Role Planner

The Role Planner is the core scheduling tool in LOFT Resource. It provides a visual timeline where you can assign people to projects, see availability at a glance, and understand the cost impact of every staffing decision.

Before you can start planning, you need to load one or more projects into the planner.

• Click the Load Project button in the toolbar
• Select one or more projects from the dropdown
• Projects will appear in the timeline with their assigned roles
• You can load multiple projects simultaneously for cross-project planning

The timeline grid shows weeks (or months) across the top and roles down the left side.

• Click on a cell to assign a person to that role for that week
• Drag across multiple cells to assign for a range of weeks
• Each cell shows the allocated percentage or days
• Color coding indicates availability: green (available), red (overbooked), yellow (partial)
• Use the date navigator to scroll through the timeline

The Role Planner supports four display modes, accessible from the toolbar:

• Schedule — Default view showing assigned people with color-coded cells
• Label — Shows text labels for each assignment
• Day — Shows the number of days allocated per cell
• Cost — Switches to financial view showing dollar amounts per person-week

When you switch to Cost display mode, the planner shows the financial impact of your staffing plan. You can choose between different cost calculation methods:

• Bid Rate — The rate charged to the client for this role
• Loaded Rate — The fully loaded cost including overhead and benefits
• Salary — The base salary cost of the assigned person
• Net — The profit margin (bid rate minus salary cost)

Total rows at the bottom aggregate costs across all visible roles, giving you a clear picture of project-level and portfolio-level financial health.

Scenarios let you model alternative staffing plans without affecting your current schedule.

• Create a new scenario from the Compare menu
• Make changes in the scenario without affecting the main plan
• Compare scenarios side-by-side to evaluate trade-offs
• Promote a scenario to become the active plan when ready

You can save and restore your planner configuration including display mode, cost mode, loaded projects, and filter settings.

• Click the layout menu to save your current view
• Give your layout a name for easy identification
• Saved layouts preserve display mode, cost mode, filters, and project selections
• Load a saved layout to quickly restore a previous view

The planner can display aggregated total rows at the bottom of the grid. Available totals include:

• Cost — Total cost across all visible roles per time period
• Revenue — Total revenue (bid rate) per time period
• Net — Profit margin per time period
• Milestones — Key project milestones on the timeline