Project Service resource allocation and shipping units

When you create a project in Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation and assign team members, the calculation of the assigned time for the assigned members is a bit complicated, so I will show you how it works.

Resource “allocation method”.

When you assign resources as a team member of a project, you have a choice in the field called “Assignment Method”.

If you check the official page, you will see that it means the following.

• All Capacity reserves the full capacity of the resource for the specified start and end dates.
• The capacity percentage reserves resources as a percentage of the resource capacity for the specified start and end dates.
• By Time - Equal distribution reserves resources for a specified number of hours, equally distributed per day from a specified start date to an end date.
• By Time - Advance reserves the resource for a specified number of hours, with the hours advanced per day from the specified start date to the end date.
• None will add resources to the team, but will not create reservations to absorb this capacity.

Quote: How do I assign resources to a task?

The above explanation is a little difficult to understand, so I tried to represent it with a diagram.

The above figure shows the resources reserved for two days (8 hours x 2 = 16 hours) on 02/07/2019 - 02/08/2019, using the respective allocation methods. This 8-hour period is set in the work template.

This 16-hour period affects the “total capacity” and the “percentage of capacity”.

• In the case of “full capacity,” you would be booking 100% of the time, so 8 hours over two days, each for a single project.
• In the case of “Percentage of Capacity”, set the percentage, in this case 50%, so 4 hours are reserved over 2 days.

In the above figure, the period is set to 12 hours. In the figure above, the period is set to 12 hours.

• In the case of “By Time - Equal Distribution”, 12 hours will be distributed evenly over two days, so 12 hours / 2 days = 6 hours.
• In the case of “By Time - Advance”, 8 hours are assigned to the previous day, 2/7, and the remaining 4 hours are assigned to 2/8.

As you can see, the time reserved for a resource differs depending on the setting of the allocation method, so please use it well.

About WBS shipping units

Once you have reserved a certain amount of time as a member of a project as described above, you can assign that time to a task in the WBS. At that time, there is an item called “Shipping Unit” as shown in the figure below.

This “shipping unit” is linked to the “man-hour” and “period” of the WBS. For example, let’s assume that we have a development task with a “Man-hour” of 40 hours, a “Duration” of 5 days, and a “Shipping Unit” of 100%, as shown below.

If you want to assign two programmers from different companies to this development task, you can use the “Add” button to add two programmers with a “Shipping Unit” of 100%, and the “Man-hours” will be assigned every 50%.

What if the workload of the two programmers is 80:20? Change the “Shipping Unit” percentage.

If multiple resources are assigned to a task that is allocated in this way, you can adjust the allocation time for each resource in the “shipping unit”.

For shipping units of resources that are only 50% allocated

The basic idea is to allocate 100% of resources to a single project, but when you are concurrently working on multiple projects like a PM, you need to distribute the resource allocation rate. For example, let’s say you are a PM as shown in the figure below, and you allocate 50% of the resources to the tasks in the WBS.

The “man-hours” for the “Fit & Gap” task in the WBS is 40 hours, and if we assign “Shipping Units” at 100%, 40 hours should originally be allocated.

But here’s the nice thing about Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation: when you check the team for the project, the “Allocated Time” is automatically calculated as 20 hours (40 hours x 50%).

You can assign tasks without worrying about the percentage of resources participating in the project. I personally think this is a well-designed feature.

The behavior is a bit confusing regarding resource allocation and shipping units for project members, so I hope this will be helpful. That’s all for this time.