Exploring Resource Management Workspace
Summarize
Summary of Exploring Resource Management Workspace
The Resource Management Workspace in ServiceNow offers a centralized, dedicated environment for resource managers to efficiently oversee team allocations and work assignments. It addresses common resource management challenges by providing a comprehensive view of resource allocation, unassigned tasks, and collaboration tools, designed to support a broad range of use cases.
Show less
Key Features
- Persistent Card View: Enables creation of focused, customizable views to manage resource allocations effectively.
- Resource Allocation View: Displays detailed weekly or monthly breakdowns of assigned work along with availability indicators.
- Unassigned Work Allocation: Filters and presents unassigned tasks, streamlining the process of assigning work to resources.
- Integration with Microsoft Teams: Facilitates seamless collaboration with task owners directly from the workspace.
- Approval Workflow: Allows resource managers to approve, unapprove, or set pending status for assigned work, prioritizing allocation.
- Iconography and Heatmap Modals: Visually identify overallocated resources and analyze work efforts for better workload balancing.
- AI-Powered Resource Finder: Utilizes Now Assist skills to recommend best-fit candidates for unassigned assignments based on role, skills, capacity, and historical allocation patterns.
Resource Finder Details
The Resource Finder leverages AI to rank candidates with a fit score reflecting alignment with assignment requirements, availability, and workload balance, accompanied by a clear rationale explaining the recommendation. It uses a colored heatmap to compare resource capacity against requested effort, allowing quick identification of availability gaps.
Practical benefits include:
- Quick staffing of unassigned assignments via a ranked shortlist with explanations.
- Handling partial availability through suggested resource pairing to cover entire assignment periods.
- Balancing workloads by highlighting candidates within the manager’s existing teams before expanding search.
Getting Started
- Configure the workspace with necessary features and permissions.
- Create resource cards to define filtered resource views tailored to teams, roles, or skills.
- Assign unassigned work efficiently using AI recommendations and availability indicators.
- Manage and approve resource allocations to optimize workload distribution and prioritize tasks.
Learn about the features, functionalities, and business value that the Resource Management Workspace provides.
This provides a centralized view of the resource allocation and requests. As a Resource manager, you get a dedicated workspace to view the team's allocation and breakdown of the work assigned to the resources.
Resource Management Workspace provides a centralized view of the resource allocations and resource requests. This workspace eases resource management problems and is designed to cover a wider set of use cases.
Features and benefits
| Feature | Benefit |
|---|---|
| Persistent card view | Create focused view to view and work on resource allocations. |
| Resource allocation view | Breakdown view of resource allocations at weekly or monthly level. |
| Allocate the unassigned work | Filter the unassigned tasks to view and allocate the work. |
| Integration with Microsoft Teams | Effortlessly collaborate with the task owner for additional insights. |
| Approve work for resources | Move the assigned work status to Approved, Unapproved, or Pending to allocate the prioritized work. |
| Iconography | Identify overallocated resources and reassign to maintain allocations within the resource bandwidth. |
| Heatmap modals | Breakdown view of the assigned work and efforts. |
Resource Management Workspace overview
The Resource Management Workspace provides a centralized view for managing resource allocations and work assignments.
The workspace is organized into the following areas:
- Resource board: Create filtered views to focus on specific teams, roles, or skills. For more information, see Create a resource card.
- Resource allocation view (top tray): Displays assigned work for each resource with weekly or monthly allocation breakdown and availability indicators.
- Unassigned tasks (bottom tray): Shows pending resource requests that needs to be assigned. For more information, see Assign unassigned work.
Resource finder
Resource managers often spend significant time manually searching for the right person to staff an unassigned assignment. The AI Resource Finder removes this guesswork by using Now Assist skills to analyze your resource pool and recommend the best-fit candidates. Each candidate is ranked by a fit score and accompanied by a plain-language rationale explaining the recommendation.
Resource finder uses the Resource fit analysis skill, which considers multiple dimensions simultaneously. These dimensions include whether the resource's planning attributes, such as role and skills group, align with what the assignment demands. They also include how much capacity the resource has during the assignment period, and how the resource's historical allocation patterns compare to the requested effort.
Access to the Resource fit analysis skill is subject to the access requirements configured for the skill in ServiceNow Otto. If the current user doesn't meet those requirements, Resource finder shows candidates without a fit score or rationale.
- Fit score - a percentage that represents how closely a resource matches the requirements of an assignment. The score blends attribute alignment, temporal availability, and workload balance into one number so you can compare candidates at a glance.
- Rationale - a short explanation of why the Resource fit analysis considers them a good fit. The rationale references specific factors like availability windows, complementary pairing opportunities, and attribute matches.
The Resource finder lets you compare each resource's available capacity against the requested effort for the assignment. Effort values respect the unit and cadence based on user preference such as hours, FTE, or person days on a weekly or monthly basis.
The availability heatmap uses color coding to make this comparison instant. A green cell means the resource has enough capacity to meet the requested effort for that period. A red cell means they fall short. For example, if the requested effort is 1 FTE per month and a candidate shows 1 for April and 0 for May. April appears green and May appears red. This helps you immediately see the gap without doing any mental math.
- Quickly staff an unassigned assignment: Resource managers use the Resource finder option from the unassigned assignment's three-dot menu. The AI insights presents a ranked shortlist which the resource manager can reviews the rationale, confirm availability, and assigns the best fit within a single modal flow.
- Handle partial availability with resource pairing: Resource Finder surfaces the real-time availability through its rationale, which suggests pairing two resources to cover the complete period. For example, one resource covers April and July while another covers May and June.
- Balancing workloads: resource board indicator in the Resource finder highlights which candidates already belong to the manager's boards. This makes it easier to redistribute work within the existing team before pulling in resources from other groups.
Getting started
Follow these steps to begin using the workspace.
- Configure the workspace to enable the required features and permissions.
- Create a resource card to define your filtered view of resources.
- View and assign unassigned work to available resources.
- Manage resource allocations to adjust and approve assignments.