The Resource Planning module adds concrete employee scheduling on projects and activities plus work packages that bundle planned hours, remaining effort, and responsible persons. This turns the company-wide project plan into an operational who-when plan per person.
Product line availability
Note: The Resource Planning module is available in ZEP Compact and ZEP Professional. It is added via the ZEP Self-Service Tool under Administration > Account. ZEP Clock does not support the module.
Permissions
Scheduling and reporting in Resource Planning are divided by role:
Employees: See their own scheduling and work packages; with self-scheduling active, they can capture their own hours.
Project managers with budget responsibility: Schedule their project employees, create work packages, and see the Resource Planning reports for their projects.
Administrators (with the Locations & Departments module also Department managers for their department; Controllers if the basic setting Controllers may schedule is active): Schedule company-wide, manage master data and mail templates, and see all reports.
Additional menu items
The module makes the following new areas and tabs available in ZEP:
My Planning
The main menu shows the entry My Planning. Employees see their own day and week planning across all projects — the standard distribution per weekday as well as specific day scheduling. If the self-scheduling permissions in the basic settings are active, employees can also enter their hours here themselves.
My Work Packages
The main menu additionally shows the entry My Work Packages. Employees see all work packages they are assigned to, with planned, actual, and remaining effort as well as the color-coded status indicator. They also maintain the remaining effort for their running packages here.
Time recording
In the time recording form, a specific scheduling with a time of day (input type From – To) can be taken over as a preset: date, times, project, task, and any stored note are filled directly into the booking form. This turns a planned scheduling into the actual project time entry with just a few clicks.
Employees
In the employee area (Employees > [person] > Assignments > Projects), you edit the standard and specific scheduling for an individual person across all their projects. Additionally, on the employee detail page under Reports > Resource Planning, the same report list as under the Employee Reports appears — filtered to the one person.
Projects
In the project area (Projects > [project] > General > Project employees), you capture the standard and specific scheduling of all employees assigned to the project. Additionally, on the project detail page under Reports > Resource Planning, the report list appears plus a dedicated Planning overview with all work packages of the project.
Data objects with work packages
Work packages can be assigned to the following data objects, and each object gets its own list for them:
Projects — all work packages of the project
Activities — work packages of an activity within a project
Tickets — work packages on a ticket from the ticket system
Subtasks — work packages of a subtask
Customers — all work packages of a customer across projects
Administration > Resource Planning
Under Administration > Resource Planning, a dedicated tile appears with the sub-items Settings and Mail templates for scheduling notifications.
Additional reports
The module adds reports in two areas, each under the Resource Planning tab:
Employees
Under Reports > Employees > Resource Planning, six reports are available:
Planning – planned hours per employee and project
Scheduling/actual comparison – planned against actually booked hours
Work Packages – all work packages of all employees
Workload (work packages) – cumulative work factor per person and day
Project time history – booking history of employees
Available capacity – remaining available work time
Projects
Under Reports > Project > Resource Planning, five project-related reports are available:
Planning – planned hours of all employees in the project
Scheduling/actual comparison – plan-actual comparison per employee in the project
Work Packages – all packages in the project with status overview
Workload (work packages) – workload heatmap of project employees
Project time history – booking history of project employees
Distinction from other modules
Note: Resource Planning complements the Project Planning module: the planned hours stored there form the basis, and Resource Planning distributes these hours over work packages and scheduling assignments to concrete persons and time periods. With the Ticket System module, tickets can also receive their own work packages. With the Revenue and Costs module, planned hours from work packages flow into cost and revenue forecasts.