122 Part 2: Structuring Projects
Setting Up Roles
Roles are project personnel job titles or skills, for example, project planner, quality assurance tester, and engineer. You can create a standard set of roles that you can assign to labor and nonlabor resources and activities in all projects in the organization. You can establish an unlimited number of roles and organize them in a hierarchy for easier management and assignment. The set of roles you assign to an activity defines the activity’s skill requirements. You can also define multiple price per unit rates and unit/time limits for each role to accurately plan future costs and allocation.
Assign roles to activities as you would resources during project schedule and cost planning. When your plans are finalized, you can replace roles with resources, based on each activity’s role and skill requirements.
View roles Choose Enterprise, Roles, then click the Display Options bar.
nTo view only those roles that have assignments in the open project, choose Filter By, Current Project’s Roles.
n To view all roles, choose Filter By, All Roles.
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View roles for a specific resource Choose Enterprise, Resources. Select the resource whose roles you want to view. Display Resource Details by clicking the Display Options bar and choosing Details. Click the Roles tab.
Add a role Choose Enterprise, Roles. Select the role immediately above and at the same level as the role you want to add, then click Add. Type the role’s ID and name. To create a hierarchy of roles, click the right arrow key to indent the selected role one level. For example, you may want to list specific roles included under Project Manager, such as Design Manager.
Type a description of the role’s responsibilities. You can use HTML editing features, which include formatting text, inserting pictures, copying and pasting information from other documents (while retaining formatting), and adding hyperlinks.
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Replace the highlighted text with the ID and name of the new role.
Click the up/down arrows to move a role up or down in the list; click the left/right arrows to change a role’s hierarchy level.
For more information on assigning roles to activities, refer to “Assigning Resources and Roles” on page 219.
Add rates to a role You can add up to five price per unit rates for each role in the roles dictionary. When you assign a role to an activity during project planning, you can choose which rate you want to use to calculate cost. Defining rates for specific roles yields more accurate project cost planning results.
To add rates to a role choose Enterprise, Roles. If tabs are not displayed in the Roles dialog box, click the Display Options bar and choose Roles Details. Select the role you want to assign rates to, then click the Prices tab. Enter up to five Price/Unit rates for the selected role.
For example, if the price per unit is $25/hour, enter 25h; if the price per unit is $50000/year, enter 50000y. You can only enter unit values in minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Your system administrator defines the abbreviations for these units in the Admin Preferences, Time Periods tab.
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Mark to indicate that any new assignments for this role will have its costs recalculated whenever any quantity changes occur, such as changing the estimate to complete for an activity.
Enter the price and unit for the selected role. The unit must be the same for each rate defined for a specific role (e.g., you cannot mix hourly and weekly time units for the same role). If multiple rates are defined for a role and you change the unit for one rate, the module changes the unit for all other defined rates. If you enter a price but not a unit, the default unit is hours.
In the Primavera Web application, you can view role limits in all charts and histograms that display role data, such as the Capacity Planning chart (Portfolios section), Role Usage histogram (Resources section), and Team Usage histogram (Projects section).
Define role limits Use the Limits tab to specify available quantities (limits) for a role. Setting limits helps you quickly identify areas of role overload in Resource/Role Usage Profiles, using different colors to represent limits and overallocated units in charts and histograms.
By default, role limits are calculated based on the limit defined for each role’s primary resource, which may not accurately reflect a role’s planned allocation. In the Project Management module, on the User Preferences, Resource Analysis tab, you can choose to display role limits based on the custom role limits you define in the Roles dictionary. In the Primavera Web application, you can set this same option in the Global Preferences, Resource Staffing section.
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You can set 
varying limits 
over time by specifying the effective start date for each change. Each effective date
must be unique.
To define role limits, choose Enterprise, Roles. If tabs are not displayed in the Roles dialog box, click the Display Options bar and choose Roles Details. Select the role you want to define limits for, then click the Limits tab. Click Add at the bottom of the Roles dialog box. Double-click in the Effective Date column, then click the Browse button to select the date the limit takes effect. In the Max Units/Time column, enter the allocation limit for the role as a unit value or as a percentage, depending on your user preference settings for resource units/time (User Preferences, Time Units tab).
The number of units available during each workperiod (hour, day, week, or month); you can enter a percentage, or a numeric value followed by a forward slash (/) and the appropriate time duration, depending on your user preference setting for time units.
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