Resource Management

Resource Management is the most efficient way to maximise your resource pool and make sure that your resources are both utilised and optimised and that you have the right balance of resources for both your in-flight projects and your planned pipeline.

Resource Management allows you to:

• View your resource availability
• View what project's resources are committed to
• View requests made for resources and easily fulfil these requests
• Perform resource optimisation
• Review capacity and pipeline planning

Resource Management in Altus is performed using the following features:

1. The Resources section of the project and proposal allows the resources required for this engagement to be requested
2. The Resource Demand section allows Resource Managers to review all requests, current commitments, and the availability of resources, and provides an easy-to-use facility to action these requests
3. The Resource Insights Power BI dashboard which allows the data relating to resources and roles to be drilled into and analysed

Glossary

A Resource Glossary can be found here

Resourcing - General Settings

The Resourcing General Settings section contains the following options:

• Allow proposals to be submitted for Approval: A yes/no toggle; when set to Yes, any Resource Plans built into a Proposal will be able to be submitted and will show in the Resource Demand screens for Resource Managers to action.
• Allow selection to Edit Resource Request via Default Form: a yes/no toggle; when set to Yes, the Edit Details button will be available through the ellipses on the Resource Request rows on the Resource Demand screen.
• Disable Resource Commitment to Project Owning Group Synchronisation: A yes/no toggle; when set to Yes, Named Resources added to a Project's Resource Plan will not be automatically included in that project's O365 group.
• Precision: a number field that controls how many decimal places will show for values on the Resource Plan and Demand screens. Please note the items that need to be taken into consideration when you are setting up these fields found here.
• Disable Planned Request Removal in Resource Demand: A yes/no toggle; when set to Yes, submitted requests made will not be able to be removed from the Resource Demand screen by Resource Managers.
• Allow users to use FTE mode: a yes/no toggle; when set to Yes, users will see and can use the FTE entry mode on the Resource Plan and Resource Demand screens.
• Allow users to use % FTE mode: a yes/no toggle; when set to Yes, users will see and can use the % FTE entry mode on the Resource Plan and Resource Demand screens.
• Allow users to use % Capacity mode: a yes/no toggle; when set to Yes, users will see and can use the Capacity (%) entry mode on the Resource Plan and Resource Demand screens.
• Security Roles: any users with the roles listed in this setting will be able to Commit hours on the Resource Demand screen. This setting works in conjunction with the security groups that determine who has access to the Resources area of the system.

Resource Grid Decimal Precision

When setting up Resourcing in an environment you need to make sure the different settings are working in harmony together. Two settings that can contradict each other are the Enterprise Calendar's Hours Per Work Day and the Resource Grid Decimal Precision.

If the Decimal Precision setting does not complement the Enterprise Calendar Hours Per Work Day value, it will result in miscalculation of the resource request hours displayed on resource tables and the visual alerts shown on the data. This especially affects the Resources’ Availability value.

If the Hours Per Work Day are set to 7.5 (one decimal place) and the Decimal Precision is set to 0, each time these hours are calculated they are rounded up in the view. So, if the resource has been proposed/committed for a full 7.5-hour day, this value will roll up to 8 in the view and show that they are working over their availability of 7.5 and the view will show this as a red alert.

Resourcing Data

Across Resource Plan and Resource Demand, there are some common resource variables:

Availability (A)

Highlights how available the selected resource is. It factors in other commitments that have been made and calendar exceptions such as Annual Leave.

Availability is determined based on the individual Named resource's capacity minus any committed hours across all projects. The capacity is precalculated when the resource is updated and takes into account the calendar assigned to the resource minus any calendar exceptions on that calendar or against that resource directly.

Generic resources do not have capacity and hence do not have availability.

As with scheduled the availability hours totals are not double counted within a group or overall total. The total represents the total unique resource hours available for the period to give you an indicator of how many hours were available in total for the resources in the plan.

Clicking on the availability hours where proposed is editable will copy the value to the proposed column.

This column is read-only in the resource plan grid and cannot be edited.

Proposed (P)

Proposed time is what the Project and or Proposal Manager can use to request hours for the selected resource to the Resource Manager.

