Strategic Resource Capacity Planning - How to set it up and view capacity plans

[Arnab19]

This article shows how to configure and use the capacity planning feature in Portfolio Planning/Strategic Planning Workspace.

Enabling resource planning from system properties

The admin can enable resource planning from the system properties by following the steps below:

• Go to system properties table: sys_properties
• Set the value of the property "sn_pw.enable_resource_planning" to "true"

Enabling resource planning from system properties

Enable internal integrations and generate default mapping

Internal integrations need to be enabled if you want data to flow from the execution side to the strategic side. If internal integration is not enabled, the demand, project and epic data will not be synced with planning items data in Portfolio/Strategic Planning Workspace. The admin can enable (if not enabled) and generate default mapping configurations from a related link in the Alignment Integration record

Enable internal integrations and generate default mapping

Configure planning attributes for capacity planning

Enable the relevant planning attributes for capacity planning by navigating to the planning attribute page. Group, role and skill are provided OOB. Custom planning attributes can also be configured. Planning attributes can be configured by the admin by navigating to Planning Attributes under Strategic Planning and enabling the relevant attributes. While enabling a planning attribute, some column configurations may have to be created.

Configuring Planning Attributes for capacity planning

Generate employee profiles for the resources

The admin can generate the employee profiles of the resources to be considered for capacity planning. Resources are users who are mapped to 'pps_resource' role. The employee profiles is where the resources are mapped to the attributes of the resources. This is a 2 step process as mentioned below:

• Update the employee definition by navigating to employee definition in employee profile
  
• Generate employee profiles from the link provided

Generate employee profiles for the resources

 

Populate the attributes of the resources in the employee profiles

Populate the attributes of resources in the employee profiles in 2 ways:

1. Using the related link in the employee profile record page. The link will populate the values for primary resource group, role and skill only if the resources are mapped to only one group, role and skill respectively.
2. Using the scheduled job "Populate primary attributes for all resources" to populate the primary resource group, role and skill. Please note that the job only populates the planning attributes provided out of the box. It does not populate custom planning attributes.

A resource may have multiple attribute values, however for the purpose of capacity planning a resource needs to be mapped to only one attribute value. So, if a resource is mapped to multiple groups, a primary group needs to be specified in the employee profile.

Populate the attributes of the resources in the employee profiles

Scheduled job to populate primary attributes

 

Generate capacity for the resources

Generate capacity for the planning period based on the attributes of the resources. The capacity is calculated based on the schedules of the resources and is displayed in FTE. The capacity user role(sn_align_ws.spw_capacity_user) is required to generate capacity.

For generating capacity, navigate to Portfolio/Strategic Planning workspace and from the L1 menu navigate to the Manage Resource Capacity page. Fill in the values for the duration and the attribute values for which capacity needs to be generated and generate capacity. To keep the capacity data in sync with the real time changes to resource data, the capacity needs to be regenerated. Generating capacity of resources

Assigning resources on work items

Capacity planning currently supports projects, epics and demands. The resource user role(resource_user) is required to create Resource Assignments. Resource Assignments for projects can be created in the new Project Workspace. Resource Assignments can be created on named resources and on the attributes of resources. Resource Assignments created on attributes of resources are in 'unassigned' state as named resource has not yet been assigned.

Assigning resources in Project Workspace

For demands and epics, Resource Assignments can be created using the new Resource Assignment form.

Creating Resource Assignments through form

Resource Assignments in Capacity Planning:

• Resource Assignments created on project tasks are rolled up to the project in Capacity Planning.
• Resource Assignments created on demand tasks are not rolled up to the demand in Capacity Planning.
• Resource Assignments created on demand get copied to projects when the demand is converted to a project.
• A user can create Resource Assignments for planning items in Portfolio/Strategic Planning Workspace.
• Resource Assignments are dependent on the planned start and end dates of the planning item.

Setting the resource criteria and view the capacity plan

Planning item should be in prioritised state for it to be shown in capacity planning tab. When a user first lands on the capacity planning tab, user must select a resource criteria that should be considered for building the capacity plan. Should the need arise to change the resource criteria, the user can change it from the Resource Criteria button in the capacity planning tab.

Setting the resource criteria  

[Dhiren Aghera]

We are using Resource plan and it seems we don't have an option to use both. So what is the recommendation and path forward to adopt? 

[Arnab19]

Hi Dhiren,
Currently the new capacity planning cannot be used with resource plans. It is in the next experience and can only be used with resource assignment. You can start using resource assignments for some of the planning items or on new planning items. We are working on a way for you to migrate the existing planning items from resource plans to resource assignments.

[Anna Bingham]

I want to be able to create and edit resource assignments on demands. I've worked out how to create a resource assignment on demand (as above), but can't find anyway to then edit it. How do I do this?

[Community Alums]

Really helpful post @Arnab19. The new Resource Assignment feature is moving in a very good direction, bringing in very much needed flexibility on resource assignments from multiple aspects.

