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Task-Driven Resource Requests and Assignments Overview

Task-Driven Resource Requests

Task-driven resource requests are generated by FinancialForce PSA, based on attributes you select, from project tasksA unit of work or collection of work associated with a project. and child project task assignmentsAssociates a resource or a role with a project task for a defined time period. Use Project Task Gantt to assign resources or roles to project tasks.. They give you an informed estimate of the roles, resources, and project milestones you'll need to cover to deliver a project.

You can choose whether to generate unheld or held resource requestsOccurs when a named resource has been reserved (held) against, but not booked to, a project or opportunity. Also referred to as "soft booking".. Project task assignments need an allocated resource in order to generate held resource requests. Held resource requests are generated with a schedule based on either the work calendar associated with the held resource using the scheduling strategy "Calculate End Date, Ignore Availability", or based on the duration of the tasks that are associated with the held resource request.

Note:

Note

If your organization uses the Task Based Schedule Strategy when creating task-driven resource requests and assignments, your administrator must enable the use-task-based-schedule-creation-strategy configuration setting. For more information, see Staffer Settings.

Task-Driven Assignments

Task-driven assignments are generated by FinancialForce PSA, based on attributes you select, from project tasks and child project task assignments. They are created directly—without intermediate resource requests—and use the resource's default cost rate and a zero bill rate. Assignment hours are summed up from estimated hours on project tasks.

About Staffing

• To automatically staff assignments, FinancialForce PSA looks for the resources allocated to the source project task assignments. If the resource's role matches that specified on the project task assignment, and the resource is available to be staffed by your Salesforce user, then the resource will be staffed on the assignment. This assumes that you choose to generate task-driven assignments by Resource Role.
• In other scenarios, FinancialForce PSA looks for the pool of resources with the same role as the source project task assignment, then staffs the assignment with the first resource on the list. Again, only resources that are available for you to staff are considered.
• Assignments are generated with a schedule based on either the work calendar associated with the held resource using the scheduling strategy "Calculate End Date, Ignore Availability", or based on the duration of the tasks that are associated with the held resource request.

Requirements

The process requires source project tasks to exist on the project. You can create the project tasks in Project Task Gantt or in the standard Salesforce interface. You are informed if there's not enough information on the project tasks to generate records based on the attributes you select.

Generation Attributes

You can choose to generate task-driven resource requests or assignments based on a combination of:

Tip:

Example

You might have project tasks for the Content Optimization milestone of a project, with project task assignments for the SEO Specialist role. You choose to generate resource requests based on Milestone and Role. For more examples, see Bottom Up Planning Examples.

Gaps Between Project Task Assignments

You can set how many days to allow between consecutive project task assignments before the process divides a single resource request or assignment, spanning the start and end dates of two or more project task assignments, into two. In this case, you can generate separate records for each time period based on your selected attributes. The value you enter is independent of the attributes selected to generate records, such as Role and Milestone. You can choose whether weekends are ignored or considered.

For more information, see Setting Longest Gap Allowed.

Additional and User-Defined Fields

Your administrator can use a field set to add additional standard or user-defined fields to the list of generation attributes. These fields must be on the project task or project task assignment objects. For more information, see the pta_fieldset_to_split _resource_request setting.

Tip:

Example

The user-defined field Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) Element is populated on your source project task assignments. You can choose to split task-driven resource requests by WBS element, creating a new resource request for every resource allocated to work on a specific WBS element.

Project-Level Summary

You can view the financial impact of task-driven resource requests and assignments on the project by viewing summary information on the project. For more information, see Viewing Summary Information.

Note:

Notes

When assigning project tasks to external resourcesA person or entity that is external to your Salesforce organization. You can use external resources when assigning external staff, such as contractors, to project tasks., you should always select a role as well as an external resource. If the Resource Role field is empty when generating task-driven resource requests for external resources, you will be asked to either ignore or update the project task assignments.

If several project task assignments with the same resource or role exist on the project, they are combined to create a single resource request.

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