Resource Scheduling in Dynamics 365 FinOps - Basic Building Blocks

I got to get my hands dirty with this functionality in the new project that i started working on and i must say this has been one of the complex areas in PSA. There are couple of bugs still in the system but overall the functionality started making sense only after i tried and tested the scenarios umpteen number of times. The 'penny drop' moment finally happened when i realized that the same screens in the resource scheduling functionality works differently when accessed from different areas in the system. When i came to know this i could instantly make sense out of most of the logic built around this functionality. And then i concluded that different areas are for different people working in resource scheduling space and those being 'Project manager' and 'Resource manager'.

Other important point to note, before i go into further details, is that the 'Resource request workflow' works differently for 'Staffed resource' and 'Planned resource'.

Resource scheduling can be done by:

• without using a Resource Request workflow
• using a Resource Request workflow

Before we go into the details of the resource scheduling process, we should understand that there are two main users who are going to use this functionality. They are:

• Project manager : Project manager will have access to 'Assign' the resources to the specific WBS tasks, which the Resource manager will NOT have. Project manager can also 'Book' the resources from the project record itself.
• Resource manager : Resource manager will ONLY have access to 'Book' the resources to the projects. Its then the task of the Project manager to assign the booked hours to specific WBS tasks if any.

Without using a workflow

• Planned resources: 
• Can be assigned to the WBS tasks using 'Auto-team' feature or by creating a record in the ‘Project team and scheduling’ fast tab of the project record, using a resource role instead of an actual resource.
• Planned resources needs to be fulfilled with an actual resource. This can be done by the Project Manager from the 'Fulfill resources' from the ‘Project team and scheduling’ fast tab of the project record or by the Resource Manager from the 'Resource fulfillment' menu item. (Project management and accounting > Project resource > Resource fulfillment)
• The actual resource will then be 'Booked' and 'Assigned' to the project, if it was generated using the 'Auto-team' feature.
• The actual resource will need to be 'Booked' and 'Assigned' manually, if it was generated from the ‘Project team and scheduling’ fast tab of the project record.
• Staffed resources:
• Can be assigned to the WBS task using the 'Assign' form by either soft or hard assigning the resource or by creating a record in the '‘Project team and scheduling’ fast tab of the project record, using an actual resource.
• The actual resource will need to be 'Booked' and 'Assigned' manually, if it was generated from the ‘Project team and scheduling’ fast tab of the project record.

Using a workflow

Workflow does not support the 'Planned resource' request.

• Planned resources: 
• Workflow does not support the assignment of the staffed resource to a planned resource. 
• Can be assigned to the WBS tasks using 'Auto-team' feature or by creating a record in the ‘Project team and scheduling’ fast tab of the project record, using a resource role instead of an actual resource.
• Planned resources needs to be fulfilled with an actual resource. This can be done ONLY  by the Resource Manager from the 'Resource fulfillment' menu item. There is a drop down on the page which has following values - 'Show all requests', 'Planned resource only' and 'Staffed resource only'. (Project management and accounting > Project resource > Resource fulfillment)
• 'Assign' option ONLY appears for the 'Planned resource' requests. For the 'Staffed resource' request 'Assign' option will NOT appear. Instead a 'Workflow' icon will appear.
• Once the 'Staffed resource' is assigned to the 'Planned resource' then the actual resource will then be 'Booked' and 'Assigned' to the project, if it was generated using the 'Auto-team' feature.
• The actual resource will need to be 'Booked' and 'Assigned' manually, if it was generated from the ‘Project team and scheduling’ fast tab of the project record.
• Staffed resources:
• Can be assigned to the WBS task using the 'Assign' form by either soft or hard assigning the resource or by creating a record in the '‘Project team and scheduling’ fast tab of the project record, using an actual resource.
• The actual resource will need to be 'Booked' and 'Assigned' manually, if it was generated from the ‘Project team and scheduling’ fast tab of the project record.

