Is there a nifty DA (not a report) that shows all the resources types for a given Resource Manager? As our user base is increasing enterprise-wide, more and more folks are unable to map a resource type to a resource manager.

For example - If I need an "Active Directory specialist" - I have no clue which Resource Manager to request this Resource Type from.

We don't have a DA that maintains this kind of information, although I suppose you might be able to create one using cross-reference fields to associate users with their Resource Managers then you could create a custom view to organize this information logically.  However, someone would have to maintain the DA in addition to any user-level modifications (new/deactivated users, changes in Resource Manager, etc.).

In the absence of a more automated solution, a place to start looking at making this a little easier to manage is use a naming convention for your Resource Types to segment Resources by an appropriate attribute, and try to consolidate larger, logical groups under a single Resource Manager to make the request process a little more intuitive.

Hopefully this is an area we can improve on in a future release, and if you have any suggestions or ideas on how this could be made better, let us know!

Erik, Thank you for your reponse.

The way I envision this to work is as follows -

In the Resource Allocation module when I select a Resource Type, the application should automatically give me a drop down list of the Resource Managers that own/manage that particular Resource Type. This functionality should be fairly easy to provide, since all the relevant information is readily available. This feature coupled with some creative naming conventions could help eliminate the guessing game.

Thanks !

Erik,

I took your advice and built a DA. I pulled the DA into a project and populated it with all the records. Now - how do I share this DA globally with the populated records? I do not know how to do that.

When I pull the DA into a different project - the DA does not come with all the records that I had pupolated with.

Any suggestions?

The best way to do this is create the DA as a global application (tab), then add the DA to a workspace such as the eProject Community or some other workspace that all users are a member of.  Or, it may just be your Project Managers, Resource Managers, Executives, and other users who need that kind of visibility into the resource pools.

If you created the DA within a project, you can export the DA definition and data, then import the DA as a new enterprise DA and then the data into the workspace.  This way, your resource pools/managers are visible as a tab in the application, and you can create any number of applicable views to best work with the data.  All you need to do is keep the data in the "master" workspace DA up to date and everything should fine.

Let me know if you need clarification on any of this.  I recently did this exact thing for one of my client's Change Management DAs, and it offers some very nice options for using the custom views as well as making data visibility a lot easier.

Erik,

This is a great workaround. I followed your guidelines and have implemented it too. Excellent suggestion - Thank you !

When I invited all the Resource Managers and Project Managers to this workspace - I wanted to send a custom notification informing them why they were being invited to this workspace. I could not find a way to create the custom notification. Perhaps - another feature enhancement request?

Glad that worked for you!  Would you mind sharing the DA you created?  I have a feeling it would be something that would come in handy for other organizations as well.

As for the custom notification for project invitations, that's a great enhancement request.  It never even occurred to me that it wasn't available.

In the meantime, you might post a News item explaining the purpose of the workspace and DA, then send notifications from that whenever new people are added.