Adding an entry to calendar messes up resource allocations

jamiegirouard · ‎05-26-2016

Geneva Patch 6. Installed resource management, working with it essentially OOB and immediately see an issue - when you add a calendar entry, ServiceNow basically adds three allocations - one of type Allocation, one of type Allocation-Calendar, and one of type meeting. So if you set up a morning event, instead of being allocated for 4 hours on a particular day, you're allocated for 12.

Is this a known issue, or some kind of configuration that needs to be changed that I'm not aware of.

corbettbrasing1 · ‎11-17-2016

What you can do for this is have time off be an "excluded" child entry on that users schedule. The only thing that actually reduces capacity is that on the their schedule.

Capacity is determined by the schedule either: at that users level if they have a schedule or by the default schedule if the user schedule is empty. So to get this to work here is what you need.

An intake form/record producer on "Schedule Entry" that does the following either in record producer script or by work flow

a. check to see if the user has their own schedule, if not copy the default schedule(or Parent schedule if you want resource managers to be able to apply a schedule for them) with calendar entries and name it their display name with a type of "user"

b. Creates an approval workflow/record if you have a requirement for time off to be approved.

c. Create an "excluded" child entry on the users own personal schedule that is the time off (the users capacity is now reduced)

If you do this you really want to add "parent schedule" to the RESOURCE --> users list view so that managers can still say "hey this resource should be at %50 schedule or something, and you also need to give type values on the schedule record (which is just string field) so you can filter, because, eventually EVERY USER IN YOUR SYSTEM IS GOING TO HAVE THEIR OWN SCHEDULE RECORD WITH THIS APPROACH. So you are going to need to be able to filter them out/in etc.

You also probably would want a business rule that if the parent schedules changes it also change the users primary schedule entries but keeps the excluded child entries.

You can learn more about it here: Resource schedules

Someone like arun.vydianathan or ITSMgal who are SN employees and work on the PPS product could tell you if his approach is completely out of the intention of oob set up or not.

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Madhu80 · ‎05-31-2016

Thanks for the screenshots. Since over allocations are supported from Geneva onwards, and time off is treated as any other event, creating a full day time off will result in a committed utilization of 300%. This is as designed. The only option that I can suggest at the moment is to create the time offs for 8 hours instead of all day events.

jamiegirouard · ‎05-31-2016

I think there is an issue with the way calculations are done depending on the report. For example, I created a time off event that lasted three days next week.

This is how my time is rendered in various reports:

I think there is an issue with the canned reports that come with the resource management module that appear to not be respecting schedules with regards to utilization calculations. I can't imagine this is as designed that in some reports available capacity is calculated differently than in other reports. It makes it extremely confusing.

pradeepbansal · ‎06-06-2016

Hi Jamie,

This is not an issue and reports are working as expected. Let me explain this with example.

Let us take example of week starting June 6th.

Let us assume, Group A, has one user, 'Usr123'

Usr123 is allocated to project tasks. Please note, we allow over-allocations form Geneva release and a resource manager can over-allcoate (more hours than specified in user schedule).

6th June - 10 hours

7th June - 10 hours

8th June - 10hours

9th June - 0 hours

10th June - 12 hours

Assuming, user is working with a 8-12 and 1-5 schedule ( as you specified, 8 hours a day)

Weekly Capacity = 40 hours

Availability for week starting 6th June = 8 hours because user is NOT allocated any work on 9th June.

Allocated hours = 42 Hours

Hours in bar graph = allocated 42 hours, available - 8 hours

Utilization = (42/40)* 100 = 105%

Hope this helps.

-Pradeep Bansal

PPS Product Management

jamiegirouard · ‎06-06-2016

Not sure you're understanding my issue.

If I create a 24-hour all day resource_event (NOT a resource_plan allocation) and have it span three days in a normal 5-day/40 hours week, this is the following behavior:

"Group Members Availability" (Hrs%)- shows 16 hours of availability for the resource

"Group Members Committed Utilization (%) - shows the resource as 180% committed for that week.

"User/Group Allocation" - calculates 72 hours of allocations for the resource but 16 hours available.

"Group Members Allocation Details (Hrs)" - shows the resource allocated for 72 hours, but with 16 hours of availability.

The reports do not give a consistent view as to the amount of time the resource is committed, which makes it confusing for resource managers and makes it difficult for me to explain. IMO, the biggest offender is the "Group Members Committed Utilization (%)", which should not be showing the resource as 180% committed for the week but rather as 60% committed.

pradeepbansal · ‎06-06-2016

Thanks for explaining Jamie. Wanted to clarify the resource events, either created directly through calendar or through resource plan, they are treated similarly.

On your point of committed utilization, let me ask this question -

Let us say a user is allocated as follows ( 40 hrs week) -

M -9 hours

T -9 hours

W -9 hours

T - 9 hours

F - 0 hours

In your situation, what should be committed utilization - 90% or 80%?

I think it should be 90%, that takes all hours into account and divides that by total capacity.