Let me now clarify the meaning of 'Staffed resource', 'Planned resource', 'Soft assign', 'Hard assign', 'Soft book', 'Hard book', 'Booked hours' and 'Assigned hours'.

***Assumption - Resource request workflow is switched on***

Staffed resource - Staffed resources can be found under 'Resource list' form. These are resources which are linked to the respective workers / employees.

Planned resource - A planned resource is a project team member, which is created for planning purposes. These resources are not linked to any worker. To create a planned resource, user can either auto generate them from WBS by using the ‘Auto generate team’ feature or from the Projects detail form, user can click on the ‘+Add’ button from the ‘Project team and scheduling’ fast tab. Then on the ‘Add roles to project’ form, pick a role and do not specify ‘Resource’. Then click the ‘Create’ button.

Soft assign - Soft assign means a resource may or may not do the WBS task based on confirmation from either the resource or resource manager. Soft assign can ONLY be done by Project manager AND the screen to soft assign can ONLY be accessed from within the project's WBS.

• To soft assign - No workflow to Soft assign
• Hard assign after that, system shows message that, “There are existing soft assignment for the resource which you have selected to hard assignment. Would you like to remove this resource existing soft assignment?”
• If there are no ‘Hard Booked’ hours, then system shows another message, “Sarang Kusare has no hard booking hours in this project to support this assignment operation. Would you like to submit a resource request for your requested hours?”
• Had there been ‘Hard Booked’ hours earlier, then system would not have shown the above message and would have ‘Hard assigned’ the resource.

Hard assign - Hard assign means a resource will for sure do the WBS task as he is confirmed. Hard assign can ONLY be done by Project manager AND the screen to hard assign can ONLY be accessed from within the project's WBS.

• To hard assign - Need to submit a resource request, which would initiate a resource request workflow.
• If there are no ‘Hard Booked’ hours, then system this message, “Sarang Kusare has no hard booking hours in this project to support this assignment operation. Would you like to submit a resource request for your requested hours?”
• Had there been ‘Hard Booked’ hours earlier, then system would not have shown the above message and would have ‘Hard assigned’ the resource.

Soft book - Soft booking on a resource means that the resource may work on the project but not on a specific WBS task. Soft booking can be initiated by PM (from within a project record) or a Resource manager (from within the 'Resource availability' workbench).

• To soft book – No workflow to soft book, however system gives an option to create a resource request, if the item is accessed from the project record. The option to create the resource request does not appear  on the item, if it is accessed from the resource availability workbench.

Hard book - Hard booking on a resource means that the resource will for sure work on the project but not on a specific WBS task. Hard booking cannot be initiated by PM (from within a project record) as the option is disabled but a Resource manager can hard book a resource from within the 'Resource availability' workbench.

• Cannot directly hard book any resource from project record, but can from the resource availability work bench. 
• Process to hard book a resource from the project is to first ‘Soft book’ 
• Then create a resource request to convert the soft booking into hard booking
• The request when approved, system will convert the soft booking into hard booking

Booked hours - Booked hours are the hours booked on the project but not to a specific task in the WBS. So if a resource is 'Booked' on a project, then he/she can be just booked on the project or can be booked on a project and assigned.

Assigned hours - Assigned hours are the hours assigned to a resource on a project to a particular WBS task. If an employee is assigned to a task in WBS, he/she is automatically booked as well to the project. So if a resource is 'Assigned' on a project, then he/she MUST be booked and assigned on the project.

This is where the bug lies i think, because if i 'Soft assign' a resource on a WBS task in the project and if i make use of the button 'Confirm hours' on the project record or resource availability workbench then the system 'Hard assigns' the resource to the project but does not 'Hard book' the resource, which is expected. Project can have 'Booked hours' without they being assigned to WBS tasks but system should NEVER have just the 'Assigned' hours without they being booked on to the project. If you are assigned on to the project that itself means that you are booked on the project.

