Top 3 Reasons for Resource Pools

Well howdy everybody, it’s Cynthia Boone, your on-demand work front CSM, and I’m back with another top three. This one is a resource management adjacent. It is our top three reasons for resource pools. Now before we get started, lot of hot sports opinions in regards to resource pools and that’s okay. We’re just gonna dive into the deep end, so let’s just get started. Number three, number three reason to use a resource pool. So at the very basic, you could use a resource pool to help you bucket your users in terms of reporting. So you could assign them to your projects or your templates and then from a reporting standpoint, you can build out a report with prompt and say I only want projects with this specific resource pool. So that may seem sort of basic, but it’s actually kind of a cool idea in terms of I’m trying to find another way to present data and report. So it’s not a bad one, but let’s get to number two, the number two. This is a more traditional approach, right? What is a resource pool if you’ve never used them? Well, it’s a collection of your users. So you’re gonna have all the users that are actually going to do work, not just review work or not just make decisions, but actually do work in Workfront and put them all in one resource pool and it makes that assignments easier, right? So very traditional way, you build your resource pool, put your working users in it and then go out to your project, project settings and then you add one or more resource pools depending.

Best way to do that is to bulk edit. So if you’re just getting started with resource pools, bonus tip, go out to your projects, select the ones, click your pencil for edit and then you’ll just go to project settings and attach your resource pools, right? Bulk editing is great, but I know y’all are waiting. This is, you want the number one, the number one reason to use a resource pool, if you wanna use a resource plan or functionality, you gotta use your resource pools. Now I know everyone’s got sort of a different approach, like to use job roles or things like that and they don’t necessarily wanna use a resource pool, but hear me out, just stick with me just for a few seconds.

Okay, so back in the day, I did the number two way, I put every single one of my users into one resource pool, it makes scrolling very long, it also makes job roles, like I have to be very specific in my job roles. So let’s talk about this. What if you have projects that only a certain workers can work on? Like we had sensitive projects that only certain designers and copywriters could actually work on, or we have projects that were specific for our vendors and contractors, or the opposite, projects that only full-time employees could work on. Okay, those are resource pools. It narrows the amount of users in your available work, and then you could even cut across time zones or regions. If you have designers in EMEA that work on specific projects, and you’ve got designers on the West Coast of the US that work on certain projects, perfect example of a resource pool. They can be, users can be in multiples. So if you’ve got big projects that you need everybody on, you can still do that. But if you wanna narrow that down to like, I only need my EMEA designers, or I only need my West Coast designers, you can absolutely do that. It’s a neat approach. And when you think about your job roles in terms of multiple resource pools, it could actually simplify your job roles. And I know that’s a struggle for all of us to just have a handful of job roles. So just throwing that out there. Here’s an example of, this is marketing, no consultants resource pool. And then you could have marketing, just consultants and vendors or whatever resource pool.

I hope you give it a shot. We all know that resource management is complex. It does take a village. And it’s unique to your org, and that’s great. That’s the thing I love about Workfront is that everyone can work very differently, and you just gotta use the tools in the way that works best for your org. And so I’m gonna say, just keep trying with the resource pool. Do not give up. We have customers that have cracked that code. And I really hope this helped. Can’t wait for the comments on this one.

See you next time on Take 3. Bye, everybody.