Glossary of Terms
This article contains a glossary of common terms used in ResourceFirst
| Allocation | Allocation is all assignment demand up to the available, unused capacity of the resource. |
| Allocation Algorithm | The configurable sequence in which the available capacity of resources is allocated to projects. The default is to allocate in project priority order. |
| Attributes | The values in fields (columns in a grid) that contain data about an object such as projects, resources, or assignments. Examples include the objectives or current state of a project, the required country and location of skill assignment demand, etc. |
| Baseline | A snapshot at a point in time of some or all of a project’s forecast labor and financial demand and its attributes from the Project Data page.
All baselines can be displayed in Qlik reports; baselines marked “Official” can be displayed on assignment pages. |
| Capacity | The decimal portion of a full-time equivalent (FTE) or hours that a resource is available to do work. The default is 1 FTE per resource per period. See also “FTE”. |
| Column | In spreadsheet-like, grid style pages, each column is a field (except for period data columns that contain data such as forecast demand).
An administrator can configure column names and other characteristics in the Admin module. |
| Custom View | User defined views created by a user. |
| Demand | The amount of effort required by a project for a given resource or skill during a designated time period. |
| Dialog | Some functions in ResourceFirst display a window with options for the user to fill in. These windows are referred to as “dialogs.” |
| Effort Forecast | The demand forecast projects have for resources, skills, and teams. Also referred to as Labor Assignments. |
| Effort State | A labor assignment can have an optional “effort state” defined that can be used by the Allocation Algorithm to determine the order in which assignment demand is allocated to resources. A common use of this field is to define one or more of these states as “committed”. Committed assignments are allocated before all other assignments regardless of project priority. |
| Event | You can create custom events, such as “risks”, “issues”, “change requests”, “outcomes,” “facilities,” “market events,” and more, which can be tied to projects and used in custom reports. |
| Financial Assignment | A financial assignment is a forecast for a financial line item. Financial line items are defined in the administration module. A project’s financial plan is made up of financial assignments. |
| Form | Some functions in ResourceFirst, particularly projects, have configurable forms that can be used to enter and display data for a single object such as a project. |
| FTE | Full Time Equivalent. 1 FTE usually designates an 8 hour day. Optionally, the system can be set to operate in hours as opposed to FTEs. FTEs are generally simpler. |
| Global Filter | The Global Filter defines the data set the user wants to load from the database (projects, resources, date ranges, and OBS nodes). Each user can set their own Global Filter, limited by their login rights. The settings are sticky and remain in place until they are changed by the user. |
| Initiation | A project can be “initiated” as opposed to directly added. This puts the requested project on the Project>Initiation page, where it can be reviewed, approved, or rejected. Preliminary assignments can be made to an initiated project, which carry over to the “live” project once the project initiation is approved. |
| Labor Assignment | Labor assignments are Skill, Resource, or Team assignments, which contain the forecast demand by time period for a project. Labor assignments are on the global Assignments>Labor page and on project detail and resource detail Labor pages. |
| List | A dropdown list associated with a field. Some lists are associated with system fields. Other lists can be configured for User Defined Fields (UDFs). |
| OBS | Organizational Breakdown Structures (OBS): An OBS is a “tree” structure with “branch” nodes and “leaf” nodes. A branch node has nodes beneath it; a leaf node has no sub-nodes.There are two primary OBSes; the project OBS and the resource OBS. Projects are members of one project node; resources are members of one resource node. The resource OBS is usually identical to the company org chart. |
| OBS Node | A node is a named point on an OBS. Projects are members of one and only one Project OBS Node Resources are members of one and only one Resource OBS Node. |
| Official Baseline | A baseline marked as “Official” in the Create Baseline dialog is displayed on assignment pages when the user selects data type “Baseline”. |
| Optimization | There are three Optimization options:
Use Availability For Skill Assignments – allocate unused resource capacity to skill assignment demand Use Availability For Resource Assignments – allocate unused resource capacity to resource assignment shortfall Allocate Committed First – allocate committed assignments before all others. |
| Page | The screen or window pane where ResourceFirst displays data. |
| Parent | A project can be selected as a “Parent” for another project. This is often used when managing programs, in which the program is the parent project. The Parent-Child project hierarchy can be seen on the Project Pivot page. |
