As a new feature in Project for the web, Bookings enables you to book resources to a project and ensure resources are not overloaded with too much work from too many projects. You can find this feature in the Resource Scheduling app, which is automatically installed on environments that have Project.
The example below illustrates the overflow on what this feature can do for you:
- A project manager determines their resource needs for a project, which in this case is a lawyer for 2 months and a designer for 1 month.
- The project manager creates two resource requests one for each resource that is needed. They can provide more details or keep it high level, depending on how the team chooses to work. Ex. They could request either a lawyer or a lawyer with expertise in contracts and arbitration.
- The resource manager sees the requests for the lawyer and designer. They check the schedule board to see which resources meet those needs (both dates and skills) and are available. Then, the resource manager fulfill the project manager’s requests by booking a specific resource for each request.
- The project manager now has dedicated resources for their project.
- Through reporting, the resource managers and project managers can both ensure resources are being used based on their bookings.
Schedule Board showing resources and their availability.
To use Resource Scheduling, you will need to configure your environment, update your resources so they have associated skills, and most importantly, ensure alignment with your team of project and resource managers. Make sure the entire team is using the feature and monitoring their resource usage for the process to work.
At a minimum, we recommend you make the following updates:
- Update the resource form so you can specify skills and roles for resources.
- Update the project drilldown so the Team tab shows up. Add the Hard Booked Hours column to the table. This will allow the project manager to see how much time they have booked compared to how much time they have assigned.
- Update the security roles for users using Bookings. To create a request, users will need the requirement and resource request set of security roles. To book a resource, the user will need the roles associated with Bookings.
There are additional customizations you can do such as creating flows around requests and resource fulfillment, reports to oversee resource bookings versus usage, and more.
Note: This article is about using Project for the web with the feature Bookings which is a part of the Dynamics Resource Scheduling App. This is not about Microsoft Bookings.