Resource Assignments for Planning/Forecasting

[Allison Lewis]

We are moving from Resource Plans to Resource Assignments, how are organizations planning for future work, demands for example, without having the soft-booking functionality that we had with Resource Plans?

[danmjunqueira]

Hey @Allison Lewis how are you today?

I faced this is, and I can say that is a common concern when transitioning from Resource Plans (with soft/hard booking) to Resource Assignments in ServiceNow’s Resource Management module, especially with the move toward using Assignments via the Planning Console or Project Workspace.

Resource Plans offered soft-booking, allowing teams to reserve time for future work, without committing specific tasks, which helped with forecasting and capacity planning.
In contrast, Resource Assignments are more granular and task-based, so they lack a true “soft booking” feature.

My team Are Addressing This in this few steps
Using “Placeholder” Assignments for Future Demand
Teams create low-fidelity tasks in projects or demands (e.g., “Phase Planning”, “QA Reserve Block”) and assign resources to them.

These functionally act like soft bookings, indicating future allocation needs.

Custom fields (like "Tentative" or "Planning Status") can flag these assignments as not yet committed.

Implementing Demand or Idea Stage Capacity Planning
Leverage the Demand Management module.

Associate a planned resource need in the form of a demand-level task assignment.

Use Resource Workbench to view tentative future loads.

Customizing Assignment Statuses
Some organizations add custom assignment statuses (e.g., Tentative, Confirmed).

A simple customization in resource_assignment table lets you track if work is soft- or hard-booked even without Resource Plans.

Using the Resource Allocation Workbench
While primarily for real-time assignments, some orgs build custom views or filters to support soft-planning visibility.

Combine with “planned vs. actual” dashboards to track planned placeholders vs. real task loads.

Capacity-Based Forecasting Reports
Use Performance Analytics or Time Series Widgets to build:

Forecast of availability by role/team

Planned future workload (even if soft or tentative)

Extend via custom reports or dashboards to visualize unassigned work or placeholder bookings.

Also you can Use Resource Plans for high-level planning (e.g., for Demands, Epics, or Portfolio Items).

Then transition to Assignments during execution.

This hybrid method helps organizations keep forecasting flexibility while aligning with ServiceNow's strategic direction.

[Carina Hatfield]

One of the goals of resource assignments was to create different use cases.  You can leverage the ready for review workflow that was added to resource assignments for soft booking.  This feature allows project managers to mark resource assignments as "Ready for Review" when they are complete, signifying a soft booking and initiating a review process with resource managers. 

Ready to Review:

• Purpose:

  The "Ready for Review" feature streamlines the process of resource allocation and management by introducing a structured workflow between project managers and resource managers.
• Pending Status:

  When a resource assignment is in progress, its status is "pending," and "Ready for Review" is set to "no".
• Soft Booking:

  Once a project manager completes their part of the assignment and marks it as "Ready for Review," the assignment is still pending but is now considered "soft booked," meaning the resource is accounted for in capacity planning.   
  Here is some more information:  https://www.servicenow.com/community/spm-articles/resource-assignment-ready-for-resource-manager-rev...