Resource Management Overview

Resource Management services give you a single point to manage resource requests, resource assignments, timecards, and resource competencies. Resource management includes requesting a resource and after the request is approved, creating its corresponding assignment, which enables resources to log timecards against that assignment. This also includes competency management and management of resource groups and job profiles. 

Resource Requests allow users to request resources to meet the resourcing needs of internal entities like Ideas, Demands, Requirements, Projects, Portfolios, Sprints, Phases, or Tasks within the Portfolio Management application or the external entities like BMC Helix ITSM: Incident, Problem, Change, Task, Release, Activity or Asset. 

Resource Assignments allow users to associate individual or group resources with the approved Resource Request. Once assigned, resources can view their assignments and log timecards for the work completed on those assignments. 

Competency Management allows the users to define the skills, courses, certificates, job profiles and more in the Portfolio Management application, including the management of competencies on the Foundation Data console. It also allows individual users to add their competencies, which can ease the process of mapping the right resource to a resource request.

Resource Management roles

Following are the end-user roles for the Resource Management module of the Portfolio Management application.

Resource Manager

Resource Manager user has the responsibility to create and manage resource requests. They can create new resource assignments and access the resource assignments associated with the resource requests created by them. It is also the Resource Manager's job to manage competencies within the Foundation Data and associate them with the corresponding resource/resource groups, job profiles and more. For more details, see Product Roles under Orientation. 

Resource Approvers

Request approvers are the resource managers or resource master users who are the approvers of the Resource Group that are associated with the resource request. 

Resource Contributor

Resource contributors log their timecards against the resource assignments that are assigned to them. A resource contributor can also manage their competencies to ease the process of planning a resource onto a resource request. For more details, see Product Roles under Orientation. 

Resource Master

Resource Master user has access to create and edit all resource requests, resource assignments, timecards, and competencies. Additionally, the resource master user can configure resource management-related settings. For more details, see Product Roles under Orientation. 

End-to-End Process

The following figure provides an overview of the resource request:

The following figures provide an overview of resource assignment and timecard:

The resource management process consists of the following procedures for handling resourcing needs. These procedures are:

1. A resource manager creates a resource request in the 'Draft' status that would be assigned to work on a resource entity by following the steps on Creating resource requests.
   • A resource entity in the Portfolio Management application can be an Idea, Demand, Requirement, Project, Portfolio, Sprint, Phase, and Task. Resource management can be enabled on these entities. For more details, see Configuring Resource Entity Type.
   • A resource entity can also be for an external source application.
2. The resource manager who requested the resource adds the necessary details to the resource request by following the steps on Viewing-and-updating-resource-requests.
3. The resource manager updates the resource request to the 'Plan/ Prepare' status for detailed planning of resources. See Changing-resource-request-statuses. The qualifications can also be added by following the steps on Requested-qualifications. The Requested Qualifications tab contains the list of qualifications that a resource should have to fulfil the resource request.
4. The resource manager can move the resource request to the 'Cancelled' status from the 'Draft' or the 'Plan/ Prepare' status if the resource request is not required. See Changing-resource-request-statuses.
5. Upon completion of the planning stage, the resource manager changes the status resource request to 'Waiting for approval' by following the steps on Changing-resource-request-statuses,
6. Notification of the resource request is sent for approval to the approvers of a resource group (if approval is required on the resource group). For more details, see Notification Matrix. 
7. If the resource group on the resource request does not require approval, the 'Waiting for Approval' status gets skipped.  
8. The resource approvers on a resource group can go to the 'Approval Console' to view the resource requests waiting for approval and choose to approve or reject them. See Approving-and-rejecting-resource-requests. The resource request is then set to the status  'Approved' or 'Rejected ' based on the decision of the approvers of the resource group. 
9. Depending on the decision, the requester (resource manager) gets a notification of approval/rejection. For more details, see Notification Matrix. 
10. When the resource request is 'Approved',
    • If the resource request has the request type 'Group', a resource assignment is automatically created for the group selected in the resource group field of the resource request. 
    • If the resource request has the request type 'Individual', the resource manager creates individual resource assignments in 'Draft' status by following the steps on Creating resource assignments.
11. The resource manager enters details such as the assigned resource, timeline of the assignment, assigned hours, and so on in the resource assignments. See Viewing-and-updating-resource-assignments. 
12. Upon assigning a resource to the resource assignment, the assigned resource gets a notification. For more details, see Notification Matrix. 
13. Once a resource assignment is moved to 'Plan/ Prepare' status by the resource manager by following the steps on Changing-resource-assignment-statuses, the planning process for the assigned resource begins for the timeline of the resource assignment. A 'Planned Hours' is automatically created, but the resource manager can create, modify or delete Planned Hours related to the assignment. See Managing-Planned-Hours.
14. The resource manager can choose to move a resource assignment to the 'Cancelled' status from the 'Draft' or the 'Plan/ Prepare' status if the resource assignment is not required by following the steps on Changing-resource-assignment-statuses.
15. The resource manager moves the resource assignments to 'Assigned' status by following the steps on Changing-resource-assignment-statuses.
16. At this status, the resource contributors assigned to the resource assignments can log their timecards, see Creating-timecards.
17. Resource contributors submit the timecards related to the resource assignments and timecards are sent to the resource manager, see Submitting-and-recalling-timecards. 
18. Upon submitting timecards, the approver (resource manager) gets a notification. For more details, see Notification Matrix.
19. The resource manager goes to the Timecard Approval Console and approves or rejects the timecards and status timecards are updated to 'Approved' or 'Rejected' automatically.
20. The submitter of the timecard (resource contributor) gets notified once the timecard is approved or rejected. For more details, see Notification Matrix.
21. A resource assignment can be set to the status 'Completed' by the resource manager when required by following the steps on Changing-resource-assignment-statuses.
22. At this stage, the resource contributors can no longer be able to log their timecards on the resource assignment.
23. The resource manager completes the resource request moving the status to 'Completed' by following the steps on Changing-resource-request-statuses. If there are resource assignments opened then they are completed, status 'Completed', automatically.  

Resource Management data access model

The Resource Management application uses row-level security (RLS) to control access to the record and fields. RLS is applied by using Security Labels in BMC Helix Innovation Studio. 

The following table describes the Security Labels required for Resource Management: