In-depth overview of the Resource manager role in Workamajig [video]

Transcript:

Now we're going to talk about the resource manager component in Workamajig. Um, you don't necessarily have to be titled a resource manager to use this. It's anyone who's overseeing our resources, traffic manager, department head, or just simply someone there at the firm who it's their responsibility to check on making sure people have work to do what our availability is and if we have projects out there that are lacking people assigned to them. So the number one place that we want to look is in our staff schedule. The staff schedule is designed so I can search in a variety of ways for our larger farms. We might be filtering out by teams by departments by role, lots of different ways that we can do that. Other times we're just looking at what does everybody have on their plate? So the information that's being displayed here truly is the accumulation of what people have dedicated their time to. I can see on a week-over-week as well as a daily view, and taking a look at the daily view is a good idea every now and again because that will bring to light issues this person, Mister Zane has a little bit too much on their plate that day. And that way I can investigate that and make sure that it might be something that we're going to re-assign one or two of those tasks to another team member so that we can balance them out a little bit more effectively. We also will see down below roles. What that means is their projects out there that have budgeted for on our director as an account manager, and we didn't know who was going to be available. So we leave our projects assigned out to what our needs are and from this one screen, I can easily go into art direction. Anyone who has the ability to be an art director on their employee record will show up as my available Art director what their availability is and what do we have as a need for an art director. That way, I can easily just take this entire project. I don't have to go task by task and quickly reassign it to one of the staff members who can provide that service. No more art direction down below. It has now been transitioned to the staff member's task list. So assuring us that things aren't falling through the cracks but also gives us the tools to see who's available that can provide those skill sets so we can get them assigned out quickly without having to go back into each one of those projects independently. Another thing I'd like to point out is, if I do drill into what someone has going on, I am going to see all the different projects and tasks that they're assigned to when they're anticipated need is how far along they are if they've started these yet. But I'm also going to be aware of what their meeting dedication is. So when we have internal meetings when we have meetings that are personal, such as maybe a dentist appointment or you're going to be taking your vacation time, all of that information will be on calendars in Workamajig, either your personal calendar or the vacation calendar, and that information feeds into our resourcing so we can be much more aware of what our true resourcing capabilities are. If people have five hours of meetings they've dedicated to for a week, we don't have 40 hours of task availability time. If we have people that are planning their vacations, we need to be proactive. We'll see that weeks and weeks in advance and be reminded regularly so that we can be proactive about being light on resources due to plan time off and also be aware if any of those projects they're assigned to had some slippage on those schedules. Now those tasks have encroached upon their vacation time. We will see that well in advance so we can address what our options are and make a decision based on that circumstance of what our best option is going to be for that staff person and for that project and task. So again, we want to be proactive and not reactive with our resourcing. So having all that information in one central location is hugely beneficial. Now we talk about these tasks showing up even though we're not going to be going through all the things that are creative person was would do. I certainly want to share again with you what they're going to see. As a creative person they have a Today page that guides their day, all those different projects and tasks that they're assigned to show up with either a tile or a line item type format, alerting them to what they have to work on. When those things are to be done by and if there's been any updates to their tasks, they'll be aware. They can also see when things are due and how much time they've been allocated and what's remaining of that time. Drilling into any of those projects, they can get details from spec sheets or files or communication with conversations that have gone back and forth between that project and the different people that are associated with it. They could also have it to-do list of things they need to accomplish. So making sure that all the information is feeding from the project to resourcing to our creative team members so that the of workflow is much more natural in fluid and not so manual when they are updating their tasks that will also update our projects when people put in their time very simply. Not only is that going to update their timesheet for the day, it's updating the project. It's also updating the project schedules so people know when people started on a task because they updated that task. When they complete a task and mark it as 100% completed. That will update that project schedule so our project managers will see the project moving and not have to manually update things and that is also what will trigger the notifications and the health meters of those projects, schedules, and budgets.