Can we restrict person assignment in internal activity?

[ashwinipingle]

Hello Experts,

My client currently is using person assignment in internal activity.

If person A is assigned to internal activity of a project (say project X - internal activity 010), then this person A should not be available for any other assignment in any or same projects. I checked workforce planning documentation however could not find any such functionality. Can workforce planning provide visual indicator of whether the person getting assigned is already assigned to some other activity? Can we implement this requirement using standard ?

Client does not want to open a separate report/screen of assignments and then edit project, instead while assigning any resource to activity, a check needs to alert the user whether that resource is available or not.

[kenmelching]

In Workforce Planning you can see the assigned resources current availability.  Look at CMP2, CMP3, or CMP9

[DaveS4]

Ashwini,

This question puzzles people since the Capacity Planning is there in SAP. In the real world, yes you can assign people through Workforce Planning, the real availability control exist on the Work Center level. If your client implement every person as a Work center, then they will now for sure the capacity and all the good stuff comes with it. However this doesn't make any sense and impractical.

Also for small number of people you can use WF Planning, but bigger the number, more the headache and unnecessary work load for the users.

You need to sit with your business people and drive their decision for Work centers:

1) How a crew (team) is defined?

2) How much capacity can be loaded to that crew? 100% vs 120%?

3) How many people exist for that crew (team)?

I hope this helps,

regards,

Dave

[ashwinipingle]

Hello Dave,

I checked with the client further as per your inputs. Kindly please provide whatever points you may have knowledge on

Following is their scenario

1. One person from projects department creates 20-25 projects at the start of the year -- this is fine

2. Total resources = 12, these need to be assigned to all these projects across the year, thus projects need to be scheduled as per resource availability at the start of the year - planning phase (i.e. when they are freed from earlier planned project assignment) -- this they have to do manually checking dates of resources

3.  For first project, all resources available 100% -- this is fine

4. For second project onward - while assigning resource in person assignment tab of the internal activity, system should prompt if same resource from earlier project is getting assigned in the same days as earlier project. Currently assume that resource is booked for whole day. Later on they want to go on hourly basis.

Each resource is already configured as a work center - however still user is not getting any messages when resource is double booked  -- can I get details on this point since you have mentioned the same in your earlier reply? any doc/pointers elsewhere? What all configurations will I need?

6.  If there is a delay in earlier project, how can the next project (which is expecting resources assigned to earlier project) get any message? -- please let know if you have any inputs, else I will anyways research

7. Can we assign priority to projects in PS?  -- please let know if you have any inputs, else I will anyways research

8.  Can we give dependencies across projects so that delay in predecessor project prompts a message to successor project where same resources are used? -- please let know if you have any inputs, else I will anyways research

[DaveS4]

Hi Ashwini,

I think you are on the right path as you have defined them each resource as Work centers. I still think this is an overkill, however given there are only 12 resources, that should be fine. You need to define capacity load as 100% in the Work Center. However do you do any Capacity leveling? Normally the Capacity Scheduler, periodically (daily, weekly etc) goes and runs the Capacity leveling, This process and its reports allow people to see where the capacity bottle necks are and when you drill-down to the red lines (cap. bottle necks) then it shows the assigned network activities and duration of the activities as well. The Capacity Scheduler goes back and changes the schedule of the activities based on this input and then runs the Cap leveling again, until the red lines disappear. This is regular Capacity Scheduling process in SAP since its inception. Unfortunately it is not that user friendly....

4) WF Planning should show the person availability when assigning. But as well as I recall, you will not get any messages.

6) No messages again.

7) Priority in the projects doesn't have any affect to scheduling.

😎 Dependencies can be built between 2 network activities, yes, therefore their schedule changes, the dependent changes as well.

However all these points are related to the Scheduling process and its ownership. If there is a Capacity Scheduler on top of this process, and he is doing the leveling and scheduling, your questions will be answered. There is no magic button in ECC as you know, you need to educate your client in that matter.

regards,

Dave

[Paulo_Vitoriano]

Hello,

There is no problem for the same person to work over multiple activities at the same time if the capacity allows for that.

If you really want one prson - one activity rule, then you can have a validation exit to monitor this.

Regards,

Paulo

[ashwinipingle]

Hi Paulo,

It will be ideal if a resource can be assigned to multiple activities. Client assigns resources in whole days and not hours so we can assume safely that resource once assigned to activity is loaded for the whole day.

What I get from your reply is that there is no standard way (alert or any visual icons) to stop the resource getting assigned on the Person Assignment tab of an activity if that resource is already assigned to some other activity in same or different project. And we need to do customization (user exit) to achieve this.

[Paulo_Vitoriano]

Hi Ashwini,

The system can alert you if you plan same individual for the same day for over 24 hours work, or whatever working schedule/capacity settings you have.  But generally speaking working on several activities is completely normal business case.  So, you are right about user exit, and that sounds quite unstandard, but your requirement is also unstandard.

Reagrds,

Paulo