Effective resource planning is key to successful business operations. Knowing who will work on what and when helps you understand how busy your team is, so you can forecast utilization and be smarter with resource allocation.
The resource planning flow in Scoro starts with bookings. This article explains what bookings are and how they work in Scoro.
For more detailed information on how to manage bookings either on a portfolio-level or a single project level, see the following articles:
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1. What are bookings?
Bookings come into play in the early preparation phase of projects once you start assembling the project team. Simply put, bookings are a way to reserve your team members' time for the project before any specific tasks are created to ensure you will have the right people available once the project starts.
The main goal of the bookings is to help you estimate resource needs vs. resource availability with little effort, i.e., without having to plan out an entire project plan with tasks and timelines. Later, you can fill that reserved time with relevant tasks.
You can access, track, and manage bookings in Scoro from two different places:
- Bookings module – a separate module in Scoro for managing bookings across teams, roles, and projects. This view is most useful for Resource Managers and Project Managers who need to see the bigger picture and forecast availability across the entire team. It gives you a high-level overview of who is booked for which projects and makes it easy to (re-)plan and (re-)allocate resources. You can analyze how busy each role is and foresee staff shortages.
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Bookings tab in a single project view – a dedicated Bookings tab in each project view for managing the project team. This view is most useful for Project Managers for planning resources and managing bookings for that particular project.
You can use the views as you see fit for your workflows. The data is interlinked across the views. This means you can use both views simultaneously, and data is kept in sync. For example, if a Project Manager books resources for their project from the project view, the portfolio-level Bookings module is instantly updated with that data as well, and vice versa.
Heatmaps and bookings work identically in both views.
Let’s look at the single project Bookings tab as an example.
The user-level heatmap shows you how much of each team member’s time is already booked across all projects. You can easily move bookings around to find slots for incoming work. The dynamic heatmap will show you instantly how each new booking affects capacity so that you can avoid resource conflicts and overbooking.
Note! The utilization levels in this view are calculated purely based on bookings.
Read more about the heatmap from the article on the Bookings module or the Bookings tab.
2. Who can be booked?
You can book either users (i.e., specific team members) or roles (i.e., Designer, Copywriter) as placeholders. Roles act as placeholder members to communicate the need for a certain skill set.
This means you can either say that:
- I will need 20 hours of John's time next week.
OR - I will need 20 hours of a designer's time next week.
In the latter case, you don't know yet which designer(s) will deliver the work, all you know is that you will need a designer. So you can select the respective role to turn it into a placeholder member. All placeholders should eventually be replaced with actual team members once it’s clear who will do the work.
Read more on roles in Scoro.
3. Booking types
You can make two types of bookings – fixed and tentative.
Tentative bookings indicate there's a need for the resource, but things may still change. Use tentative bookings in the early stage, when you’re still waiting on the go-ahead from the client, or when you’re simply trying to figure out potential deadlines and timelines to promise. Tentative bookings are marked by a striped background.
Fixed bookings indicate committed work and, therefore, a more definite need for the resource. Use fixed bookings when the project and the timeline are confirmed. Fixed bookings are marked by a solid background.
We recommend scoping out the resource needs with tentative bookings and then converting them into fixed ones.
4. Who can see bookings?
Admin users can control access to the bookings via permission sets. Permission sets can be managed from Settings > Administration > Permission sets.
1. Access to the Bookings tab in the project view
The Bookings tab is visible for everyone whose permission set includes the permission to View bookings.
2. Access to the Bookings module
The Bookings module is visible for everyone whose permission set has the Bookings module setting enabled. Each user can customize their menu to hide the Bookings module from view, if needed.
Read more about permission sets.
5. How do bookings differ from tasks and time entries?
It’s important to understand that tasks and bookings are independent of each other and have different goals. Simply put - bookings help you plan people, while tasks help you plan work.
- Bookings help you reserve someone’s time. You don’t have to know yet exactly what they will be working on. Bookings are easy to adjust or remove as the project plan changes, so your utilization forecast remains up to date.
- Tasks help you plan out work and deliverables in more detail. You should already know what the person will be working on.
Bookings focus on the team and indicate when a resource is needed, while tasks focus on the deliverables and indicate what that particular resource has to do.
To illustrate the difference with examples:
- Booking: I need 10 hours of John’s time next week.
- Task: I need John to work 10 hours on the website design next week.
- Time entries: I need John to work on the website design for 5 hours on Monday and 5 hours on Tuesday next week.
6. Incorporating bookings into workflows
For more detailed information on how to incorporate bookings into your workflows and how to manage bookings either on a portfolio-level or a single project level, see the following articles:
7. FAQ
| Do I need to delete bookings when I start creating tasks for the booked time frame? | Bookings and tasks are independent of each other. You don’t need to delete bookings once you start creating more specific tasks or time entries. Bookings can stay in place as they simply show you how much of the resource’s time you booked in the first place. |
| How is role placeholder availability calculated? | Role placeholder’s availability is calculated based on the remaining availability of the users linked to this role. Read more here. |
| How is the role placeholder utilization level calculated? |
Roles act a standalone dummy members in projects. Their utilization level is calculated purely based on the bookings made for this placeholder. Read more here. |
| How do bookings work with retainers? | The booking tool always shows the bookings for all retainer periods. The view is not limited to the current period in order to give you a more high-level, long-term overview of bookings. |
| What’s the best practice for adopting bookings? | In order to ensure accurate data and unlock the full potential of bookings, you should ensure that your whole project management team uses bookings to plan out their resource needs. Bookings need to become an integral part of the project workflow. |
| Why can’t I see the Bookings tab? | If you can’t see the Bookings tab, it means your user doesn’t have the permission to View bookings. Contact your site admin. |
| Can I shift all bookings at once when the project dates change? | Changing the project start and end dates is easy: click on the project dates next to the project's progress bar and select the new dates. To shift all bookings simultaneously with the date changes, tick the Bookings checkbox and click Save to confirm the changes. |