Planning user capacity in Strategic Planning Workspace

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Planning user capacity in Strategic Planning Workspace

    Strategic Planning Workspace enables ServiceNow customers to assess and manage resource capacity effectively. By reviewing existing allocations and resource availability, you can make informed decisions when assigning resources to planning items. The workspace provides two primary screens: Manage Resource Capacity and Capacity, which help in generating, viewing, and updating resource capacity details aligned to portfolios.

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    Manage Resource Capacity

    This screen allows you to select a time frame and primary resource attributes (such as groups, roles, or skills) to view the number of available resources. The generated capacity details are saved and can be refreshed to reflect the latest changes from employee profile mappings.

    • Filter resources by capacity attributes for specific date ranges.
    • Toggle between Auto-select and Manual-select modes to view either all allocated resource efforts or customized data.
    • Regenerate capacity to update availability based on current resource mappings.

    Capacity Screen

    This screen provides a detailed view of resource efforts linked to prioritized planning items within your portfolio. It includes an interactive Gantt chart to analyze allocations and forecast future resource needs.

    • Displays current resource capacity and allocations in a heatmap format.
    • Allows filtering of planning items by type, state, priority, or other attributes, with a default view of prioritized items only.
    • Shows operational work efforts and estimates outside the portfolio in an Additional Items list.
    • Capacity allocation is color-coded for clarity:
      • Yellow: Planning item without resource assignments
      • Blue: Resource estimates within capacity
      • Red: Overallocation in resource estimates
      • Green: Resource estimates within capacity (cells)

    Operational Resource Assignment

    Resource Managers can create or migrate operational resource assignments (such as meetings, training, or time off) to accurately reflect workforce availability:

    • Operational assignments for activities like training reduce available capacity and are reflected as efforts in the Operational Work line item on the Capacity screen.
    • Time off assignments reduce total available capacity but do not appear in the Operational Work line item.
    • Example: A group with 2 FTEs assigned 10% capacity for training will show 0.2 FTE as operational work; a 25% time off reduces available capacity to 1.5 FTEs for the quarter.

    The Operational Work line item is visually distinguished with a gray highlight for easy identification.

    Assess the resource capacity and review existing allocations, which help you to make informed decisions while working on assigning resources in Strategic Planning.

    Use the manage resource capacity screen to generate resource capacity details.

    Use the Capacity screen to view detailed information about the resource capacity mapping to a portfolio.

    Manage resource capacity

    Figure 1. Manage resource capacity screen
    Manage resource capacity screen displaying the capacity details for Employee Management group.

    Using Manage resource capacity, select a time frame and primary attributes to view number of available resources. Generated resource capacity details are saved. You can regenerate capacity to view latest changes in the resource availability.

    Resource capacity screen helps you to view the following data.

    • Resource availability for generated capacity.
    • Total number of available resources in a monthly breakdown view.
    • Latest date of generating the capacity details.
    • Option to regenerate and fetch the latest capacity details from the employee profile mappings.
    On the Manage resource capacity screen, you can:
    • Filter resources with specific capacity attributes for a required date range to view the number of available resources.
    • Regenerate capacity details to view the latest details from the resource employee profile mapping.

    Select resource criteria

    • Select a primary attribute to automatically view the available groups, roles, or skills from the resource assignments of the prioritized planning items.
    • Switch between Auto-select and Manual-select option to view the allocated resource efforts for all planning items or to view a custom data, respectively.
    • Define resource criteria to view the available groups, roles, or skills from the resource assignments of the prioritized planning items.

    Resource criteria screen in Capacity.

    Capacity

    Capacity screen displays the resource efforts from the prioritized planning items.
    • Comprehensive overview of resource capacity and allocations.
    • Current resource capacity allocation.
    • Interactive Gantt chat to view prioritized planning items in the bottom tray to analyze and plan work.

    Capacity view for resource capacity.

    Understanding the Capacity screen.
    Table 1. Capacity legend
    Color Description
    Yellow (Gantt bar) Planning item with no resource assignments.
    Blue (Gantt bar) Resource estimates for Planning items are within the resource capacity.
    Red (Cells and Gantt bar) Overallocation in resource estimates.
    Green (Cells) Resource estimates within the resource capacity.
    Using Capacity, you can:
    • View the capacity allocations of prioritized planning items for your current portfolio and better forecast your future resource requirements.
    • Use the filter option (Capacity filter button.) to view planning items by their type, state, priority or any by any required attributes to create capacity plans.
      Note:
      Default filter is set to display prioritized planning items only.
    • View the updated resource capacity based on the assigned operational resource assignments.
    • View the total resource capacity in the heatmap view.

      Resource capacity heatmap view.

    • View total resource capacity and total estimates.
    • View the efforts for operational work and efforts for estimates outside of portfolio in the Additional items list.
    • Redefine the workforce criteria by selecting Resource criteria (Resource criteria button.)

    Calculation of Operational Resource Assignment in Capacity

    As a Resource Manager, you can create operation resource assignments or migrate existing operational resource plans of your employees to handle the required meetings, trainings, time off and so on to meet your work requirements.

    Consider a group with capacity of 2 FTE and resource manager creates a Group type operation resource assignment for 10% of the capacity for training. This operational assignment can be viewed in the Operational work line item in the top-tray of the Capacity screen. The value of the Operational work line item will be 0.2, which is 10% of total capacity of the group.

    When a resource manager creates a Group type operation resource assignment for time off, this doesn't update the Operational work line item but reduces the total available capacity.

    Consider the same group for which resource manager creates an operation resource assignment for 25% of the capacity for time off, for a quarter from April to June. The total available capacity of the group for the quarter April to June will be 1.5 FTE, which is 75% of the total capacity after reducing the 25% time off.

    0.5 FTE, which is 25% of total capacity of the group will be reduced.
    Note:
    The Operational work line item is highlighted in gray color.
    Capacity view showing Operational work in a red highlight box.