple project managers attempting to use a resource at the same time.
- Improve scheduling efficiency
When a new project needs to be scheduled, you can find out when resources are available and schedule your project for that period.
When needed, you have the option to allocate a placeholder instead of a resource. This can be useful if resources are assigned by someone else and you want to indicate your resourcing requirements. Placeholders can also be used if you are in the early stages of planning and aren’t ready to assign a specific resource. For even more granularity in your planning, you can allocate resources to specific tasks instead of at the project level.
Allocating resources to a project
To allocate a resource or placeholder to your project:
- Within your link project, go to the Team tab and click the Allocation toggle.
- Find the resource (or placeholder) you want to allocate. If the resource isn’t shown, add them to the team first.
For each resource, you’ll see information on their current allocations, including:
- Allocations to your project in blue
- Allocations to other projects in grey
- Time off in green
- Scroll to the date range you want to allocate for.
You can change the dates when entering the allocation.
- Click in the grid where the desired resource and date range intersect.
- In the Set Allocation dialog, choose:
- The date range to allocate for
- How much time they’ll spend on the project, either as:
- The number of hours each day
- A percentage of their time. The number of hours will be calculated based on the percentage and the resource’s assigned office schedule.
- The total hours for the selected period (only available in the Monthly view). The hours will be distributed evenly over each day of the period.
- If you are allocating in the Weekly view, which days of the week the allocation is for
- Click the Add Allocation button.
Once allocations have been added, you can update or remove them as needed.
Allocating resources to a task
To allocate a resource or placeholder to a task:
- Within your project, go to the Team tab and click either the Members or Allocation toggle.
You can allocate to tasks from either location.
- Click Assign to Task underneath the resource’s name.
- Enable the check box for the tasks you want to assign, if they aren’t already checked.
- Click Continue.
- For each assigned task, enter when the resource will work on the task using the Start Date and End Date fields.
- Click Done.
To update a task allocation, follow the same steps and edit the dates as necessary.
FAQs
What do I do if the resource’s allocation varies?
Create a new allocation for each change in allocated hours. For example, if you want the resource to work 4 hours per day for one week and 8 hours per day the following week, create an allocation for 4 hours and then create an allocation for 8 hours.
Related links
Why is a user not available in the Resources page?
Allocating a resource to a project
Allocating a resource to a task
Changing a resource's allocations
How allocation works
