Deltek Open Plan Help

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General Tab

The General tab of the Resource Details dialog box defines the basic information about the resource.

Contents

Use the fields and options to configure this tab.

Field Description
ID

A resource ID is an alphanumeric code unique to the resource and consists of from 1 to 59 characters, including periods that are used to indicate hierarchical levels.

By default, Open Plan defines a maximum field length of 59 characters for resource IDs and 60 characters for resource descriptions. It is possible, however, to modify the standard data structure and data dictionary so that these field lengths can be as long as 255 characters for new files.

When you enter a resource ID on the Resource Details dialog box, enter only the local portion of the resource ID. Open Plan automatically enters the parent portion of the ID.

Open Plan does not distinguish between upper and lower case characters in an ID and will flag resource R0001 as a duplicate of resource r0001.

IDs containing the following four symbols " , | ; are used as delimiters in Open Plan and may cause problems when importing or exporting data.

When you enter a resource ID in the Resource Details dialog box, enter only the local portion of the resource ID. Open Plan automatically enters the parent portion of the ID.

Open Plan does not distinguish between upper and lower case characters in an ID and will flag resource R0001 as a duplicate of resource r0001.

Description

A description can contain up to 60 characters. You may use both upper and lower case characters.

Type

The type of a resource can be one of the following:

  • Normal: An individual resource that does not get "used up." For example, a person or a facility.
  • Consumable: A resource that is consumed or "used up," such as the bricks in a construction project. The available quantity of a consumable resource is reduced as it is used up. Units that are not required during one period of availability are carried forward to the next period.
  • Open Plan assumes that the total quantity of a consumable resource is available on the date specified in the From Date field on the Availability tab, and that some quantity of the resource is available until it has been totally consumed or used up.
  • Perishable: A consumable resource with an expiration date. This type of resource is sometimes called "use it or lose it" and is frequently used in instances where budgets cannot be carried forward into the following fiscal year.
  • Open Plan assumes that the total quantity of a perishable resource is available on the date specified in the From Date field on the Availability tab. Like the consumable resource, the available quantity is reduced as it is consumed. In contrast to the consumable resource, however, any quantity of a perishable resource remaining is no longer available after the date specified in the To Date field on the Availability tab.
  • Resource Pool: Open Plan uses this resource to represent a group of resources at a lower level of the same pool. It is important to be aware of which resources serve as pools because of the following ramifications:
  • Information defined at the pool level is ignored by the child resources belonging to the pool.
  • If you delete a pool, you delete all child resources as well.
Category

Open Plan supports the following types of resource category:

  • Other Direct Costs (ODC)
  • Labor
  • Material
  • Subcontract

Open Plan uses Other Direct Costs to monitor costs that are directly attributable to the activity as opposed to the resources.

For a complete description of each of the Category options, see the Activity Information Cost Tab.

Unit

For each resource, you can enter a description of how you measure the resource (for example, hours, tons, and so on).

Effort Factor

The effort factor setting is used for the calculation of durations for effort-driven activities. The effort factor indicates to what extent the resource is available for any one activity. For example, assume that a resource, while available for 8 hours per day, cannot devote more than 4 hours of his or her time to any one activity. Enter an effort factor of 4 to reflect this situation.

This setting does not indicate efficiency and has no effect on resource scheduling calculations.

Attention: For a description of effort-driven activities, see Effort-Driven Activities.
Unit Cost

A cost for each unit of the resource.

Employee ID

You can enter the Employee ID used by the Human Resources Department in this field.

Threshold

Thresholds specify an additional number of units of availability for a resource that can be used to avoid project delays if necessary. The value of a resource threshold represents an incremental amount on top of all existing availabilities for that resource. Open Plan ignores thresholds for consumable resources.

Open Plan interprets a threshold value based on the default duration unit and the conversion settings for a project. For example, assume that you enter a threshold of 2 for a labor resource used in a project in which the default duration unit is defined as days and in which one day converts to 8 hours. Open Plan interprets the threshold for that resource as 16 labor-hours. Note that one implication of this approach is that the interpretation of a threshold value may vary since it depends on the settings stored on the Preferences tab of the Project Properties dialog box for the project.

Project

This field contains a list of projects to which the resource file containing the selected resource is assigned. If you select a project from the list, Open Plan reserves 100 percent of the resource's availability to the project.

Lower level reservations can override higher level ones. This allows you to reserve an entire resource pool for one project and then override this for resources at a lower level in the resource hierarchy.

If the selected resource is an individual resource (as contrasted with a pool) you can use the Availability tab to apportion the availability to multiple projects.

Attention: For information about reserving resources, see Reserve Resources for Use by a Specified Project.
Email Address

You can use this field to store an email address for the resource. This information can be used as an Address field in the Email Advisor.

Suppress in Lists

If selected, this option suppresses the inclusion of this resource in all lists. While the resource is not deleted from the file (and, thus, does not affect cost calculations), the resource cannot be used in resource assignments, nor is it included in any list of resources.

Suppress for Scheduling

You can have Open Plan ignore a resource during resource scheduling. This is useful in cases where you want to track requirements for a particular resource but ignore any potential impact it may have on the project schedule. During resource scheduling, Open Plan treats suppressed resources as though they have unconstrained availabilities.

Roll Up for Scheduling

Roll-up resource scheduling allows you to look at resources and schedule the activities from a summary perspective by specifying the hierarchical level for resource availabilities and assignments. When you indicate that the resource is to be rolled up for scheduling purposes, you specify that all references to that resource should be treated as a reference to the first parent of the resource in the hierarchy that is not rolled up to a higher level. (Thus, every rolled-up resource must have at least one hierarchical parent that is not rolled up.) The only restriction to this technique is that you cannot roll up both consumable and non-consumable resources to the same pool.

Using this feature, you can produce a more general resource schedule without a detailed consideration of individual resources. This effectively reduces the number of calculations required to produce a resource-based schedule, thereby improving processing times for larger projects.

For example, assume that MARY and JANE are resources in the following hierarchy:

Resource Availability Roll-up Option Selected
PEB
PEB.MENG
PEB.MENG.MARY 3 hours/day Y
PEB.MENG.JANE 5 hours/day Y

PEB.MENG is the first parent of MARY and JANE that does not have the roll-up option selected. Therefore, Open Plan considers that PEB.MENG has an availability of 8 hours per day since it combines the availabilities of both MARY and JANE.

This roll-up feature is incompatible with the use of alternate resource assignments involving pools and skills.

Attention: For information about alternate resource assignments, see Resource Allocation.
Progress Based on Activity Progress

Use this option to automatically progress the resource based on the schedule status of the activity. For example, if you have statused the activity as 50% complete, Open Plan assumes that the resource assignment corresponding to the first half of the activity duration has occurred as planned.

This option is selected or is turned ON, by default.

Attention: For information about entering resource progress, see Resource and Cost Progress.
Actual Cost Based on Progressed Quantity

Use this option if you want Open Plan to automatically calculate actual costs from the number of resource units used. For example, if you define the unit cost for a resource as $10.00, and you indicate that 5 units of the resource have been used, then Open Plan calculates the actual cost for the resource as $50.00.

Attention: For information about calculating actual costs automatically, see Calculating Earned Value Progress Automatically.
Consider in Cost Calculations

If this option is selected, Open Plan includes the resource in cost calculations.

Related Topics

Related Procedures