Using Resource Management Workspace
Summarize
Summary of Using Resource Management Workspace
The Resource Management Workspace within ServiceNow's Project Portfolio Management allows Resource Managers to create custom views of resource allocations and requests across persistent portfolios. This workspace consolidates resource assignments from various planning workspaces to provide a comprehensive overview of resource utilization and allocation.
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Key Features
- Custom Resource Boards: Create tailored views using resource cards to monitor resource allocation and tasks.
- Advanced Condition Builder: Customize portfolios based on teams, attributes, and groups, and save queries for future use.
- Resource Insights: Access detailed information on tasks, allocation statuses, and actual vs. allocated hours.
- Heatmap Modal: Visualize resource utilization and availability using color-coded insights in the allocation heatmap.
- Group By Functionality: Regroup resources by primary attributes like Group, Role, or Skill for focused management.
- Inline Editing: Modify resource assignments directly within the workspace.
- Export Options: Export resource portfolio views to Excel or CSV for easy sharing with stakeholders.
Key Outcomes
Utilizing the Resource Management Workspace helps Resource Managers effectively track and manage resource allocations, ensuring optimal use of resources while identifying any over-allocations. The ability to customize views, filter requests, and receive real-time insights enhances decision-making capabilities and improves project management efficiency. By leveraging these features, organizations can better align resources with priority projects, streamline approvals, and maintain a clear overview of resource utilization across various teams and projects.
Create custom resource board views of persistent portfolios to view the current resource allocation and resource requests for all of your resources and work.
Resource assignments from different planning workspaces are pulled into this dedicated view for Resource Managers to give you an overall work view. Resource Managers can easily create resource cards to build persistent portfolios and view the resource allocations.
Quickly create multiple portfolios using resource cards and navigate between these cards to work on the resource requests. Use the advanced condition builder to customize these portfolios based on the teams, attributes, groups, and so on, to view the resource allocation.
- View the number of tasks assigned to a resource.
- Understand the type or state of the assignment, and track the changes made to assignments.
Indicator Description 
Indicates that the resource allocation is within the available bandwidth. 
Indicates that the resource is over allocated for the available bandwidth. 
Indicates the work assignment is made for a group. 
Indicates changes to start or end date, allocated hours, and so on, to the approved resource assignments. Note:When these changes are made, the status of the assignment is moved to pending, indicating resource manager about the review required for the changes made. Once the changes are reviewed and the assignment is either approved or unapproved, this icon is no longer displayed. - Understand of the status of the assigned tasks rolled up to resource level using the Resource status column.
- View the primary attributes such as Group, Role, and Skill of each resource in the top tray. These come in handy while working on reassigning a task to different user with the same primary attributes.
- View the priority and state of the project, demand, or epic in the Priority and State columns in the resource board and allocate resources to priority or high-risk planning items.
- View the actual hours vs allocated hours for a task.
Enable the Show actuals toggle (
) from the settings side panel (
) to view the efforts captured for a task via time cards. Approved time cards are reflected in the resource board view as actual hours. - Get insights about the resource allocations using the new heatmap modal.
- View or hide requested work in the lower tray using Unassigned tasks toggle.
- Filter unassigned work to view the custom requests.
- Assign the unassigned tasks.
- Approve or unapprove the assigned tasks.
- Split a resource assignment into two for one resource at the required date.
Once you access these resource cards, you get a similar view as the following example with extensive insights.
) settings.Customize your resource board view
- View or hide unassigned tasks
Use the Unassigned tasks (
The Unassigned tasks view, in the bottom tray, facilitates you to build a custom filter condition to view unassigned requests with details such as duration, breakdown view of requested efforts, requested work item and its parent item, owner or requester of the task. Use the filter condition builder to get a custom or focused view of the unassigned tasks.
) toggle to view or hide the unassigned tasks in the bottom tray. - Change effort type
Switch between Hours, FTE, or Person Days effort types to view resource allocations based on the
- Group By
Customize the view of your resource boards using the Group By feature to regroup the resources depending on your organization needs. You can group by Primary Group, Primary Role, Primary Skill, Owner, or Project.
- View or hide columns
Use the column config option (
) to view or hide any columns on the top tray or bottom tray of the resource board.
Resource allocations and heatmap view
The resource allocation view in the top tray provides you with a nested view of the assigned work items rolling up to resource level and the resource allocation breakdown view based on the time-frame (weekly or monthly) and by work efforts (hours, FTE, or person days).
) icon to get details at the individual task level (epics, demands, and so on) assigned to the resources. This helps you to get a breakdown view to understand:- Work assigned to a specific resource.
- The amount of time a resource is allocated to an individual task.
You can edit the resource assignments using the inline editing feature in the top-tray.
) or Unapproved (
) work items assigned to a resource.Allocation heatmap modal gives you an overview of the resource utilization to identify the over allocated and the available resources. The allocations are color-coded to display the availability of the resources and help you to identify the availability of the resource for the filtered time frame.
The new heatmap modal gives you the following insights for a resource such as the assigned tasks with their respective project owner, resource status, efforts for each task, total utilization percentage for the approved tasks, and the remaining capacity.
From the above example, you can see the breakdown of the approved work items along with the rolled up efforts, Utilization percentage, and the Remaining capacity for the month of January 2025. The approved work is within the resource capacity as the remaining capacity is 120 hours. Resource manager can use these insights to decide and allocate the pending work items to another resource with available effort.
Using the com.snc.resource_management.exclude_status_from_capacity property, Resources managers can customize to view the resource assignments with a specific state in their workspace and what to view in the total allocation modal. For example, you can view resource assignments in either Approved, Unapproved, and Pending resource assignments, or the ones in Approved and Pending states only.
Once the property is set up, work items in a specific states to show up in the full capacity and full allocation rollup of a resource. The new allocation modal displays the allocation breakdown and the rollup values of the work items for the configured states.
When you group a resource board using the Group by option, the heatmap allocation modal for a group gives the following insights.
Group resources on resource board
The resource board provides a comprehensive list of resources, which are fetched depending on various resource attribute types, projects, and work items. You can group these resources to gain an accurate perspective on specific attributes, owner, or the parent items associated with the projects. You can group the resources by Primary Group, Primary Role, Primary Skill, Owner of the task, or Parent Item of the work.
If you group the resource board by Primary Group, you see the list of primary groups that the resources are associated with and a drop-down of the list of resources in that group and the work item they're working on. In this view, you also get the rolled up values of the efforts at resource level and group level. The rolled up values can be viewed at a monthly or weekly breakdown.