Creating Assignments from Project Tasks

You must have added at least a role and a resource to a project task to create a project task assignment (PTA) from which you can create an assignment.

When creating assignments, there are mandatory grouping criteria of Resource Role and Resource for the contents of each assignment. You cannot remove these grouping criteria, but your administrator can add other criteria, such as milestone and external resource.

Using the mandatory grouping criteria, PTAs are grouped into one resource request for each role and resource combination. This means that you cannot create separate assignments for the same role and resource combination on the same PTA.

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 have assigned the Staffing permission control to you.

To create assignments from a project task assignment:

  1. On a project record, click Actions | Task-Based Resourcing | Create Assignments from Project Tasks. The Create Assignments from Project Tasks window opens.

    The roles and resources in the project that you can generate assignments for are displayed. All possible assignments are selected by default.

  2. [Optional] Deselect any assignment that you do not want to create.
  3. [Optional] Edit the field values, as needed.
  4. [Optional] Click Grouping Criteria to define the fields that you want the assignments 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 and rows are removed from the table.
  5. Click Create.
Note: Contact your administrator if you need to change the fields available in the grouping criteria.
Tip: Your administrator can map additional PTA fields to assignment fields. If a field in the grouping criteria has a custom mapping, read-only columns for the corresponding assignment fields are displayed in the table.

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 assignments by using this field. This creates assignments that group the PTAs with the same role and the same On-Site field setting.

The following example shows how changing project task details updates the schedules of the project tasks in an assignment when your administrator uses the Task Management custom setting Project Task Scheduling field. For more information, see Changes to Assignment Schedules When Project Tasks Are Changed.

In this example, the current day is Wednesday.

Original Project Task Assignment Details
Project Tasks Resource Role Estimated PTA Hours Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri
Task 1 Project manager 12 Day 1 Day 2 Day 3    
Task 2 Project manager 10 Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5
Task 3 Project manager 3         Day 1

This creates the following schedule for the assignment.

Note: Project tasks do not have individual schedules, they only contribute to the assignment schedule.
Original Assignment Schedule
Project Tasks Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri
Task 1 4 4 4    
Task 2 2 2 2 2 2
Task 3         3
  Scheduled assignment hours per day 6 6 6 2 5

For each project task, the estimated hours are split equally over its duration.

If you now change Task 1 to be one day longer and Task 2 to be one day shorter, the following details apply.

Changed Project Task Assignment Details
Project Tasks Resource Role Estimated PTA Hours Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri
Task 1 Project manager 12 Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4  
Task 2 Project manager 10 Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4  
Task 3 Project manager 3         Day 1

This creates the following schedule for the assignment.

Changed Assignment Schedule
Project Tasks Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri
Task 1 4 4 3 3  
Task 2 2 2 2.5 2.5  
Task 3         2
  Scheduled assignment hours per day 6 6 5.5 5.5 2

The existing schedules for Monday and Tuesday are unchanged. All of the remaining assignment hours from Wednesday to Friday are spread equally across the project tasks, so that the original total estimated assignment hours are maintained.

The following example shows how the Retain Schedule Adjustments value in the Project Task Scheduling field in the Task Management Settings custom setting works by ensuring that any adjustments to the assignment schedules in the planners are retained if the project task dates are shifted in the Gantt.

Original Project Task Assignment Details
Project Tasks Resource Estimated PTA Hours Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon
Task 1 Resource 1 36 6 6 6 6 6 0 0 6

For each project task, the estimated hours are split equally over its duration.

Project Task Assignment Details After Schedule Adjustments
Project Tasks Resource Estimated PTA Hours Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon
Task 1 Resource 1 36 5 8 7 6 6 0 0 4

Now, if you shift the project task by 3 days and it starts from Thursday and set the Project Task Scheduling custom setting field to Retain Schedule Adjustments.

Project Task Assignment Details After the Shift
Project Tasks Resource Estimated PTA Hours Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tues Wed Thu
Task 1 Resource 1 36 5 8 0 0 7 6 6 4

And, if the Project Task Scheduling custom setting field is blank, the hours are recalculated.

Project Task Assignment Details When Project Task Scheduling is Blank
Project Tasks Resource Estimated PTA Hours Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tues Wed Thu
Task 1 Resource 1 36 6 6 0 0 6 6 6 6

 

To generate assignments from project tasks:

  1. On the Project Tasks related list of a project record, click Generate Assignments. The Generate Assignments from Project Task Assignments page opens.

    You can also open the Generate Assignments from Project Task Assignments page using Gantt or Project Task Gantt.

  2. Select some attributes to base the generated assignments on. You can only select Milestone together with Role, Resource, or External Resource. Custom attributes may 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 assignment 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 an assignment that spans the start and end dates of the source project task assignments.

  4. Click Preview Assignments.
  5. Preview the assignments, including scheduled hours, cost rate, bill rate, duration, and the proposed resource to be assigned.
    Tip:

    The proposed quantity and field values of the assignments depend on which attributes you select. Try a combination that reflects how much information is on your project task assignments.

  6. Update any assignment 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 assignments that you want to discard.
  9. Click Generate 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 assignments are displayed on the Unfilled Resource Requests page, along with summary information.
  10. [Optional] Delete any assignments that you no longer want.
Note:

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

Project task assignments for which a resource role cannot be derived are ignored when generating assignments from tasks.

Combined project task assignments using the task based scheduling strategy resulting in the creation of an assignment or held resource request having more than 24 hrs for a day are ignored.

Resources who do not have roles matching a role for a project assignment can be included in a list of possible resources to assign to a project task assignment. In this instance, two additional resources who are not assigned to the project are suggested who do have a matching role. These resources are selected based on their alphabetical order. Your administrator can set the allow-to-assign-a-resource-with-different-role setting to control this behavior.