Labor Planning

You can enter plan dates at all work breakdown structure levels included in the plan, assign employees and generic labor resources to work breakdown structure elements, and enter anticipated date ranges for those assignments.

On the Labor tab in Plan mode in the Projects hub, you can:

• Review planned hours and amounts for the full life of the project and at any work breakdown structure level. The Labor planning tab gives you the option, for a project that is underway, to display planned hours by calendar period for the life of the project, for past periods as well as current and future periods.

  When you display a project in the grid, you can expand the work breakdown structure to display the lower-level work breakdown structure elements and, at the lowest level, the resource assignments themselves. For each resource, you can see the planned hours or amounts for the work breakdown structure element, broken down into the calendar periods that you have specified for the grid. The hours or amounts for each calendar period roll up from the resource level to each of the work breakdown structure levels.

• Click an employee name to view extensive information about the employee on his or her Employee Card. When you drill down to the resource level in the Labor grid, the employee's name is a link to his or her Employee Card, as it is elsewhere in DPS. Along with basic profile information, the Employee Card displays an employee's skills and credentials; all of the employee's assignments that have planned hours remaining; and a list of the employee's current and past projects, with a summary of the actual job-to-date hours that the employee has charged to those projects.
• Assign resources to work on your projects. In the Assign Resources to Project dialog box, select one or more resources, locate one or more lowest-level work breakdown structure elements to which you want to assign those resources, and click + next to each of the selected work breakdown structure elements to make the assignments. You can repeat those steps as many times as necessary, without closing the dialog box, to specify all of the assignments, and then click Assign to finalize them all at once.
• Enter planned hours for individual assignments or enter summary hours for allocation to individual assignments. After you assign employees or generic resources to one or more work breakdown structure elements for a project, use the Labor grid to enter planned hours for those assignments:
  • Use the calendar period columns to enter planned hours for a resource assignment for specific days, weeks, or months. You can enter hours at the resource level or for any work breakdown structure element to which the resource is assigned at any level of the tree structure. If you enter hours in a calendar period column at a level of the work breakdown structure rather than at the resource level, DPS automatically allocates those hours to lower-level elements and to resources.
  • An alternative to entering planned hours calendar period by calendar period is to enter the sum of hours for a range of dates (for example, the entire assignment date range), let DPS allocate those hours across calendar periods, and then make any necessary changes to fine-tune the plan.
• Copy plans from other projects. You can create a new project based on an existing project, either by selecting From Project in the Create Project field on the New Project form or by selecting Copy Project on the Actions menu. When you do this, you have the option to copy the existing project's plan as a starting point for the new project's plan.
• Move labor plans from opportunities to projects. If you perform resource planning for an opportunity, are awarded the contract, and set up the project in DPS, you can move all or part of the plan you set up for the opportunity into the plan for the project. Use either of these methods:
  • When you create the project, select the From Opportunity option in the Create Project field on the New Project form, and select the Copy Plan Structure and Move Assignments check box.
  • After you create a new project, inactivate or close the opportunity. DPS displays a prompt with a link to display the opportunity plan in Project View in Resource Management and gives you the option to delete the plan or move it. To move the plan, select the portions of the opportunity plan work breakdown structure that you want to move into the project plan. The move includes assignment start and end dates and all planned labor hours.
• Adjust plans. If you enter assignments for resources and later need to make changes, you can do any of the following:
  • Add or delete assignments.
  • Change or remove planned hours for individual calendar periods.
  • Reschedule assignments or plans. Shift dates while preserving the same number of working days or change the duration of an assignment or plan.
  • Reassign an assignment, or part of an assignment, from one resource to another (for example, from a generic resource to an employee).
• Manipulate the calendar period columns in the planning grid to get exactly the view you want. As you work in the Labor grid, you can use the Change Scale dialog box to specify the duration of each calendar period: week, month, or a combination of days and months. The Days & Months option displays plan data by day for one or two months, with the rest of the project plan displayed by month. If you select this option, you also specify the month or months for which you want to display plan data by day.
• View planned hours or planned amounts. Once you have entered planned hours, you can switch your view of the plan to show either the hours or the corresponding planned amounts in the calendar period columns.
• Plan based on cost or billing rates. Depending on plan settings, plan amounts are based on cost rates or billing rates. If you plan your project based on both cost and billing rates, you can switch between cost amounts and billing amounts.