Working with Resources
Resources are the lifeblood of any project, without which an idea will never reach fruition. Effective management of personnel, equipment, and raw materials is key to bringing your project to a successful conclusion, and OmniPlan provides the tools you need to do just that.
Creating and Deleting Resources
There are several ways to create new items in resource view:
Select an item in the resource outline and press Return (or Command-Return, depending on the Keyboard Options in OmniPlan’s keyboard preferences).
Click the Add button (plus button) below the outline.
Click the Add button in the toolbar above the outline.
Drag a Contacts card into the resource outline to create a Staff resource which collects its contact information from the Contacts.
Secondary-click and choose Add ▸ Resource from the contextual menu.
There are a few ways to delete a resource or resource group:
Select a resource or group in the outline, then press the Delete key.
Select the item, then click the Remove button (minus button) below the outline.
Select the item, then click the Remove button in the toolbar above the outline.
Select the item, then secondary-click to reveal the contextual menu and choose Delete.
Note
If you’re publishing and subscribing, new tasks and changes can come from other users of the project. Use the change tracking sidebar to accept or reject these changes.
Assigning Resources to Tasks
Most tasks require some kind of resources in order to complete. Software development needs programmers, excavation needs heavy machinery, and construction needs lumber. Tracking which resources are assigned to which tasks helps you to see how long the tasks will take to complete, and when your resources are going to be busy or idle.
There are several ways to assign a resource to a task:
Select the task in task view, open the Task Assignments inspector, and check the resources you’d like to assign. You can then edit the amount to assign, if it’s different from the default amount. You can also see all of a resource’s assignments, and adjust their amounts or clear them, in the Resource Assignments inspector.
Drag tasks around between resources’ lanes and the Unassigned lane in the resource timeline chart. While dragging a task from one resource to another, you can hold the Option key to assign the task to the second resource without unassigning it from the first.
Drag a card from Contacts to a task in the task view. If the project doesn’t yet have a resource associated with that card, a new one is added.
Edit the Assigned column of the task outline or the assigned resources area in the Gantt chart. The following are helpful hints:
Enter resource names in the Assigned column to assign them to the task.
You can also double-click resource lists in the Gantt chart and edit them directly there.
Follow a staff resource with a percentage inside curly braces to assign an amount other than 100%.
Follow a material or equipment resource name with a number in curly braces to assign an amount other than 1 unit.
Separate multiple resource names with semicolons.
Grouping Resources
As with tasks, you can also group resources — and resources can be assigned to groups of tasks, as well.
Assigning Groups
If you assign a resource to a group of tasks, the resource becomes assigned to every task in the group. The group itself can’t have a resource assigned to it.
If you assign a group of resources to a task, OmniPlan provisionally labels the task as having the whole resource assigned. Then, when you level resources, one member of the group is chosen to work on that task. If that member becomes unavailable, leveling again assigns a different member.
Characteristics of Resource Groups
A resource group is just a way to organize several resources together, so it doesn’t have a lot of the same characteristics as an individual resource, like Efficiency and Cost.
Name — Of course, a resource group has its own name.
Address — You can assign an e-mail address to a group, in case you have a mailing list or some address which goes to all of the members in the group.
Type — A resource group can contain resources of any type (Staff, Equipment, or Material), but its own type is always Group.
Cost/Use, Cost/Hour, and Efficiency — These are shown as averages of the values of all members of the group. If you enter a new value, it is applied to all members of the group.
Editing Resources with the Resource Information Inspector
The Resource Information inspector contains all of the vital details about a staff member, piece of equipment, or raw material used in completing your project.
The resource Name is the same as the one that appears in the resource outline.
A staff resource can be assigned an email Address. If the resource is associated with a Contacts card, you can use the pop-up menu to pick which address to use. Or, you can always just type an address.
Click the Action button (gear menu) to associate this resource with a Contacts card, open the card in Contacts, or send an email.
The resource Type can be Staff, Tool, Material, or Group.
The Units value means how much of the resource is available. (For materials, this measures the amount required instead.)
Efficiency is how much effort the resource can make compared to the amount of time it takes.
The Start and End dates determine for which dates the resource is available.
The Cost per Use is an amount of money for each time the resource is assigned to a task.
Cost per Hour is an amount of money for each hour of effort the resource is assigned.
Total Uses means the number of times this resource is assigned to a task.
Total Hours is the sum of the effort of all tasks the resource is assigned to.