Resource scheduling can be done in multiple ways and that's what is the most confusing part of this functionality. And adding to that some standard Microsoft bugs does not let you conclude your understanding, if you are trying to make some sense of the scenario that you are working on. Hence based on client's request / discussion, always suggest one specific way which will be fit for purpose for the client.

Kind Regards
Sarang

Sales Order, Item requirements and Project PO (& auto created Item requirement) - Stage Cycle

Sales Order cycle:

1. Open Order 
2. Delivered 
3. Invoiced

Item requirements cycle:

1. Open Order (Sales order of 'Item requirements' created in the background, with Sales order line status 'Open order)
2. When the Item requirements is 'Packing slip' updated:
• The Item requirements and the associated Sales order line will be in status 'Delivered', if there is NO (cost price = 0) cost price on the item. The status will change to 'Invoiced' only when the project invoice is posted for that transaction.
• The Item requirements and the associated Sales order line will in status 'Invoiced', if there is (cost price = actual value) cost price on the item. 

Project PO and auto creation of Item requirement cycle (to consume cost on the project at the time product receipt):

1. Open Order (if the settings are such that 'Item requirement' is to be created on creation of PO, then an Item requirement record will be created with status 'Open order')
2. Received (when the PO line is received and if the settings are such that cost is to be consumed on the project, then the status of the 'Item requirement' and the associated 'Sales order' line is changed to 'Invoiced')
3. Invoiced 

Parameters for consuming the cost on the project upon project PO receipt:

Quick Notes -

1. Item requirement is a vehicle to document the material needed on the project. It is one of the ways suggested in the system, to consume the material cost on the project.
2. System creates ONLY ONE Sales order of type 'Item requirements' against a project. The status of the same sales order is updated from 'Open order' to 'Delivered' to 'Invoiced' based on the new 'Item requirement' lines. For e.g. the item requirement that is created on a project has one line and it is packing slip updated, then the associated sales order will be 'Invoice' updated. If a new item requirement line is created later, then a new line will be created in the same sales order and the status of the sale order will be changed to 'Open order' again. However the line which is invoiced previously will still be in invoiced state. 

A quick snapshot:

Thanks

Sarang

WBS and the display of Sales (Procurement) Category

By default the lines created on the WBS are of 'Hour' type. They are displayed on the 'Schedule planning' tab. However if you wish to define and plan for other project transaction types like, 'Expense', 'Item' and 'Fee', you need to navigate to the 'Estimated costs and revenue' tab. 'Hour', 'Expense' and 'Fee' type transactions are ok to define as you need to select an appropriate project category against the same.

However when it comes to items, it is still ok, if you have 'Items' defined, as there is an 'Item number' drop down to select the appropriate item. But if you only deal in procurement categories, then there is a bit of an issue. I mean an additional setup is required, so that procurement categories start showing in the WBS in the 'Sales category' drop down.

Procurement categories on WBS

To allow this to display the additional setup is as follows. The assumption here is a 'Procurement' type category hierarchy is already defined. This can be checked at :

Category hierarchies

Then the next step is to create a new 'Category hierarchy role association' of type 'Sales category hierarchy' and associate it with the 'Procurement' category hierarchy. The navigation to the 'Category hierarchy role association' is as mentioned in the screenshot above.

This setup will enable the display and selection of the procurement category in the WBS.

Thanks
Sarang

Calculation Method and Revenue Posting

Calculation Method = None

Project Cost center = A

Contract Value = 100,000

Hours Forecast = 10,000

Total Cost Posted = 7,000

Cost for employee ABS which belongs to Cost Center A = 3000

Cost for employee XYZ which belongs to Cost Center B = 4000

% cost complete = 70% (7000/10,000)

Revenue to recognize = 70,000

Note: In this method, the sales price / amount that is displayed against the posted transaction, is calculated based on sales price setup. This sales price / amount is a tentative indication of what revenue could have been generated from that project transaction. But that is not the actual sales revenue, as the sales revenue in the fixed priced project is through the on-account invoicing (contract value). The entire revenue is recognized on separate 'estimate' fee category (from the project group setup), whenever the revenue recognition is run via the estimate process. System will post the general ledger voucher for the recognized revenue.

