Improving Resource Matching Performance at Scale

When matching resources to resource requests, if the volume of resources in your org is high, we recommend that you perform the tasks below to improve the efficiency of resource matching.

For information about the potential impact of high volumes of data on resource matching, see How High Volumes of Data can Impact Resource Matching.

For an explanation of the resource matching process, see Intelligent Staffing Overview.

Narrowing Search Criteria

When searching for resources, set essential criteria that narrow down the pool of potential matches to between 100 and 1,000 resources.

Note:

We recommend that you combine essential and non-essential criteria to find the most relevant resources. You can still consider non-essential criteria.

For role, region, practice, group, Worked With Customer, Preferred Resource, and any resource search fields in your org, you can set essential criteria in the following ways:

  • At runtime from the Resourcing tab on a resource request page, and Resource Request Staffer:

    1. Click Open the Match Settings panel to open the Match Settings panel.
    2. In the Field Weightings section, set the weightings of the most important criteria to 4, "Essential".
  • For the Resourcing tab on a resource request page, Resource Request Staffer, and auto-staffing you can preset essential criteria via the staffing preference record linked to a resource request. For more information, see Staffing Preferences Overview.
  • For all other features, and to set defaults for the Resourcing tab, Resource Request Staffer, and auto-staffing, your administrator can update the Resource Search Service custom settings. For more information, seeResource Search Service Settings.
Note:

Filtering by Preferred Resource and resource search fields is not supported by Resource Optimizer.

For skills and certifications, set the most important skills to "Essential" when creating resource requests. For more information, see Managing Resource Skill Requests on Resource Requests. If desirable skills are disabled in the Skill Management custom setting, all skills are considered as essential. For more information, see Skills Management Settings.

Deprioritizing Availability

Resource availability is the most complex resource attribute for the org to evaluate. This is due to the fact that all the resource's existing assignments and held resource requests must be checked for their impact on the resource's availability. Therefore, applying all filtering steps before checking availability can significantly speed up the resource matching process.

Because resources are evaluated based on the priorities defined, availability can be ranked as the first, second, third, or fourth in the match settings. We recommend you set it to third, or second at most. If the Cost Rate attribute is visible, you can set Availability on fourth. The most suitable resources will still be ranked by availability.

Note:

When schedule availability is enabled, the Cost Rate attribute (if available) is positioned according to the value set in the Cost Rate Priority field and the Availability attribute is always locked at the fourth position. If Cost Rate Priority is set to 4, the system automatically reassigns it to third position so it doesn't conflict with the locked Availability attribute.

To adjust the match priority from the Resourcing tab or Resource Request Staffer page:

  1. Click Open the Match Settings panel to open the Match Settings panel.
  2. In the Match Priority section, move the Availability attribute to the second, or third position. If the Cost Rate attribute is visible, you can set Availability on the fourth.

For all other features, and to set defaults for the PSA Resourcing Lightning component, your administrator can update the priority using the Resource Search Service custom setting. For more information, see Resource Search Service Settings.

Note:

Using Cost Rate as a priority is not supported by Resource Optimizer.

Avoiding Minimum Availability Filters

Minimum availability can be thought of as applying a filter based on availability in the filtering step. Therefore, availability must be calculated for all resources who match the other essential criteria. We recommend you do not use this filter when searching large numbers of resources.

For more information, see Filtering Resources by Skills or Certifications.

Combining Advice

You can combine the above practices into an overall best practice.

Example:
  • Define some essential and desirable skills in your resource requests.
  • Weight region, practice, and group as "Essential", and role, Worked With Customers, Preferred Resource, and resource search fields differently.
  • Prioritize fields, then skills, availability, and then cost rate (if available).
  • Do not filter by minimum availability.