Deciding Critical Roles and Scheduling Methods in OpenAir

Identifying Resource Roles

When managing your bench schedule in OpenAir, you must identify what roles are needed. Generic resources can be used while in the planning and the pre-sales process prior to main users being identified, and assigned to a project. Generic resources will act as the placeholder in reports to also determine capacity planning. If you associate Generics to tasks with planned hours and dates and/or to bookings, this will allow for visibility to short and long term staffing needs. The use of bookings, in conjunction with the task assignment, will allow for greater flexibility and ease in managing resources across projects. If you do not have the generics setup, these are setup in the Administration module, under Application settings > Resource settings, where there is an option to configure Generics. Once the Generic is saved the first time, the options to associate a work schedule, job code, loaded cost and user entity tag become available.

Methods for Scheduling Resources Effectively

You also need a method to identify the resources to schedule. The first method is the project or task assignment; which is on the personnel tab within a project. Generics and named users can be found in the list of users for project assignment or in the user list dropdown on tasks. Another option is to create Bookings for generic or named resources.

If you are using both task assignments and bookings and need to create bookings, a quick option is to create Create generic bookings. This is an internal switch feature which requires you to display the list view and references the generic task assignments. Bookings are generated after selecting the create option and put into the submitted booking stage unless auto approval processes are otherwise in place. Bookings with this feature are generated to the task level and, in many cases, are the only control for users to access tasks for time entry.

Bookings allow for the ability to make bulk updates. Bulk updates are made via the run an action button and allow for the dates, resources and bookings types to be easily and quickly updated. The bulk update process allows for generic resources to be swapped out for named users once a decision is made on who will be performing the work.

For more scheduling tips and techniques, checkout the recorded webinar Scheduling Techniques and Bench Management in NetSuite OpenAir or some of the other TOP Step recorded webinars at topstepconsulting.com.