Where is the Resource Utilization Coming From? – Project Online/Project Server 2013

A Resource Manager came to me years ago with a perplexing issue. When she was looking at the allocation for a resource on a particular project, she could not figure out why the resource seemed allocated – even when the project schedule does not have any tasks assigned to that resource.

Long story short, after a lot of head scratching, I figured out that there was a project that was using a resource plan, as opposed to a project schedule to consume the resource’s availability. You can see below a screenshot from Project Server 2010, where there is no indication of whether the utilization was from a Resource Plan or Project Schedule.

ResourceUtilization1

 

If you have been in this scenario, you will know how painful it was to figure out where the utilization was coming from. Either you needed a custom report or you would have had to open each plan/resource plan to see where the utilization is coming from.

However, Project Online/Project Server 2013 has a cool feature improvement that will help this, as I describe below.

In this example, I built a resource plan for one of the projects. I made sure that I set the Resource Utilization to come from Resource Plan, and published it.

ResourceUtilization2

ResourceUtilization3

Now, when we look at the resource allocations/availability in Resource Center, we can clearly see where the utilization is coming from, as shown below.

ResourceUtilization4

 

A small improvement, but will help reduce confusion, and help the Resource Managers!

 

 

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Written by Prasanna Adavi
Prasanna Adavi (Project MVP, PMP, MCTS, MCITP, MCT) is a Senior Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Consultant. specializing in helping organizations meet their business needs in the areas of Project Management and Portfolio Management. He is a regular presenter at various Project Server, EPM and SharePoint events across the country, and regularly blogs. He also runs a podcast dedicated to MS Project and Project Server. He has been awarded the MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award by Microsoft since 2014, for his continued contributions to Microsoft Project Community. Connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.
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  1. Do you know which table this is in with project online, using odata?

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