Resource planning with Project Workspace

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Resource planning with Project Workspace

    ServiceNow’s Resource Management in the Project Workspace enables customers to efficiently allocate and manage resources at both project and task levels. This capability supports dynamic resource assignments, allowing adjustments throughout the project lifecycle to align with skills, availability, and project priorities.

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    Key Features

    • Attribute-Based Resource Assignments: Create assignments based on resource attributes such as Group, Role, and Skill, facilitating task reassignments to similarly qualified personnel.
    • Flexible Editing: Modify resource assignments, including dates, resources, efforts, and proposed allocations directly within the resource assignment pane using inline editing.
    • Multiple Effort Views: Toggle between Hours, Full-Time Equivalent (FTE), and Person Days to view resource allocations according to preferred effort metrics.
    • Resource Assignment Pane: Provides an intuitive interface to add and manage resource assignments, with automatic backend resource plan generation for detailed allocation tracking.
    • Resource Allocation Heatmap: Visualize resource utilization via a color-coded heatmap modal, identifying over-allocated and available resources over weekly or monthly intervals, with insights on assigned tasks, efforts, utilization percentages, and remaining capacity.
    • Effort Calculation Configuration: Administrators can configure effort calculations via the com.snc.resourcemanagement.excludestatusfromcapacity property to customize which assignments contribute to effort metrics.

    Key Outcomes

    By leveraging Resource Management within Project Workspace, ServiceNow customers can optimize project execution through precise resource allocation, enhanced visibility into resource capacity, and the ability to proactively manage workload distribution. Resource managers gain actionable insights to reassign pending work effectively and ensure resource utilization aligns with overall project and organizational strategies.

    Use the Resource Management application to allocate and manage your resources in the Project Workspace.

    Key benefits

    Using Resource Management, you can create, plan, track, and monitor resource assignments at a project or task level in the Project Workspace. With Resource Management in Project Workspace, you can:
    • Create an attribute-based resource assignment.
    • Change the resource assignment dates, resources, efforts, and proposed allocations at any level of the project.
    • View resource allocations using new heatmap modal. The allocations are color-coded to display the availability of the resources.
    • View the primary attributes such as Group, Role, and Skill of each resource in the resource assignment pane. They are useful when you work on reassigning a task to a different user with the same primary attributes.
    • Switch between Hours, FTE, or Person Days effort types to view resource allocations.

    Resource assignment pane

    The resource assignment pane displays a interface where you add resource assignments for your projects or project tasks.

    Resource assignment is a process of allocating a resource or group of resources to a project task. When a resource assignment is initiated, a resource plan is auto-generated in the back-end of the project management system. This resource plan details the information of how resources would be allocated throughout the project. Resource assignments are approved by the resource manager to make sure that the allocation aligns with the overall resource strategy, considering factors such as availability, skills, and project priorities. Resource assignments remain dynamic and can be edited throughout the project life cycle. Resources can be assigned based on defined attributes such as skills, expertise, or other criteria relevant to the project or task.
    Note:

    Resource efforts calculations are driven by the com.snc.resource_management.exclude_status_from_capacity property. Admin can configure this property to calculate efforts for certain defined resource assignments only. For more information, see Resource Management properties.

    Edit the child resource assignments directly using the inline editing from the resource assignment pane.

    Resource allocations and heatmap

    The Resource allocation view combines a hierarchical task structure by resource with time-based and effort-based allocation metrics, such as hours, FTE, or person-days over weekly or monthly intervals.
    Note:
    Switch between different efforts such as hours, FTE, or person days to view a resource allocation heatmap based on the selected effort type.

    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.

    Legend for resource allocation view.

    Heatmap breakdown

    Figure 1. Allocation heatmap breakdown
    Heatmap modal explaining different parameter values of resource allocation.

    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.