As an implementation specialist I have to say though that in it's current state, resource assignment is very rough to setup on a new implementation:

On one hand, the Strategic Planning Workspace offers the new Capacity Planning interfaces which I find much more appealing and practical than the outdated, Scenario Planning workbench, giving you much more ways to interact and dig into the allocations. Also, the ability to bring other work items than Projects into the Capacity planning view (and the Workspace in total) are very strong additions when compared to resource plans.

On the other hand, resource assignments lack many foundational features that resource plans currently strongly support. First of all, there is no process behind allocating resources. A project manager can allocate at will any resource - also, the resource status is meaningless. The role of the resource manager and the allocation process of the resource plan - a very strong process that most organizations follow in a way - is missing. Also, there is a lack of "Operational" resource assignments. You need to either dump down the resource capacity to reflect the percentage allocated for non-project work, create resource assignments for every single ITSM task that a user is assigned, or create "bucket projects" for operational work. Last, but definitely not least, there is a great lack of documentation and learning material from either docs or nowlearning. I had to spend a great lot of time investigating the new features in personal dev instances along with information that I could gather from ServiceNow community posts like this one or from ServiceNow Community channel on YouTube.

Overall, the release of the Resource Assignment feature feels very rough and lacking both in core functionality and in documentation for implementers.

[Arnab19]

@Anna Bingham  You can edit the resource assignments in 2 ways

1. Go to the record page of the demand and open the resource assignments from the related list and edit.
2. Go to the planning item page and open the resource assignment tab. There is a kebab menu for each row. You can click and edit the resource assignment row from there.

[Arnab19]

@Community Alums thank you for your feedback, I really appreciate it. We are addressing each of the use cases mentioned by you in the coming releases. We are also working on improving the documentation.

[prashant_gadgil]

Realign assignments to demand issue

I assigned some resource assignments on a demand to match the requested start date and requested by date

Then extended the demand by moving out requested by date. 

Then clicked the UI action link called  "Realign assignments to demand"

I think it is supposed to readjust my reasource assignment and those resource's allocations to match the new dates on demand. But nothing seems to be happening. WHen I click on the UI action, it comes back on the same page but resource assignments are not adjusted for dates. 

Am I missing something or is there a bug in the product

[Louis Savalli]

I just conducted my own assessment of this functionality and I agree with @Community Alums almost word for word.  There is a lot of promise here and I like the direction it's going, but I cannot recommend it on a new implementation.  On top of the issues that Alexandros1 noted, I don't like that you can't seem to allocated resources to the project as a whole, it seems you're forced to allocated them task by task (please correct me if I'm wrong).

And, while doing that in my PDI, I ran into several error messages from the UI, and when I looked at the project, there were some resource plans created in half-finished states or with bad data.

I'll be keeping my eye on the improvements to this product, I'm ready to begin using it when it addresses these issues.  I like how it ties into the current resource management tables so reporting stays the same, that's a huge win.

[Community Alums]

Hey @Louis Savalli. Thanks for the feedback.

Regarding the resource plans on the project level, you can try to turn on the "Display summary task" setting. This will make the project visible as the top level task (as in the planning console) and by selecting it and then creating resource assignments, you effectively create them on the project level.

However, it does not show resource assignments that have been created on child project tasks but only the assignments that have been created directly on project level (Unlike the "Resources" view of the old workspace or the related list of resource plans under the project form where it shows any resource plan under project tasks as well).

[Fabio Cresta]

I added a new custom planning attribute (Department), and it works. How do I add the same attribute as filter in the Resource Capacity view? Thx

[psyherin]

Hi @Arnab19 ,

I think there is some misinformation here Resource assignments cannot be used for demand tasks at all so I think this below statement should be removed or updated.

• Resource Assignments created on demand tasks are not rolled up to the demand in Capacity Planning. "

Regards

[Louis Savalli]

@psyherin you can create resource assignments against any task:

[psyherin]

Hi @Louis Savalli 

sure you can but try changing the start and end date (may be a week or so) and try to save the record, it will give you an error message.
Resource assignments are more for project, project tasks and demand.

[Louis Savalli]

@psyherin Yes, the resource assignment dates on a demand task will auto-populate from actual start and actual end from the demand task.  That doesn't seem very helpful.  I agree they're not really for demand tasks, it doesn't appear that use case was fully planned out.

[Karlie]

As an employee changes positions we might remove them from a resource group and add them to a new one. Is there a way the employee profile - primary resource group gets updated automatically or do we have to manually click the related link? Same goes to new users, I see their employee profile being created automatically but I do not see their primary resource group being added automatically. Thanks!

[Jennifer Steele]

I've followed this and get all the way to the last step of viewing the capacity plan and it just spins endlessly and never loads. Are there missing configuration steps here that would cause this not to load successfully?