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There are two primary types of assignments in ResourceFirst: Labor and Financial.
Labor Assignments specify forecasted demand by time period for a specific project. This demand can be for a specific person (resource) or for a skill needed from a specified organization in the OBS Node (Organizational Breakdown Structure).
Financial Assignments specify forecasted dollars by time period for a specific project at the financial item/category level.
There are two types of Labor assignments: Resource (a person by name) and Skill.
On Resource assignments, the OBS node is fixed since people are members of one and only one resource OBS node.
On Skill assignments the resource OBS node defines the range of resources from which a person with the Required skill is needed. A Skill assignment is defined by the absence of a resource name.
Labor assignments are viewed and managed on the following pages:
Projects > Assignments (global assignments, within your current data load)
Resources > Assignments (global assignments, within your current data load)
Individual Project Workspace > Assignments tab (for assignments for a specific project)
Individual Resource Workspace > Assignments tab (for assignments for a specific resource)
PMO > Assignment Rollup (read only)
Note that a user with appropriate rights can add or delete assignments and can edit attributes (fields) including period demand values.
See the remaining articles in this series for details on the features available on the Labor Assignment pages.
The central drive train behind ResourceFirst is its unique and flexible Allocation Algorithm.
First, it is important to understand the concept of “allocation” in ResourceFirst.
When a resource is assigned to a project, the amount that the resource is actually available to fulfill is considered “Allocated” and the amount that cannot be worked on due to unavailability is considered “shortfall.” The level of shortfall is indicated by the colors in the cells (red indicates severe shortfall, orange is moderate shortfall, and yellow is mild shortfall). Allocation and Shortfall are calculated analytics and are not part of the system data. The thresholds that define which shortfall levels warrant which colors is defined in Administration > Server Settings.
When ResourceFirst calculates allocation for assignments, it allocates each assignment in sequence, according to how the Allocation Algorithm is set up in Administration > Server Settings. Named Resource Assignments are processed before Skill Assignments. The default configuration is:
If the Optimization > Allocate Committed First checkbox is unchecked via the Optimization button on the Assignments page, then ResourceFirst by default allocates in order of the project’s Unit Priority and then the Project ID, referencing the above configuration (which can be tailored according to your needs). This means that once a need on the highest priority project is filled by the resource’s availability, the system then allocates the resource’s remaining availability to the next highest priority, and so on until the resource’s availability is consumed, and then shortfall colors begin to appear for subsequent assignments for that resource.
If the Optimization > Allocate Committed First checkbox is checked via the Optimization button on the Assignments page, the system will first look at the Effort State of the assignments to see which items are flagged as “Allocate First” (in the Effort State list in Administration > Lists > Effort State) before looking at Unit Priority and Project Name. The Effort States are defined in the Administration > Lists > Effort State list. There, various states can be defined, such as:
Each can be defined with a sequence to appear in any drop downs and flagged as to which to allocate first. See Administering Lists for more details, under Effort State.
If using Effort States, each assignment would then have an Effort State set for it in the Effort State column.
With such a setup, for example, assuming the default Effort State list is in place and the Optimization > Allocate Committed First checkbox is checked, all the assignments designated with “Allocate First” Effort States would be allocated first, and within each group, the allocations would occur in Unit Priority, then Project ID sequence.
Put another way:
1) “Allocate Committed First” on the Assignments page options button, if checked, looks at the Effort State prior to other items in the Allocation Algorithm (specified in Server Settings), to see which items are flagged to allocate first.
2) Within the Effort State List: All items marked “Allocate First’ (in Administration > Lists > Effort State) are allocated first, in the sequence of the “Order” field. There can be multiple items flagged as “Allocate First.”
3) The Order field is also used to sequence the order in which Effort States appear in drop downs. For Effort States NOT checked as “Allocate First” this is the only use of the Order field. Effort States not marked as “Allocate First” have no impact on the allocation sequence.
4) Once all the “Allocate First” Effort State assignments are allocated, the allocation happens in sequence of the remaining Allocation Algorithm items (Unit Priority, etc.).
5) If multiple “Allocate First” assignments have the same Effort State (e.g., Committed), those items get allocated according to the remaining Allocation Algorithm items (Unit Priority, etc.)
For more details, see Server Settings and General Defaults (under Allocation Algorithm) and Administering Lists (under Effort State).
The Allocation Algorithm by default applies to named resource assignments. Skill assignments only rely on these rules if Use Availability for Skill Assignments is checked via the Optimization button on the Assignments Page. In this case, the calculations are based on the rolled up resources that are available (or unavailable) to meet the skill need. Otherwise, allocation is not calculated for skill assignments and the color is always in red, since the skill need is unfilled.
The colors on the period values are the result of the ResourceFirst prioritized resource availability analysis, and are as follows:
The color thresholds are set by the administrator for all users. See Server Settings and General Defaults for how to change the thresholds.
Note that the colors do not necessarily indicate the degree of the resource’s over-utilization (for that, you need to go to the Utilization page). Rather, they indicate how much of an assignment cannot be filled by the resource, given their availability. So if you have an assignment for the resource for a given period that is for 1 FTE (full time), then all subsequent assignments for that resource in that period will be RED, because the resource is at capacity and cannot fill any part of other assignments.
In contrast, if you have an assignment for the resource for .50 (half) of an FTE, and then you assign them to another project in the same period for .60 of an FTE, then the second project will be YELLOW because they can only fill .50 of the required .60 FTEs for that second project. In other words, the colors indicate how much of an assignment can be filled by the resource, given their other assignments and their capacity.
NOTE: With Optimization turned off (Use Availability for Skill Assignments is unchecked), skill assignments always appear in RED because they need to be filled. However, if you have Optimization turned on (Use Availability for Skill Assignments is checked), you will see the Yellow/Orange/Red colors for skill assignments based on the degree to which unused capacity with that skill is able to satisfy the demand.
Below is the Labor Assignments screen, accessible from the Resources > Assignments option or Project > Assignments.
The assignment rows that appear are dependent upon the project and resource OBS nodes chosen in the global funnel filter (current data load), plus the proper authority (at least P0 project read rights and the appropriate resource rights). See Administering Rights and Privileges for more on rights.
From left to right across the top grey menu bar, functions are as follows:
For more on Labor Assignments, see the following articles:
Creating Labor Assignments
Editing Assignments
Copying Assignments
Forecast/Actuals/Cost Toggle
Managing View and Columns on the Assignments Page
Showing Header Rows
Using Picklists
Financial assignments are viewed and managed on the following pages:
Financials > Assignments
Individual Project Workspace > Financials tab
“Managed” means that a user with appropriate rights can add or delete assignments and can edit attributes (fields) including period financial values.
See the articles in the Financials section for details on the features available on the Financial Assignment pages.
