Resource Utilization Board in Dynamics 365 Project Operations

The Resource Utilization Board in Dynamics 365 Project Operations helps Practice Leads and Team Leads visualize and keep track of the actual utilization rate of the resources in your organization.

The Resource Utilization Board shows you all bookable resources’ time entries compared to their capacity and expected utilization rate.

Once you have defined the expected utilization rate and working hours for your bookable resources, those resources have been booked to a project, and their time entries have been submitted and approved, you can take advantage of the Utilization Board functionalities.

Note: Dynamics 365 Project Operations is one of 5 different Dynamics 365 apps that serve various CRM needs.

How to Use the Utilization Board to Review Actual Resource Utilization

Step 1. To navigate to the Utilization Board, open the Project Operations app and navigate to either the “Projects” or “Resources” area. Click on the “Resource Utilization” sub-area.

Step 2. Click on the calendar icon dropdown on the top menu bar to select your utilization view, either daily, weekly, or monthly. Then select your date range.

The Resource Utilization Board compares the time entries that a bookable resource has submitted and that have been approved against their total capacity (defined by the number of hours they are expected to work) and expected utilization rate.

The board displays three key pieces of information based on those calculations:

1. The total number of hours a resource has been booked during the selected time frame (one week in our example).
2. The percentage of hours a resource has been booked compared to its total capacity during the selected time frame (one week in our example).
3. Utilization percentage compared against total resource capacity for the selected unit of measure (daily in our example).

The color coding displayed in the Resource Utilization Board is determined by comparing the billable submitted time entries that have been approved against the defined resource’s target utilization rate:

• Green: Billable utilization ≥ Resource target utilization
  • If your actual utilization is above your utilization target, for example if you have target utilization of 75%, as soon as your actual utilization hits 75% or above, the color of that cell will change to green. In this case, you are either at or have surpassed your target utilization for that day.
• Yellow: Target utilization – 20 ≤ Billable utilization < Target utilization
  • If your target utilization is set at 75%, as soon as you hit between 55% and 74%, the color of that cell will be yellow. In this case, you are close to the target but have not yet reached 75% utilization.
• Red: Billable utilization < Target utilization – 20
  • Any utilization rate falling below your target utilization rate minus 20%. In this case you are still far from reaching your target utilization and are working in a range of 0%-55% utilization.

Note that you cannot modify the calculations. It is set at 20%.

Step 3. Right-click on a resource’s name and click on “View resource card” to view additional resource information, such as: Skills, Roles, Target Utilization, Billable Utilization, Percentage Not Utilized.

For tailored advice, support, and implementations with Dynamics 365 Project Operations and the rest of the Microsoft business stack, please feel free to contact us. We’d love to talk with you.