This chapter discusses the assignment approval workflow process and handling overcommitments.
This chapter covers the following topics:
You can view the stage at which an assignment exists. You approve an assignment using the Oracle Workflow or manually. Approvers can approve or reject an assignment. Rejected assignments can be updated and resubmitted for approval.
You identify the overcommitted hours for a resource and handle it.
To view the approval status of an assignment, click on the Team Role in the Resources page. The approval status represents the current stage of approval of the assignment.
If Oracle Workflow is enabled, you can specify a sequential list of approvers. The workflow process automatically forwards the approval forms to the approvers in the specified order. If Oracle Workflow is not enabled, then you must manually contact the listed approvers.
You can schedule assignments for a group of resources. For example, you can schedule a team meeting for a project team by selecting multiple resources from the My Resources screen and clicking Add Admin Assignment or Add Delivery Assignment. You can enter the assignment information, which the system uses to create an assignment for each resource that you selected. A mass assignment workflow then routes each assignment for approval.
If you have authority to approve the assignment, you can approve it immediately or submit the assignment through the approval process. In either case, you must identify one or more approvers for the assignment confirmation.
During this process, the resources are checked for potential or existing schedule conflicts. If conflicts exist and the resource is overcommitted beyond the defined level of acceptability, then the assignment request is flagged as having conflicts.
Once an assignment is approved, the approval status of the assignment is changed to Approved and the schedule status of the assignment is changed to a confirmed system status. If the assignment is rejected, you can make changes to the assignment and resubmit it through the approval workflow process.
Any change in status of an assignment triggers notifications to the resource, the resource manager, the staffing manager, and the project manager. The transfer price amount is shown only on single assignment approval notifications, not on mass assignment approval notifications.
When an assignment is created, the amount specified for the start date will be the initial transfer price rate. (If the assignment start date is a holiday or a calendar exception, the first working day will be taken for calculating the initial transfer price amount). A user can update the transfer price amount by running the PRC: Update Forecast Amounts process, which calculates the transfer price rate as an average of the rates given during the assignment duration.
Related Topics
Defining Scheduled Team Members, Oracle Projects Fundamentals
Assigning People to Projects, Oracle Projects Fundamentals
PA: Mass Assignment Approval Workflow, Oracle Projects Implementation Guide
After you update information for a group of assignments or you add an assignment or an administrative assignment to a select group of resources, you can submit them for approval. If you have approval authority over some of the selected resources, then you can approve the transaction immediately for those resources, either individually or all at once. When you select the check box to submit the assignments, all the assignments are approved right away.
Update requests for all other resources will be forwarded to the appropriate person for approval. The primary contact is by default the first approver and the resource manager is by default the second approver. You can change these approvers as necessary. If a particular transaction does not require approval, then a notification is sent to the approvers for each resource describing the update.
The determination of overcommitted resources is based on the setup done by the implementation team. The setup includes the same calculation period (daily or weekly) as used for determining available resources, and a separate overcommitment threshold percentage.
A resource is considered overcommitted and shown on the staffing pages as well on the timelines based on the following calculations:
The overcommitted hours = (confirmed hours - capacity hours) are calculated based on a weekly or daily basis as determined by the setup. For example, consider a resource with capacity of 40(8 hours * 5 days), if the resource has 40 confirmed hours over 4 days (10 hours per day), the resource is considered overcommitted for 2 hours on 4 days on a daily basis, but not on a weekly basis.
The overcommitment percentage (overcommitted hours/capacity * 100) is then compared to the overcommitment threshold percentage setup by your implementation team. If the overcommitment percentage is more than the threshold percentage, then the resource is considered overcommitted. For example, if the minimum threshold percentage specified is 30%, then all resources that are overcommitted for more than their 30% of their capacity are shown as overcommitted, starting from the date that they meet this criterion.
Note: Availability and overcommitment is only generated for a resource through a maximum period of time in the future, as defined in the setup. Therefore, if you are looking for available or overcommitted resources beyond this time period (for example beyond two years from today) you may not see accurate data.
Resources are considered overcommitted when their confirmed assignment hours exceed their capacity by a specific percentage within a given period. If you add an assignment to a resource that is overcommitted, you can either continue to create the new assignment with the conflicts or remove conflicting hours from the confirmed assignments.
If you choose to continue, then the new assignment is submitted for approval and the approver is warned of the overcommitment. If you choose to remove the conflicts, conflicting hours are removed evenly from the conflicting confirmed assignments after the assignment is approved. For example, you have two confirmed assignments on a resource that are scheduled as follows:
Assignment A: 6 hours
Assignment B: 2 hours
Assume that the capacity of the resource is 8 hours per day. If you add a third assignment of 2 hours to this resource for the same day, a conflict is created. The resource will have an overcommitment of 2 hours. If you choose to remove the conflict, one hour is removed from both Assignment A and Assignment B. Therefore, your assignment for this resource on this day will look as follows:
Assignment A: 5 hours
Assignment B: 1 hour
Assignment C: 2 hours
Notifications are sent to both the requester and approver of an assignment when an overcommitment case is encountered. The notification to the requester provides a link to handle the conflicts. You have a choice to continue the process by either allowing or removing the conflicts.
The notification provides you with the number of conflicting days. This number reflects the true number of days in conflict. Therefore, if 16 hours are scheduled for the same day on an 8 hour daily capacity schedule, "1" appears as the number of days in conflict.
If you are the approver, you can view the conflicts and select the appropriate approval action for each overcommitment case.
The overcommitment check for a mass submission of assignments is handled through a workflow process. You can select in advance how to handle any encountered overcommitments. If you choose to be notified for each encountered overcommitment, workflow notifications provide you with the necessary information and available options.