Drawbacks:

1. Entire Revenue of 70,000 is posted to cost center A, as revenue posted in this method follows the dimensions of project.
2. Revenue per employee is not visible at the transaction level.

Calculation Method = Markup percent – total

Project Cost center = A

Contract Value = 100,000
Hours Forecast = 10,000

Total Cost Posted = 7,000
Cost for employee ABS which belongs to Cost Center A = 3000
Cost for employee XYZ which belongs to Cost Center B = 4000

% cost complete = 70% (7000/10,000)
Revenue to recognise = 70,000
Revenue posted to cost center A = 30,000
Revenue posted to cost center B = 40,000

Note: In this method, the sales price / amount that is displayed against the posted transaction, is calculated based on sales price setup. This sales price / amount is a tentative indication of what revenue could have beeen generated from that project transaction. But that is not the actual sales revenue, as the sales revenue in the fixed priced project is through the on-account invoicing (contract value). Whenever the estimate process is run to recognize the revenue, instead of posting the entire revenue on a fee category (as done in the 'Calculation method = None' process above), system will update the sale value on the individual project transactions posted earlier and will also create a general ledger voucher for the pro-rated recognized revenue per project transaction.

Advantages:

1. Revenue of 70,000 is posted to cost center A and B on a pro-rata basis. The revenue posted in this method follows the dimensions of individual transaction.
2. Revenue per employee is visible at the transaction level.

Thanks
Sarang

Max Hours Calendar and Maximum Working Time

When the resource is setup for timesheets, he is assigned the 'Period Code' and a 'Max Hours Calendar', however 'Max Hours Calendar' is not mandatory.

In 'Max Hours Calendar' a calendar is selected which has hours specified for the weekdays. Mostly the value is 8 hours per day.

If the 'Max Hours Calendar' is defined on the 'Resource setup' form, then the system restricts the user from entering more hours on the timesheet than specified in the 'Max Hours Calendar'.

If the 'Max Hours Calendar' is NOT defined on the 'Resource setup' form, then the system DOES NOT restrict the user from entering more hours on the timesheet than specified in the 'Max Hours Calendar'.

However if the 'Max Hours Calendar' is defined on the 'Resource setup' form but the situation is such that max hours needs to be overridden for some days, then the user can make use of 'Maximum working time' and specify the values there.In this case system will always take the values from the 'Maximum working time' and not from the 'Max Hours Calendar'. In this case the system restricts the user from entering more hours on the timesheet than specified in the 'Maximum working time' for the days specified.

One small note about the 'Resource scheduling calendar' : The calendar selected here also updates / selects / changes the calendar selected in the 'Calendar' field in the 'Employment' tab of the employee.

The calendar selected in the 'Calendar' field in the 'Employment' tab of the employee is used for ELR.

Thanks

Sarang

VLOOKUP - Quick Reference

Today i was using VLOOKUP after long (as was involved in Data Migration validation) and i kind of struggled a bit initially. It is straightforward once you know it, but if you have forgotten the mechanism and the logic behind it, it takes a few, not much, but a few iterations to get it right. The purpose of this quick reference blog post is to stop wasting the time in re-inventing the feature in future, if i not use it for long again. This is typical right, once you stop using what you have learnt, your brain tend to either delete it from your memory or keep it somewhere else in the memory, so that it can focus on the recent learning or tend to focus on what matters you most.

I am going to write this post in the language that i would understand once i refer to it in future.

VLOOKUP is simply finding a corresponding value for a desired constant, from a stack of huge data. For example, there may be a excel sheet with 10,000 rows and 19 columns. You know that 1st column is the list of employee id and all the other columns could have different set of data like, salary, leaves, role, employee name, project allocation, reporting manager and years of experience etc. 

