#projectserver Generic Resources with 0% capacity skew FTE calculations in resource plans

** Update **
Having looked at the data, the general rules are now 

• Dont use TAP flag unless it is explicitly for the Team Assignments functionality (which no-one uses anyway)
• And if you want to use Generic Resources on Resource Plans using FTE planning, make sure (for now) that they have some capacity, and design this out of your capacity planning reports.

Generic Resource Capacity

in times gone by I have picked up the habit of using the "Team Assignment Pool" flag on Generic Resources to avoid setting the Max Units to 0% and still have zero capacity for the resources in the RDB.  This was a throwback to the heady days of PS2007 and its complete lack of stability (0% resources used to cause havoc when using the Assign Resources dialogue in MS Project).

It looks as if this is a habit I am going to have to break.

Today I have found a new issue in Resource Plans on PS2013 where setting the Team Assignment Pool OR setting Max Units to 0% on a resource has a negative effect on the FTE calculation.

Example:

• Create three generic resources (r1, r2, r3)
• set R1 with Max Units = 0% and Team Assignment Pool is No
• set R2 with Max Units = 100% and Team Assignment Pool is Yes
  These are the two trouble settings
• Set R3 with Max Units = 100 and Team Assignment Pool is No
  this one should work fine

Now create a new project and assign these three resources to the Resource Plan

• Set Timescale = Weeks
• Set units = FTE

Now enter one FTE for each resource across the periods and save

Now, when switching Units to Hours you will see two of the resources (R1 and R2) will have more hours per week than R3.  In my environment, R3 had 40 hours per week and R1/2 had 54 (no idea where 54 came from)

So this takes us into some further thinking on this:

• How on earth is the FTE calculation working this out?
• Does PS now assume Generic Resources do not have capacity elsewhere in the tool (such as the little used and mostly redundant Resource Availability chart, MSP_EpmResourceByDay capacity data, OLAP, etc) as this will have a significant bearing on how we use Generic Resources going forward.

In my mind Generics are buckets of planned work.  They do not have capacity in most scenarios.  They may (or may not) be used as Team Assignment Pool resources (if the functionality was useful).  They should not be included in Capacity calculations but MUST contribute towards the total Team demand.  I have never found another useful "capacity" based solution for these guys, so why on earth do we continue with capacity numbers for them.

So, a word to the wiser.  If you want to use Resource Plan FTE scheduling, leave your generic resources with capacity or see strange results.

I am going to go find out whether i need to update my capacity planning reports now :(

I decided to do a quick check on what exactly 2013 is doing from a Generic Capacity perspective these days

• The use of Team Assignment Pool removes the resource completely from the MSP_EPMResourcebyDay table so no capacity can be held.  This is probably a tad extreme and could break some reports where joins don't allow for this
• Use of 0% Max Units zeros capacity in the ByDay table as you would want, and doesn't seem to cause any issues with assigning resources (I didn't expect it would any more, but it's always good to check).  
• User of >0% Max Units adds capacity to the resource data as you would expect.