Once a resource request has been submitted, those proposed values will be visible on the Resource Demand for the Resource Manager to commit on.

More details can be found here

Committed (C)

Committed time is entered in the Resource Demand link to the new page, to section “Entering Committed Values” and represents the approved hours for the request in the plan on a given day aggregated to the visible period.

It is important to note that generic resources cannot have committed hours. Any committed time will be set against a fulfilment named resource.

Automatic Creation of Bookable Resources

By default, project Users can select to add a System User who is not yet a Bookable Resource to their Resource Plan. Upon selecting that System User to add them to the Resource Plan, a Bookable Resource record will automatically be created for that System User.

System users are identified

During the automatic creation process, the following fields will be set:

Field	Value
Enterprise Calendar	Default Enterprise Calendar
Primary Role	Job Title (if matching Role found) or to 'Unclassified'

Periodically Resource Managers should monitor for Bookable Resources who are added to the Unclassified primary role and switch them to their appropriate role.

If an existing Bookable Resource is added to a Resource Plan and that Bookable Resource does not yet have a Primary Role or an Enterprise Calendar, then those fields will be populated with default values (as per above) at the time they are added to the Resource Plan.

Note

This behaviour can be turned off by enabling the configuration setting 'disableSystemUserResourceSelection'. When this behaviour is disabled, the Resource Picker will only allow selection of existing Bookable Resources.

Resource Entry Modes

Resource capacity

Resource Capacity is calculated for Bookable Resources based on their selected Enterprise Calendar but also considering any Calendar Exceptions for that Enterprise Calendar and the Calendar Exceptions for the Bookable Resource.

The horizon for the calculations can be adjusted via the Resource Horizon setting in the Configuration Settings. By default, the horizon is set up to calculate 12 months in arrears and 36 months into the future (this is also the recommended configuration).

The Capacity for affected Resources will be recalculated whenever any of the following events occur:

1. The Enterprise Calendar field value is changed for a Bookable Resource.
2. The Working Days or Work Hours are modified for an Enterprise Calendar record.
3. A Calendar Exception is created, modified, or deleted for an Enterprise Calendar or a Bookable Resource.
4. The Scheduled Process 'Capacity Calculation for Bookable Resources' runs (by default this job is configured to run Daily).

The 'Capacity Calculation for Bookable Resources' Scheduled Process is configured to run Daily and is intended to run as a 'catch up' job to ensure no capacity calculation actions have been missed, that calculations which timed out are restarted or to recalculate based on changing Resource Horizon settings. This job will target 500 resources for each run and will run for the Bookable Resources whose Horizon calculations are the most stale.

Note

Capacity Calculations can be switched off altogether in an environment by switching the Resource Horizon Configuration Setting 'Calculate Resource Capacity?' value to 'No'.

Capacity (%)

The Capacity (%) resource entry mode allows resources to be requested based on their Capacity (explained above). A Resource's Capacity value can be seen in the hover pane on the Resource grids.

This Capacity % entry does not consider the users availability. For example:

• The Resource has a capacity of 40 hours
• The Resource has already been committed to 38 hours
• A Capacity (%) of 50 is entered for the same period for the Resource, this Capacity (%) will equal 20 hours

If a Resource doesn't have a Calendar assigned, the system cannot calculate their capacity.

If the resource has zero capacity in the period (for example, the resource is on leave or not working on those days) then “NA” will be shown in the cell. Essentially as you cannot divide by zero to compute the % capacity of the resource. These “N/A” cells are read-only.

All grouping rows and overall totals are hidden in this mode as each resource has different capacity. This means we cannot add them together to provide a meaningful number.

Note

Generic resources do not have capacity so for the purpose of these units, generics resources are treated as an FTE with the default hours on each weekday.

Note

We do not accept partial percentages and due to rounding there may be some scenarios where the saved hours don't convert cleanly back to the percentage.

Capacity, Weekend Days and Entry Mode Considerations

When entering data at an aggregated level (e.g. Week, Month, Year), the value for the request will be distributed across the days of that period where Capacity exists for that Resource. For example, entering a value of 20 Hours at the Month level for a Resource will distribute those 20 Hours across each day of the month where that Resource has Capacity. If that Resource has Capacity across 20 days for that month, it will result in 1 Hour being requested for that Resource for each of those days in the month with Capacity.

