Overview

Resource Management organizes work in three levels: a program contains projects, and a project contains demands. A demand is a single staffing need—one role to fill for a period of time. Each level is created inside its parent, so the hierarchy is set as you build it rather than assembled afterwards.

Dates are constrained down the hierarchy. A project's start and end dates must fall inside its program's dates, and a demand's dates must fall inside its project's dates. Eightfold enforces this when you create a record and again when you edit one—if the dates fall outside the parent's range, the save is rejected with a duration error. Plan the parent's date range before you create children.

Each program and project carries a status of Draft, Active, or Archived, an owner, and an optional description and identifier. Access is governed by user groups attached to the program or project: a user group can be restricted from creating programs, from creating projects inside a specific program, or from creating demands inside a specific project. Deletion can be restricted the same way.

Once a demand exists, resource managers staff it through the demand pipeline. Advancing a resource creates a booking against that demand—see the Feature Explainer for that flow.

The three levels

• Program — the outermost container, with its own date range and owner
• Project — sits inside one program; inherits the program's date bounds
• Demand — one staffing need inside one project; inherits the project's date bounds

Targeted personas

Five personas interact with the hierarchy:

Pre-requisites

How it works

Navigation

Everything in the hierarchy is created from one page.

1. Go to Resource Management ▸ Overview.
2. Confirm the Create Program, Create Project, and Create Demand options appear. Buttons missing here mean the signed-in user's user group is restricted from that level.

Create a program

The program sets the outer date range for everything inside it.

1. Click Create Program.
2. Enter the Program Title. Keep it recognizable to the people who'll pick it from a list later.
3. Set Start Date and End Date. Make the range wide enough to contain every project you expect to run inside it.
4. Add a Program Owner, then select Set as main contact for the primary owner. Add further owners with Add owner.
5. Enter a Description, and a Program ID if your organization tracks its own identifiers.
6. Set Program Status to Draft while you're still planning, or Active once the program is live.
7. Click Save.

Create a project inside a program

Create the project from its parent program so the relationship is set automatically.

1. On the Overview page, find the program and hover its row.
2. Open the row's more-actions menu and select Create project within {program} program. Creating from Create Project instead means picking the parent by hand in the Program Name field.
3. Enter the Project Title.
4. Set Start Date and End Date inside the program's range.
5. Add a Project Owner, a Description, and a Project ID if you use one.
6. Set Project Status to Draft or Active.
7. Set Project Class if your tenant uses it. The available options are tenant-specific.
8. Click Save.

Create a demand inside a project

A demand is created from its project and opens straight into calibration.

1. On the Overview page, find the project and hover its row.
2. Open the row's more-actions menu and select Create demand within {project} project. Eightfold creates the demand and opens its calibration page.
3. Set the demand's start and end dates inside the project's range.
4. Complete the rest of calibration—role, skills, location, and any custom fields your tenant defines. The demand can't be staffed until calibration is complete.
5. Check the Program and Project section on the calibration page to confirm the demand landed under the right parents.

Manage the lifecycle

Status changes are confirmed before they apply.

1. Open the program or project and change its status field.
2. Click Confirm on the Confirm Status dialog. The dialog names the old and new status so the change is deliberate.
3. Expect an archived program or project to display an archived notice to anyone who opens it. Archiving preserves the record and its history.

Booking types and statuses

Bookings are created by resource managers against a demand, not configured here. This is the reference for the values they'll see; the Feature Explainer covers the flow.

• Booking Type - Engagement, Leave, Optional Holiday, or Learning Days. Engagement is the type used when staffing a demand.
• Booking Status - Pending, Approved, or Rejected. New bookings default to Approved unless your tenant runs an approval step.

Recommendations

• Build the hierarchy top-down and get the program's date range right first. Almost every duration error traces back to a parent range set too narrowly.
• Create children from their parent's row rather than from the standalone create buttons. It removes the chance of attaching work to the wrong parent.
• Keep programs broad and long-lived, and let projects carry the real delivery dates. A program re-dated mid-flight is the change most likely to be blocked by existing children.
• Archive rather than delete. Archiving keeps the reporting history intact, and deletion is often blocked by user-group restrictions anyway.
• Mirror whatever your PSA or finance system treats as the source of truth. Two competing hierarchies is worse than one imperfect one.

FAQs

Can a demand sit under more than one project?

No. A demand belongs to one project, and that project belongs to one program. Reporting rolls up along that single path.

Can I move a project to a different program after creating it?

Reassigning the parent isn't part of the create-and-edit flow. Plan the parent before creating, and raise a request with your Eightfold representative if an existing project needs to move.

What happens to demands under a project that gets archived?

The demands and their history stay intact and keep reporting against the project. Archiving signals that the work is closed rather than removing it.

Our finance system treats a work order as the parent of a project. Can I add that level?

No. The two container levels are fixed. Map your outermost concept onto the program and keep the correspondence documented outside Eightfold.