Is anyone else struggling with Resource Workspace?

[Niels Aksel]

We have been using classic ServiceNow Resource Management for years and are now preparing to migrate to Resource Workspace. While we understand and appreciate the simplified allocation process, we are struggling to see how Resource Workspace supports some of our day-to-day resource management activities.

Overall, we find the workspace difficult to navigate and it can be challenging to get a clear overview of resource requests, allocations, and actual effort. We are interested in hearing how others have experienced the transition and whether you have found effective ways to work around some of the limitations we are seeing.

A few examples:

1. Project overview and reporting

As a Project Manager, it is not easy to get a simple overview of how many hours have been allocated to my project. The Resource Board primarily focuses on total allocated hours and utilization, but we are missing straightforward visibility into allocated and actual hours for the project

2. Assignment distribution

When distributing an unassigned resource allocation across multiple users, the distribution logic often leaves behind small amounts of effort on the unassigned resource assignment. We find this quite frustrating, especially since ServiceNow considers this expected behavior rather than a defect.

Has anyone found a practical way to handle this situation?

Related knowledge article: KB2737283

More generally, how has the Resource Workspace been received in your organization?

[Chris Cannella]

Hello Niels,

Please let me know if I’m misunderstanding the questions.

For the first – Have you tried going to the Resource tab from Project Workspace, then clicking the gear to show actuals, then choosing to group by parent item. 

That should show you the actual and planned by resource, then summed for all resources on the project. 

For the second – Is your issue that you;

• Have an unassigned assignment for 400 hours in the month of July.  Select two resources to assign the work.  Each resource gets 160 hours for the month and there are 80 hours remaining?  -or-
• Have an unassigned assignment for 81 hours in the month of August. Select two resources to assign the work.  Each resource gets 40 hours for the month and there is one hour remaining (or similar)?

If the first, that is proper behaviour.  By default we will not assign more than 8h per day to a resource.    

If the second, the remainder issue is likely due to hour being the smallest time slice.  Please check ‘default value for a calendar event’ on the ‘resource management properties’ page (all-project administration-settings-property resource).  Try setting the value to something small like .6.  This will not change any existing data but should smooth out future spreads of effort.

I hope this helps,

Chris

[Alpa82]

Hello @Chris Cannella  we get the same feedback from our customers.
The requirement is to see the total sum of the planned effort ( e.g. Person days) for the whole duration of the project, not only per each month/week that is now available as a selection.
In the project Planning / Resource grid or in the Resource page is missing the option to see total for all duration of the project lifecycle as well total sum of the actual effort spent (e.g. in Person days).
We can create report in the Analytics menu but that is again one click away and not in place which is designed for the resource assignment.
Another misleading fields are on the project form that are related to Planned effort and Actual effort but those are not linked to resource assignment or the actual time spent (from time cards).
It would be great to consider some improvement on this as many projects are planning the effort in Person Days for whole project and need to clearly see, e.g. this si 100 PD/MD (based on the resource assignment) vs the Actual PD/MD (based on the time cards).

Thank you

[Chris Cannella]

Hello Alpa82 - So for your customers, you are not looking for a new behaviour in RMW, but for a new column in PW when on the planning tab.  Specifically the ability to see total planned\actual effort by task and then rolled up to each parent until we reach the project header.  Correct?  I will discuss this with Hayley.

[Niels Aksel]

Thanks both. Yes, this is very much aligned with what we are experiencing

Our Project Managers need a simple view of total planned resource effort versus actual effort across the full project duration. The information should ideally be available directly where they are doing the resource planning, rather than requiring a separate Analytics report

Another important feedback from our Project Managers is that much of the new resource planning experience seems focused on the Resource Manager perspective, with emphasis on overall allocation, capacity and utilization. That makes sense for a Resource Manager, but when working from Project Workspace, the primary focus is the individual project

For a Project Manager, the key questions are much simpler: How many hours have I planned or allocated to this project, how many have actually been used, and how does that compare for the project as a whole?

This is one of the areas where we currently find the move from Classic Resource Management to the new workspace challenging. The planning capabilities are there, but the overall project-level visibility is harder to get

Are we missing something in how the new workspace is intended to be used by Project Managers, or are there any changes planned to improve this project-level visibility?