Weekend days (where there is no Capacity) can be explicitly scheduled for a Resource, however, note that this can only be done via the Hours entry mode and at the Day level. Please also note the following behaviours:

• If a Resource has had Hours set at the Day level for a weekend day with no Capacity, if a later change is made to that Resource request at a higher zoom level (e.g. Week, Month, Year), then the distribution of the request hours will be made across all days with Capacity, and therefore the weekend day will revert to 0 hours in that instance.
• If a Resource has had Hours set at the Day level for a weekend day with no Capacity, then when switching the entry mode to either FTE or Capacity (%), the cell will show 0 as the requested amount. This is because those entry modes require a non-zero Capacity value to attribute a value.

When in FTE entry mode, cells will be locked for editing if viewing at the Day level and where the day is a Weekend day. FTE mode assumes that weekend days are non-working days.

When in Capacity (%) entry mode, cells will be locked for editing if the Capacity for that Resource is 0. This is because of the reliance on a non-zero Capacity value for that modes to attribute a valid value.

FTE resource entry mode

FTE entry mode is a quicker way for resources to be allocated to a resource plan.

• PMs don’t need to know how many hours a resource works
• Multiple FTE generic roles can be added to plans easily.

To change to FTEs mode, select the following menu. Next to the menu icon it will display what mode is active.

The FTEs values in Altus are a measure of effort. The hours that one FTE equates to are calculated based on the “Hours Per Work Day” field in the Default Calendar.

Resource Plan and Resource Demand Data Granularity

All data within the Altus Resource Plan and the Resource Demand tabs is saved at the Day level.

Therefore, when hours are entered at any Period level higher than Day, certain rules determine how these hours are distributed at the day level. This distribution is called the Resource Data Granularity

Data Granularity rules:

1. Proposed Hours Spread Evenly by Resource Capacity
2. Proposed Hours Spread by Schedule Assignments when using the Create plan from schedule Feature
3. Committed Hours Spread as Proposed
   1. Committed Hours Spread Proportionally as Proposed
4. Committed Hours Spread Evenly by Resource Capacity when there are no Proposed Hours in the Period
5. Committed Fulfilment Resource Hours Spread by the Proposed Hours of the Parent Resource
6. Proposed Fulfilment Resource Hours Spread Evenly by Resource Capacity when there are no Committed hours in Period

Rule 1 - Proposed hours Spread Evenly by Resource Capacity

Hours are distributed evenly across the selected period based on the Resource's capacity. This behaviour is the same for both named and generic resources.
If the entered value cannot be distributed evenly across every available day, the last day of the period will be used to capture the remaining amount - so the last day of the period may contain a value slightly different to the other days in the period.

For example: A Project Manager has added a resource on their Resource Plan, the resource works full time Monday to Friday. The Project manager enters a proposed value of 30 hours at the Month period level for the month of July.

• The system distributes the 30 proposed hours across the days of the month where that Resource has capacity (in this instance, on each weekday in the month of July).
• Each weekday is distributed 1.3 hours of proposed work except the last weekday of the month which is allocated 1.4 hours to ensure that all the combined hours add up to 30.

Note

The more decimal places the value is broken down by at the daily level the smaller the remaining value may be. To learn more about decimal precision click here.

Rule 2 - Proposed Hours Spread by Schedule Assignments when using the Create plan from schedule Feature

If you use the Create Resource Plan from Schedule feature hours are distributed for each resource based on the assignments from Altus Tasks. This behaviour is the same for both named and generic resources.

For more information on how to Create Resource Plan from Schedule click here

Rule 3 - Committed Hours Spread by Proposed

When committed hours are entered into a period that contains proposed hours, the committed hours will be added to the same dates and in the same proportion as the proposed hours. This behaviour is the same for both committing hours against a named and a fulfillment resource.

Data can be entered into the Resource Demand table in different ways for more information please click here.

For example: A Project Manager has distributed a proposed value of 6 hours per day from Monday 10th – Thursday 13th June which is a total value of 24 hours for that week (and month).
When viewed on the Resource Demand screen, with a period level set to Month, the Resource Manager can see that the Resource has been requested for 24 hours across the month of June.

