Resource Assignment Guidance - How to enable and start

[fran_oisschneid]

Big changes come nowadays with SPM which moves to workspaces, to propose a better and easier way of working for all users.

Workspaces are not only a matter of user interface, they also revisit processes in place to manage projects, portfolios, resources, strategies, and more.

New! SPM Resource Assignments

The Resource Assignment is the new way to manage resources with ServiceNow SPM.

This is a change as it doesn't work as resource plans that we had until now to manage resource efforts.

Resource assignments started with Utah version, got more features with Vancouver, and it is now effective in Washington release.

This article aims to guide people who wants to set up resource assignments, it doesn’t talk about the concept nor how it works but tells the steps to enable it.

Other related info in community with Resource Assignment and Capacity Planning Guide and Strategic Resource Capacity Planning - How to set it up and view capacity plans.

Workspaces

The Strategic/Portfolio Planning Workspace, Project Workspace, Resource Management Workspace are working with the resource assignments, not resource plans. Capacity planning is only available using resource assignments in strategic/portfolio planning workspace.

The resource plans are still valid and can be used, even after resource assignments are enabled, but resource plans are not available in the new workspaces.

Plugins

Resource Assignments have been designed to be used with all these new SPM workspaces.

The Project Workspace and the Resource Management Workspace must be installed.

From resource assignment point of view, the Strategic/Portfolio Planning Workspace is optional, but must be installed to benefit of the capacity planning.
They will install the new tables as the resource assignments, planning attributes, employee profiles.

Activating Resource Assignments

Resource assignments are automatically enabled with new instances.

Existing instances don’t have resource assignment enabled; they still work with resource plans by default.

To work with resource assignments with existing instance is perfectly fine, we need to enable the system property sn_pw.enable_resource_planning in Project Workspace scope to true, and then to add resource assignments related lists to demands and projects.

One thing to keep in mind: demands and projects having resource plans can’t manage resource assignments, demands and projects having resource assignments can’t manage resource plans. This is the one or the other, not both.

When resource plans are already in use and a decision is took to use resource assignments, a migration tool is provided to convert resource plans to resource assignments. In this case the resource assignments must be properly configured prior to run the migration (planning attributes, employee profile).

Capabilities

New features and capabilities are coming with resource assignments:

• Can manage how cost plans are created from resource efforts, configured with Planning Attributes.
  • No more fixed Labor Capex cost plans
• Can manage how resources are rolled up to manage capacity planning, configured with Planning Attributes.
• Project managers can assign named resources to tasks with few clicks.
• To manage the resource efforts comes with more flexibility and can handle other attributes than group/role/skill.

Do I need it now?

For newcomers into SPM, I recommend starting with resource assignments, it prevents to create technical debt from day 1. Existing customers already managing resource plans can keep going with resource plans but should have a look to resource assignments, and decide if they want to move to resource assignments and when.

We can mode from resource plans to resource assignments, and a migration tool exists in ServiceNow to move from resource plans to resource assignments.

There is no way to come back from resource assignments to resource plans.

Cost Plans

The first question which comes when working with resource assignments the first time: “Where are the cost plans?”.

Cost plans with resource assignments are not dynamically calculated as it they are with resource plans. To manage cost plans is an async manual action, to click on the button Generate Labor Costs. Also, the existing job Generate labor costs for demands and projects can be enabled.

After resource assignments are updated, again the cost plan calculation must be called to refresh the cost plans with the new costs.

Planning Attributes

The second question is “Why are costs calculated this way?”. The answer is in the Planning Attributes, which must be set to fit your needs. Do you need to rollup assigned efforts to get one cost plan per group? One cost plan per department and per internal/external resource type?

Cost plans are not anymore Labor Capex and one to one with efforts. Any aggregation can take place.

For this purpose, a new Expense Type field now exists on projects and project tasks, which can be typed as Capex or Opex, and this can be used to create Capex and Opex cost plans depending on the project and task where efforts are assigned. A default value capex or opex can be set when creating a new project/task, this is the system property sn_plng_att_core.default.expense_type in scope SPM Planning Attributes Core.

The available planning attributes OOTB are the employee type (internal/external), expense type (capex/opex), group, skill, role. Any other attribute can be added, as department for example, this is only a matter to create the new attributes in tables resource plans, cost plans, resource allocations, resource assignments to be able to use it. Depending on the modules installed in the instance, other tables may also need to have the new attribute.

Employee Profiles

How the magic happens? It happens with the Employee Profiles table.

Last but not least the employee profile table must be up to date to manage resources used in workspaces. This is the data of the employee profile which is used in planning attributes.

Technical Tip

Resource Assignment is technically a layer added above resource plans and resource allocations.

There is only one new table to store the resource assignments, which is the resource assignment table. All the assignments details are stored into the existing resource plan, resource allocation, resource allocation daily tables. Resource assignments will also fill the resource aggregate weekly and monthly tables. Therefore, to use the resource assignments doesn’t break the laws and existing reporting may still be used for instance.

But the whole mechanic is managed with resource assignments and all resource plans used for resource assignments are set to Allocated state and are read only.

We can use these resource plan tables for reporting, but don’t try to update them with script or job as it would break the resource assignments mechanic.

Note: As of now, the resource assignment table itself can be updated with script as business rules trigger and cascade updates to other tables.

[Alpa82]

Hello @fran_oisschneid 
Thank you very much for the overview, it is very useful article.
I would like to confirm if I understand well the below statement:
' One thing to keep in mind: demands and projects having resource plans can’t manage resource assignments, demands and projects having resource assignments can’t manage resource plans. This is the one or the other, not both.

When resource plans are already in use and a decision is took to use resource assignments, a migration tools provided to convert resource plans to resource assignments. In this case the resource assignments must be properly configured prior to run the migration (planning attributes, employee profile).'

Q:After we enable resource allocation and use the migration tool, what will happen to our existing projects that already use resource plans? - Will we be able to use the resource assignment feature in the Project workspace for these projects ? (e.g. create new resource assignments for those projects, adjust the existing resource assignments if needed?

Thank you

[Alex2506]

@fran_oisschneid 

Hi Fran - great article. I have a question around cost plans.

When creating a Resource Assignment (and then using the 'Generate Labor Costs' button) Cost plans are created. Is this a 1-2-1 relationship? So every resource assignment has their own associated cost plan? 

We're trying to understand the relationship here as it looks like cost plans are getting updated in certain circumstances rather than new ones being created.

Perhaps @Luis Ataide can also help - any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you! 

[Luis Ataide]

Hi @Alex2506,

The cost plans generated from resource assignments are not a 1-2-1 relationship. They are generated and updated based on the planning attributes defined for financials. 

I suggest exploring the information available in the Quick Start Guide for Financial Planning, which includes labour costs from resource assignments.

[curtis lorash j]

Do we still use group types of 'resource' when we move to resource assignments?  Are they still required if we are using resource assignments?

[Luis Ataide]

Hi @curtis lorash j , resource groups are still required (groups with the role pps_resource). Please review the information available in this community article: Quick Start Guide for Resource Management