| Partition | Users in ResourceFirst can be designated as part of a partition. A user with Partition Owner rights can share certain functions (such as views, scenarios and global filter settings) with users in the partition. |
| Period Data Cells | For pages that show data across time periods (such as Assignments, Utilization, Demand), the cells that contain period-specific FTEs, hours, or dollars are referred to as “period data cells”. |
| Roadmap | The Roadmap page shows the project portfolio for all projects loaded in the current session as a high level Gantt timeline, including phase and milestone indicators and start/finish dates. |
| Primary Skill | When a resource is assigned to a project, the Primary Skill is copied to the assignment Required Skill field. |
| Project Detail Mode | A page layout mode on the Project Data page. A pane on the left is a list of all visible projects. The right pane has a page selection icon bar which provides access to all the pages that display data about the project; Forms, Assignments, Request, Events, Status & Baseline History, etc. The right pane pages show data for the single project selected in the left pane only. |
| Pulse Engine | A Business Rules customization and development capability is called the Pulse Engine. Notifications and calculations can be set up by PDWare or by an administrator using SQL statements. |
| Qlik & QlikSense | Qlik & QlikSense is the Business Analytics tool licensed by PDWare and built into ResourceFirst for reporting. |
| Resource Request | If project managers are not authorized to enter labor assignments directly, they can request skill or resource assignments. Anyone with the proper rights to the Resource OBS node can approve or reject the request. |
| Resource | A resource is a person or entity that has an entry (row) in the ResourceFirst resource table. Resources have associated skills and attributes and can be assigned to projects. |
| Resource Assignment | A Resource Assignment is an assignment to a project of a named resource (as opposed to a Skill assignment). |
| Resource Detail | There are two display modes on the Resource>Data page: Grid and Detail. In Detail mode, all resource names are displayed page left. When a resource name is selected, an assignments page containing all assignments of the resource is available as well as a utilization page for that resource. |
| Required Skill | The Required Skill field in an assignment defines the skill that is needed on the project for a designated time period. |
| Rights | Rights are access permissions granted to users in ResourceFirst. The permissions define what data a user can see or modify and what operations a user can perform. |
| Scenario | A scenario consists of a copy of one or more projects which can be modified without affecting the source projects.
The scenario projects are complete copies including project attributes and Gantt task plan (if any) and labor, financial, and asset assignments. Scenarios can be loaded and unloaded and shown with or without the current forecast. If approved, a scenario can be posted back to its source projects to establish a new plan. |
| Secondary Skills | In addition to the Primary Skill, a resource can have secondary skills.
When searching for candidates to satisfy a skill need on a project, available resources with a primary or secondary skill matching the required skill on the assignment will appear as possible candidates. |
| Shortfall | Shortfall is the portion of assignment demand that cannot be satisfied with remaining (unused) resource capacity.
Shortfall = Demand minus Allocation. |
| Skill Assignment | A Skill Assignment is a labor assignment with an empty resource field.
The Skill assignment can be filled by a named resource who possesses the required skill as their Primary or Secondary skill. |
| Target | Financial and/or FTE targets can be defined at multiple levels of the Project OBS node.
These targets appear when performing analysis on Analysis>Waterline pages to see if your project portfolio falls within defined targets. |
| Page Toolbar | The toolbar that includes page-specific functions, such as add, delete, save, export, etc. |
| UDF | User-Defined-Field: ResourceFirst provides many UDFs. An associated drop-down list can be created in the Admin module for any UDF. |
| User | A ResourceFirst User is a person who has an entry (row) in the user table and a set of access permissions (rights). |
| Utilization | Utilization reports how much of a resource’s capacity is consumed by demand. A resource can be underutilized, overutilized, or within target utilization. |
| View | A View is a named definition of the layout of a grid style page.
It defines what fields are available on the page, the left-to-right order of the fields, the width of each field, whether the field is visible or not, the freeze pane location, and the page sort order. In addition, a custom page filter specification can be associated with the view. Personal views can be created by users. Public system views are created by administrator users. |
| Waterline | There are two waterline pages in the Analysis area: (Labor) Waterline and Financial Waterline.
Each page has a chart at the top and a grid at the bottom where the rolled up project FTE demand and financials can be delayed, scaled up or down, and removed from the total. The charts display FTE capacity or target on the labor page and the financial target for the current data load. The effect of changes with respect to targets is displayed in the chart either by period or cumulatively. |