• If they enter 24 hours into June, these committed hours will follow the same days as the 30 hours proposed and 6 hours will be entered into each day from the 10th – 13th June at the Day level.
• If they enter a different committed value, for example 30 hours into June, these committed hours still follow the original proposed request days and 7.5 hours per day from 10th – 13th June will be entered at the Day level.

Rule 3.1 - Committed Hours Spread Proportionally as Proposed

As with Rule 3 when committed hours are entered into a period that contains proposed hours entered at a lower calendar level, the committed hours will be added to the same dates and in the same proportion as the proposed hours.

For example: a Project Manager has entered at the Day level a proposed value of:

• 4 hours on the 10th of June
• 6 hours on the 11th of June
• 8 hours on the 12th of June
• 6 hours on the 13th of June
• 4 hours on the 14th of June
• For a total of 28 hours.

When viewed on the Resource Demand screen, with a Period level set to Month, the Resource Manager can see that the Resource has been requested for 28 hours in the month of June.

• If they enter 28 hours in June, these committed hours will spread at the Day level exactly as the 28 proposed hours in the period of 10th – 14th June.
• If they enter a different committed value, for example they enter 35 hours in June, these 35 committed hours will spread at the Day level proportionally as the proposed hours , which will look like the following:
• 5 hours on the 10th of June
• 7.5 hours on the 11th of June
• 10 hours on the 12th of June
• 7.5 hours on the 13th of June
• 5 hours on the 14th of June
• For a total of 35 hours.

Rule 4 - Committed Hours Spread Evenly by Resource Capacity when there are no Proposed Hours in the Period

This rule follows rule 1, if there are no proposed hours within the period, any hours added to the Resource Demand screen are spread evenly across the selected period based on the Resource's capacity.

Rule 5 - Committed Fulfilment Resource Hours Spread by the Proposed Hours of the Parent Resource

This rule is applied when a resource manager fulfills a generic or named resource request with a named resource. Any committed hours added against that period follows the rules 3 and 4.

For example: 30 hours are proposed for a generic or a named resource which on the Day level equals 6 hours each day from the 10th to the 14th of June.

• If the resource manager assigns a fulfilment resource to the request and enters 30 hours into June, these committed hours will spread exactly as the 30 hours proposed for the generic or named resource and 6 hours per day from the 10th – 14th June will be added in the fulfilment resource column at the Day level.
• If the resource manager assigns a fulfilment resource to the request and enters a different committed value, for example 25 hours into June, these committed hours will spread by the proposed request and 5 hours per day from 10th – 14th June will be added in the fulfilment resource column at the Day level. Rule 4, the proportional spread of hours at the day level, is also applicable here.

Rule 6 - Proposed Fulfilment Resource Hours Spread Evenly by Resource Capacity when there are no Committed hours in Period

This rule follows rule 1, if there are no committed hours for a fulfilment resource in a period, any proposed hours added to the Resource are spread evenly across the period based on the Resource's capacity.

Video

Resource Plan Granularity

Resource Plan and Resource Demand - Export to CSV

Within the Resource Plan and the Resource Demand screen, there is an 'Export to CSV' option that allows all the visible information within the Resource Demand grid to be exported to Excel.

The extract contains the following columns:

• Project/Proposal Name
• Resource Name
• Primary Role
• Type:
• Request: these are Request that have not been completely fulfilled.
• Fulfilment: these are Requests that have been completely fulfilled.
• Number:
• Availability: the availability value for this named resource
• Proposed: the requested value made by the Project Manager
• Committed: the committed value made by the Resource Manager
• Period columns: the exact layout of these columns will change based on the Period view you have visible when you export the data.
• Request ID: the unique ID for this resource request
• Fulfills Request ID: if this is a fulfilment resource this cell will map back to the Request ID column to show what request this fulfilment was made for.

Things to Note:

• Only the visible data is available within this export because the Availability of a resource is only calculated for the visible periods
• Generic resources do not have an availability or committed value, so only the Proposed values are exported for these resources.

Software boundaries and limits

See Resourcing Limits