Hi,

again my Blog Reade has a Problem. Here it is:

“I have a challenging task to transition unorganized planning in my company to using ms project professional 2010 with share point site. We have generic resources like developers, testers – but they have very specific skills (as in they work on specific products only). Also, this is a multinational corporation, so some resources are in different countries. Due to this, i have a nightmare organizing resource pool because i can’t just put them under generic and also when assigning resources how can i best use the filter. How can I add specific skills to people, so when i replace generic resource with a person, it will be specific. How would you replace generic resource with a person with specific skill-set? So for example, we have product testers and that is generic name for resource, but each tester knows specific products so they cannot all test all the products.”

Well, frankly, the best thing to do is to use Project Server. But we can do this with a little effort in MS PROJECT 2013

First I will add two new custom fields in My Projects: Skills, and Products:

and then:

On the same way I’ll create the Products custom field with lookup values: SharePoint, and Project. When I’m done with that I will ad those field in the Entry Resource Table:

and then:

and finally:

Now I’m ready to add some Resources:

Notice this:

• G-Developers: Generic Resource for Developers, and it doesn’t have specific Product assigned
• G-Testers: Generic Resource for Testers, and it doesn’t have specific Product assigned
• John: Specific Resource for Developers, and he knows how to test SharePoint
• Mary: Specific Resource for Developers, and she knows how to test Project
• Peter: Specific Resource for Testers, and he knows how to test SharePoint
• Paula: Specific Resource for Testers, and he knows how to test Project

I’m going to save my Resource Pool:

Now I’m going to create brand New Project:

Firs step is to Assign Generic Resources to Tasks, and I’m going to do that:

and:

and finally:

Those Generic Resources are over allocated, but it is not important to this story!

Now I want to replace Generic Resources with Specific one!

As you can see, I’m going to create new Filer, because I have to filter only those Resources who are Developers for SharePoint:

I will now continue with My filter (I’m not going to bother you with pictures), and I’ll get:

I want to filter only those Resources who are Developers and they are experts in SharePoint.

I will apply this filet for my Task:

and:

You can see only G-Developers (Generic Resource already assigned to the Task), and John, who is only Developer with SharePoint knowledge. When I click at Replace I’ll get:

and finally:

Now you see only John, because hi is only one Filtered.

Some notice:

• After you are done, do not forget to Close the Filter (remove the checkmark on the left size on screen above or use All Resources filter)
• On another Task when you will need another filter (for example, developer for Project), you can create another filter (be careful, if you have a lot of Skills and Product, you will have many filters, and that can be annoying), or modify existing filter (edit it, it is less annoying)
• Resource Pool is not unlimited. You can have up to 50 Resources
• If you don’t like that, than Project Server is right Product for you!

Hope this helps at least a little bit!

Regards!