Now if someone asks you to prepare a report for 2000 random employees out of 10,000 and they wish to include values from some random 8 columns out of 19, then there are potentially two ways to do it. Either manually search for each and every employee and then search for the corresponding values in the respective columns and then create the report, which is tedious and time consuming or simply use VLOOUP feature. 

Before using VLOOKUP, we shall first look at the contents of VLOOKUP.

VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table array, col_index_num, [range_lookup])

In our example, we will create a new excel sheet with first column being the employee ID (with employee IDs populated) and then the 18 columns for which we require the data. The next 18 columns is where we will be applying the VLOOKUP.

For example the first column is employee id and the first value in the employee ID column is 001 and is in cell A1.

Assume that we wish to find the employee name in the second column.We will apply the VLOOKUP in the second column i.e. Employee name .

The formula will be as follows:

VLOOKUP(A1, table array, col_index_num, [range_lookup])

lookup_value - will be the cell reference of the cell in which employee ID '001' resides, in the new result / report sheet.

table array - is the source of data where you are trying to find the corresponding value ( Employee name, in this case). In our case it will be the entire source sheet with 10,000 rows and 19 columns.

col_index_num - This is the most important parameter. This value is the COLUMN NUMBER from the SOURCE SHEET, where the desired values resides (desired value in this case is Employee name).

For example in the source sheet (with 10,000 rows and 19 columns), the first column is Employee ID and the employee name column is 12, counting from Employee ID, then the col_index_num value will be 12. This will tell the system to fetch the corresponding value from column 12 from the source sheet.

[range_lookup] - This value is either 0 (False, Exact match) or 1 (True, Approximate match). We will mostly (99% of the time) select 0, as hardly we will be interested in approximate value.

But to explain this in more detail, please look at the example below:

In the screenshot below, we are trying to find the value for '2'. However '2' is not present in source data. In this case, if the  [range_lookup] value is '0' .i.e. Exact match (False), then the system displays an '#N/A' error.

[range_lookup] value is '0', col_index_num value = '3' (as 'L' is 3 columns away from 'J')

No 'EXACT' value for '2' hence error is displayed '#N/A'

Now if the [range_lookup] value is changed to '1', the system will return the next largest value, that is less than your specific lookup value. In this case it is '123'.

[range_lookup] value is '1', col_index_num value = '3' (as 'L' is 3 columns away from 'J')

No 'APPROXIMATE' value for '2' is found, hence largest value less than to the corresponding look up value (which is value against '1' in this case) is displayed, which is '123'

This is quick reference for VLOOKUP, for me. Hope i will not have to use this post again to remind me of VLOOKUP. But if at all i had to, this post should help me refresh the learning and i should hopefully spend less time reinventing this functionality in future.

Thanks

Sarang

Reverting the transaction status from 'Selected for credit note' back to 'Invoiced'

I just now came to know a way of reverting the SAME project transaction which is in 'Selected for credit note' back to 'Invoiced'.

When the project transaction is invoiced, the 'Transaction status' is changed to 'Invoiced':

When you select the transaction for credit note, the 'Transaction status' is changed to 'Selected for credit note'

I was wondering how do i put this 'Transaction status' back to 'Invoiced' as i selected the transaction mistakenly for credit note.

I got to know this today from one of my colleague. The solution is to just run the process again and 'Deselect' the transaction, which will revert the 'Transaction status' from 'Selected for credit note' to 'Invoiced'.

When clicked 'Ok', the system reverts the 'Transaction status' from 'Selected for credit note' back to 'Invoiced'.

The reason for knowing this was, i was getting stuck while posting an estimate on a % complete fixed price project. The on-account transaction based on which system calculates the accrued revenue was in the 'Selected for credit note' state and hence system was giving the error :

"On account cannot be chosen for type project and ID". 

Had i known this process of reverting the transaction status back to 'Invoiced' i would have been successful in posting the estimate.

Thanks 

Kind Regards

Sarang