Resource Placeholders

Use resource placeholders to allocate project hours before a member is identified, set placeholder rates and costs, and reassign allocations later.

Resource placeholders are leveraged to allocate project hours when you have yet to identify a specific member for that work. Placeholders can help you account for hours on a tentative project, adjust to a sudden change in project resources, or signify a need for a project extension.

Creating a Resource Placeholder

You can create placeholders in Custom Data in the Settings section (Figure 1) or from within the Schedule (Figure 2).

Figure 1 - Resource Placeholder list where you can edit and adjust

You can create Placeholder options under the Allocation tab by clicking the ”+” sign next to the Placeholder header. (Figure 2) A drawer will open for you to input the Placeholder information (Figure 3).

Figure 2 - Where you can create a new Placeholder under allocations

Figure 3 - Drawer to input new Placeholder information

Rates and Costs for Resource Placeholders

When creating resource placeholders, you can provide an Average Bill Rate and / or an Average Cost per Hour.

When Ruddr calculates planned services cost on a project, it will include resource placeholder allocations when an Average Cost per Hour has been provided.

Likewise, when considering planned Time and Materials Revenue, Ruddr can leverage the placeholders’ Average Bill Rate in cases where the allocation itself is not already associated with a bill rate. This would most often be the case on projects that do not use project roles.

Creating Allocations for a Placeholder

Allocating a placeholder on a project is as easy as creating a regular allocation and selecting “Placeholder” as the Resource Type. (Figure 4)

Figure 4 - Assigning an allocation to a Placeholder type

Once the type is set to Placeholder, you will be able to view that allocation under the assigned project as a placeholder. (Figure 5)

Figure 5 - Place Allocation on a project

Reassigning Placeholder Allocations to a Member

Once you are ready to assign a Placeholder to a project, you can do that in 2 places.

You can select the three dots next to the placeholder allocation and an option will appear to Reassign Allocations. (Figure 6)

Figure 6 - Reassign the selected allocation

You can either reassign to a member or if needed, assign to a different Placeholder Type at the bottom of the options. (Figure 7)

Figure 7 - Select which type you want the allocation to move to

Additionally, you can edit the Placeholder by right clicking on the allocation and selecting edit. (Figure 8)

Figure 8 - Select Edit on the Placeholder Allocation

Here you can change the type to Member or you can change the Placeholder type if you need to adjust. (Figure 9)

Figure 9 - Edit a Placeholder Allocation