Finding a resource

Find a resource and assign or allocate that resource to a task, work item, or investment. In the Find Resource dialog box you can search for resources by the name, role, or skills. You also have the option of sorting the candidates by availability, based on the criteria of your choosing. When you select a possible candidate, you can view the resource's availability in the time-phased graph.

The Find Resource dialog enables you to search for resources from specific resource teams by name, role, or skill, and search from specific resource teams. This search will return all the resources meeting the identified criteria, and list them alphabetically under Candidates. Clicking a resource displays an associated capacity and availability graph in the lower pane.

The Find Resource dialog also enables you to sort the returned list of resources according a weighted availability score. You can define the value attribute used to calculate availability for the candidate scoring. The availability score displays a graphical indication of a resources availability, from most available to least.

5 bars Most available, score of 81-100.
4 bars Score of 61-80
3 bars Score of 41-60
2 bars Score of 21-40
1 bars Least available, and possibly over-allocated, score of 0-20

You can determine the exact availability score by positioning your mouse pointer over the candidate score graphic. These values are derived using a resource availability algorithm. Essentially, for each resource that matches the search criteria and selected timeframe, availability is calculated in the following way:

Straight availability resources with the most non-allocated hours.
Earliest availability resources with the most non-allocated hours that are the closest to the specified time period.
Value of non-availability resources allocated to high-value investments are considered less available than those allocated to lower-value investments.

The period availability score is a resource's capacity minus any planned hours for all investments on which the resource will work. Each planned hour is adjusted by the value of the investment so that resources on high value investments are scored as less available than resources on lower value investments. Candidates with availability on or closer to the specified time period are more desirable than candidates with availability in the future, even if their overall availability in terms of non-allocated hours may be higher. If you select a specific Investment Value Attribute to sort against, the relative value of the availability scores for all candidates will likely vary.

To find a resource

When allocating or assigning resources, click to open the Find Resource dialog box.
In the Search dialog box, type the string for which you want to search.
Select the Name attribute.
For Match, select any word to have the search results include any of the text you typed or select all words to have the search results include all of the text you typed. To search for a specific phrase, put quotation marks around the word(s) for which you are searching.
From the Display drop-down, select Documents.
Click Advanced to set up a more detailed search, including defining rules, searching by keyword, title, and description, and selected investments.
Click OK.