Planning

Sometimes you know you need certain people or roles for a project, but you are not yet ready to assign them to specific tasks. Through the Resources tab, you can assign resources to a project at the project and Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) level. Note that this planning assignment does not necessarily prevent the resources from being used elsewhere. Instead, the Resources tab lets you add resources to your project during the early planning phase, without removing them from the general resource pool. You may later on choose to assign these resources to actual activities once the project is approved and underway. You can also prevent a planned resource from being used in other projects by checking the Committed box in the specific assignment. This is one way to securely reserve a resource for a project.

The following screenshot shows the Resources tab:

The planning resources feature is similar to top-down budgeting, in that the planned resource assignments do not tie directly to the...