Total Cost is the combined cost of all uses and all hours for this resource.
Tracking Assignments with the Timeline
When you want to manage your project from the point of view of the resources available, the timeline in Resource View will help you visualize and control your assets.
Click the bar graph button to show or hide the resource allocation graph beneath each resource’s timeline.
The chart shows a timeline of tasks for each resource you select in the outline. If you select no resources, the chart shows all resources’ timelines. If the resource is unavailable during some normal working hours, because it has customized working hours, the unavailable times have a background of the Off-hours color (gray by default) as it is set in the Project Colors inspector.
Below the resources’ timelines, an Unassigned timeline shows the tasks which aren’t assigned to any resource. You can drag tasks between timelines to change their assignments.
A blue bar in the load graph represents time when the resource is being used at 100% of its available units.
A pink bar in the load graph represents time when the resource is being used at over 100% of its available units. You can level the project to clear up such problems.
You can zoom the timeline the same way you zoom the Gantt chart. Just choose a scale from this menu or drag in the header area.
Using Columns in the Resource Outline
As with task view, the resource outline can be customized to display columns with a wide variety of information about your resources. To show and hide columns, select them in View Options (⌘J) or secondary-click on the column header and toggle them in the contextual menu that appears.
- Attachments
- You can click the paper clip icon Attachment icon in the selected row to see a menu of the item’s attachments, or to link to a file if there isn’t one linked yet. Rows with links to files show a paper clip icon even when they are deselected.
- Notes
- You can click the note icon in the selected row to show or hide the item’s note, or to create a note if there isn’t one yet. Rows with notes show a note icon even when they are deselected.
- Unique ID
- The unique ID is a number assigned to each task or resource to identify it unambiguously, even if its name or position in the outline changes. A unique ID won’t ever change, and each new task or resource you create gets a new unique ID number. These numbers are useful for matching up items when you are importing and exporting projects between OmniPlan and other applications.
- Custom Work Week
- An icon appears in this column if a resource has a work week that differs from its default work week; the default work week for a resource is defined by its parent (if it’s a member of a group) or the project (if it’s not). You can click the icon to see the resource’s work week, and from there you can always click the X button in the upper right of the week view to revert to the default.
- Schedule Exception
- An icon appears in this column if a resource has a work schedule that differs from its work week, such as when someone goes on vacation. You can click the icon to see the resource’s work schedule, and from there you can check the orange-highlighted dates to see where its exceptions are. You can click the X button in the upper right corner of any week view to clear the resource’s exceptions for that week.
Duration and Effort
Duration is how long a task takes in actual working hours in the schedule. If the task begins at 8:00 and ends at 12:00, that’s a duration of 4 hours. Note that non-working times don’t count; if a task starts one afternoon and doesn’t complete until the next morning, or spans a lunch break, only the working hours are counted. Also note that the resources assigned to a task may have different working hours than the project as a whole, and thus the displayed duration of a task may not match up exactly with the amount of effort it takes.
Effort is the total amount of working time put into a task by all assigned resources. A task with a duration of 4 hours, with 2 resources assigned at 100%, has an effort value of 8 hours. Note that Material resources don’t contribute to effort, only Staff and Equipment resources do.
The duration and the effort of a task can change depending on the resources you assign.
Each task has a setting in the Task Assignments inspector which controls whether to keep the duration fixed, the effort fixed, or both.
When you assign or unassign staff and equipment resources, the value that isn’t fixed re-calculates its value; the other field stays the same. Regardless of which value is calculated, you can always edit either value manually.
If both values are fixed, then assigning resources changes the assigned percentage.
What Makes Duration and Effort Change
Multiple factors influence both duration and effort. The most common variables are described below; adjusting them can help bring a project in line with the desired timeline for completion.
- Number of Assigned Resources
- Assigning more resources to a task generally causes the task to take less time, because the required effort gets completed sooner.
- Efficiency of Assigned Resources
- Assigning less-efficient resources to a task causes the duration to be longer than the effort, because the resource takes more time to achieve the same amount of effort.
- Assigned Amount and Available Units
- Assigning fewer units of a resource to a task causes the duration to be longer than the effort, because less of the resource’s time and energy is being spent on that task. This situation is common when a resource is split between multiple tasks at one time. The amount of a resource you can assign to tasks depends on the resource’s available Units (set in the Resource Information inspector or the Units column of the Resource outline). Assigning more of a resource than is available causes a violation and shows up as overutilization in the Resource timeline.
