What is the resource planning view?
Resource planning shows you the load on your staff. It is only available in Synergy Enterprise and uses a simple timeline to indicate when staff are not busy and highlights when they are overloaded.
Why use this view?
Managing your resources is critical to guarantee successful delivery of your projects. Resource planning gives you a detailed overview into which projects your resources are working on. In the grid you can see which weeks your workforce and even your business, are most busy.
This help guide will break down the different components you see when you open resource planning - namely the staff list on the left and the resource rows and footers in the main grid.
The staff list is used to look up a resource you want to view in detail. Scroll through the list to find the staff member. Alternatively, type part of the staff member’s name or part of their email address into the filter box at the top of the staff list and press enter to run the search.
The parts of the staff list are defined as:
User graphic — users can choose how they want to visually appear in Synergy. Users can use a gravatar or upload an image. Alternatively, Synergy will automatically assign their initials to a random color if no graphic is found.
Primary rate – the letters in bold in the staff list identifies the primary rate assigned to this resource.
Project name – clicking on a record in the staff list will show the projects this resource is allocated to.
Stage name — clicking on a project name will open the different stages for the particular project. When a user is allocated to a stage, Synergy divides the user’s time between the duration of the stage. For example, if 20 hours is required for a stage going over 10 weeks, Synergy will allocate the user to work for 2 hours on each working day during this time period. The percentage next to the stage name shows what percentage of the user’s time will need to be devoted to this stage.
Staff footer — Combines the different projects this staff members is assigned to and shows the total number of hours.
Stage level — follows the same conditions as project planning. Blue rows – stage is at the proposal status. Teal rows — project is in the active status.
Tips: The staff list is sorted in alphabetical order. In the case a combination of alphanumeric characters are used, numerals will appear before letters.
Striped rows — Shows this resource is underallocated - less than 95% of their time is utilized.
Red rows — Shows this resource is overallocated - more than 105% of their time is utilized.
Blue rows — Shows this resource is allocated at the optimal level - between 95% and 105% utilization.
Dark overlay — The end of the dark overlay is today’s date. The overlay defaults to show 2 weeks into the past but you can scroll up to one month, from today’s day into the past and 12 months, from today’s date into the future.
Page footer —Adds the number of hours your workforce is allocated to projects per week.
Actions available
Being primarily a read-only page, there are only a few actions that can be done when using resource planning.
Use the staff list (on the left) to look-up a resource you want to view in detail. Look up a staff member by:
Scrolling down the staff list to locate the staff member.
Type part of the staff name or email address into the filter box at the top of the staff list and press enter to run the search. Click 'Clear' in the filter box to return to seeing all the projects.