Availability
Overview
Resource requests in Planning is a powerful functionality designed to streamline and enhance the resource management process for project teams. This feature empowers users to efficiently request and allocate resources for their projects, promoting collaboration between project managers and resource managers. By requesting allocation approvals, you make sure nor allocation gets overlooked and the right people are assigned to the correct tasks with efficient time management in mind.
Enable resource requests
To begin using resource requests in Planning, first, enable them in Company settings:
- Go to Company settings > Account settings > Advanced settings.
- Find the "Resource management settings" section.
- Turn the "Enable resource approval" toggle on.
Once the toggle is enabled, it is saved automatically. You can now navigate to Resources > Planning to create resource requests.
Permissions
Any user with access to Planning, indicated by having the "Access resource planning" permission checked, can create resource requests for any user in the system.
Note
Resource requests can be created for both users and unnamed resources.
However, only individuals with the "Manage hard allocations" permission + Non-project member - Members & assignees - View and manage - enabled can serve as approvers. Only these users can approve or reject any resource requests.
Requests creation
To create a resource request for any user or unnamed resource, follow these steps:
- Navigate to Resources > Planning.
- Add the user/unnamed resource requiring approval to a project.
- Initiate the allocation creation process (refer to Planning - managing allocations for more details).
- In the "Add allocation" pop-up, specify the Approver for your request.
- After choosing an approver and saving the allocation, the request is created, and the approver will receive an email notification.
Warning
Only a user with the "Manage hard allocations" permission can be chosen as an approver.
You can also edit allocations later by modifying dates, allocation percentage, total allocated hours, and the approver.
Request statuses
Resource requests can exist in three statuses:
- Waiting for approval - applies to soft allocations awaiting approval after the allocation is created and the approver is specified.
- Approved - assigned to requests after the approver approves the allocation. The "Approved" status is displayed only for hard allocations.
- Rejected - is given to allocations that have been rejected by the approver. The "Rejected" status is displayed only for soft allocations.
Requests approval or rejection
To approve or reject a resource request, the user-approver can navigate to Resources > Planning and open the allocation with the "Waiting for approval" status. Alternatively, they can access the allocation through the received email notification.
- When a request is rejected, the allocation is displayed as a soft allocation.
- Upon approval, the allocation for a user transitions to a hard allocation.
- To approve a resource request for an unnamed resource, an approver needs to select the user to replace the unnamed resource.
The user-requester receives an email notification once their request is approved or rejected.
Requests approval or rejection in bulk
Warning
Only users can be selected for batch resource requests approval or rejection.
Warning
Only resource requests in the Waiting for approval status can be approved or rejected in bulk.
It is possible to approve or reject pending resource requests in batch. The procedure is as follows:
- Utilize the batch operations button at the top of the left-most column.
- Use the checkboxes to make a selection of users to include them in the batch approval or rejection.
Note
You can also select projects using batch operations. In this case, all users under these projects will be selected.
3. Click Approve request or Reject request on the batch operations panel that opens above once at least one selection is made.
4. Optionally add a comment, reason for rejection, etc. in the Message field in the appeared pop-up.
5. Click Approve or Reject respectively.
Note
The entered message will be posted as a separate entry on the project details message board.