Creating Resource Requests from Project Tasks

You must have added at least a role to a project task to create a project task assignment (PTA) from which you can create a resource request. To create a held resource request, the PTA must have a role and a resource.

When creating either type of resource request, there are mandatory grouping criteria for the contents of each resource request. You cannot remove these grouping criteria, but your administrator can add other criteria, such as milestone and external resource. Using the mandatory grouping criteria:

  • For unheld resource requests, PTAs are grouped into one resource request for the role.
  • For held resource requests, PTAs are grouped into one resource request for each resource and role combination.

This means that you cannot create separate resource requests for the same role on the same project task assignment.

Notes:
  • The main procedure is for users of record pages supplied by Certinia from Fall 2020.
  • From Fall 2020, if you are not using the pages supplied by Certinia, your administrator can add the PSA Actions: Task-Based Resourcing component to the project record page.
  • Your administrator must grant you the Resource Request Entry permission control and edit access to the relevant fields. For information on the field permissions required, see Permissions for Creating Resource Requests from Project Tasks (Lightning).

To create resource requests from a project task assignment:

  1. On a project record, do one of the following:
    • For unheld resource requests, click Actions | Task-Based Resourcing | Create Resource Requests from Project Tasks. The Create Resource Requests from Project Tasks window opens.
    • For held resource requests, click Actions | Task-Based Resourcing | Create Held Resource Requests from Project Tasks. The Create Held Resource Requests from Project Tasks window opens.

    The roles and resources or suggested resources in the project that you can generate resource requests for are displayed. PTAs without roles are not displayed. All possible resource requests are selected by default. Any external resources are shown in the Notes column.

  2. [Optional] Deselect any resource requests that you do not want to generate.
  3. [Optional] Edit the field values, as needed. For picklists, start typing to generate a list of options, and then select an option.
  4. [Optional] Click Grouping Criteria to define the fields that you want the resource requests to be grouped by. All of the available fields are selected by default, but you can deselect fields that you don't need, and then click Update Preview. If you remove fields from the grouping criteria list, the corresponding columns are removed from the table. Contact your administrator if you want to change the fields available in the grouping criteria.

    If you are using the default Resource Role, Resource, and Milestone fields on project task assignments to group resource requests, read-only columns for the corresponding resource request fields are shown in the table. For unheld resource requests, columns for the Resource Role, Suggested Resource, and Milestone fields are displayed. For held resource requests, columns for the Resource Role, Resource, and Milestone fields are displayed.

  5. Click Create.
Notes:
  • After you have created resource requests, your grouping selection is retained whenever you use the same browser on the same computer for this procedure.

  • When you have created a resource request from a project task, and the resource request is then held, a task schedule is generated and the resource's hours are spread equally across the task's duration. When you create a resource request that is not associated with a project task, and then the resource request is held, this follows the standard behavior.

Tip:

Your administrator can map additional PTA fields to resource request fields. If a field in the grouping criteria has a custom mapping, read-only columns for the corresponding resource request fields are displayed in the table. For more information on configuring groupings, columns, and custom mappings, see Managing the Custom Columns, Groupings, and Custom Mappings Used When Creating Resource Requests from Project Tasks (Lightning).

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.

Example: If the user-defined On-Site field is populated on your source PTAs, you can split task-based resource requests by using this field. This creates resource requests that group the PTAs with the same role and the same On-Site field setting.

The following examples show the resource requests that can be created using the example set of project task assignments to create the resource requests grouped by role, and then by both milestone and role.

Example Set of Project Task Assignments
Project Task Project Milestone Internal Resource External Resource Resource Role
Task 1 Milestone A     Developer
Task 1 Milestone A     Java Developer
Task 2 Milestone A     Consultant
Task 3 Milestone B Robert    
Task 4 Milestone D Daniel   Developer
Task 5 Milestone B Daniel    

In both examples, resource requests cannot be created for Task 3 and Task 5 because they do not have an assigned role, which is a minimum requirement.

Example 1: Resource Requests Created Grouped by Role
Target Resource Request Resource Role Project Milestone Project Tasks
RR1 Developer Milestone A, Milestone D Task 1,
Task 4
RR2 Java Developer Milestone A Task 1
RR3 Consultant Milestone A Task 2
Example 2: Resource Requests Created Grouped by Milestone and Role
Target Resource Request Resource Role Project Milestone Project Tasks
RR1 Developer Milestone A Task 1
RR2 Developer Milestone D Task 4
RR3 Java Developer Milestone A Task 1
RR4 Consultant Milestone A Task 2
  1. Depending on the type of resource request you want to generate:
    • On a project record, click Actions | Task-Based Resourcing | Create Resource Requests from Project Tasks.
    • In Gantt, click the expand arrow on Create Assignments, and then click Create Resource Requests.
    • In Project Task Gantt, click Create Resource Demand and then Generate Resource Requests.
    • Click Generate Resource Requests on the Project Tasks related list of the project detail page that you are generating resource requests for. From Fall 2020, this is not on the default page layouts.
    • Click Generate Held Resource Requests on the Project Tasks related list of the project detail page that you are generating resource requests for. From Fall 2020, this is not on the default page layouts.

    The Generate Resource Requests from Project Task Assignments page opens.

  2. Select some attributes to base the generated resource requests on. You can only select Milestone together with Role, Resource, or External Resource. Custom attributes might be available to select if configured by your administrator.
  3. [Optional] In the Longest Gap Allowed (Days) field, enter the duration of the longest gap, including weekends, permitted between consecutive project task assignments before a single resource request is divided into two. To ignore weekends when calculating gap duration, select Ignore Saturdays or Ignore Sundays.
    Tip:

    If you don't enter a value, the process ignores gaps in the task schedule and generates a resource request that spans the start and end dates of the source project task assignments.

  4. Click Preview Resource Requests or Preview Held Resource Requests.
  5. Preview the resource requests, including resource role, requested hours and bill rate, projected costs, and the proposed suggested or held resource.
    Tip:

    The proposed quantity and field values of the resource requests depend on which attributes you select. Try a combination that reflects how much information is on your project task assignments. For example, if resources haven't been assigned to your tasks, deselect the Resource checkbox. Remember, you can always click Reset to discard the previewed resource requests and try again using different attributes.

  6. Update any resource record fields that you can edit. Your administrator can set the use-task-based-schedule-creation-strategy setting to control this behavior.
  7. Use Update Preview and Reset Preview as described in Buttons.
  8. Deselect any previewed resource requests that you want to discard.
  9. Click Generate Assignments to save the records to your organizationClosed A deployment of the Salesforce/Certinia applications with a defined set of licensed users. Your organization (org) includes all of your data and applications, and is separate from all other orgs.. The new task-generated resource requests are displayed on the Unfilled Resource Requests page, along with summary information.
  10. [Optional] Delete any resource requests that you no longer need.
Notes: