Bench Management

The bench is the list of consultants who need a new assignment: people whose booked work is about to end, and people a resource manager has placed there by hand. Bench Management shows both groups in one place, so you can see who is becoming available, decide who really counts as available, and look for follow-up work for them.

The page is available in the ‘Resource Management’ menu under ‘Bench Management’.

Note: The page is only shown when the ‘Bench management’ client setting and the resource management module are switched on for your company, and only to users whose ‘View bench’ permission covers at least one person. Your administrator can only switch the setting on while the resource management module is on; once it is on, it can always be switched off again.

Who appears on the list

The list mixes two kinds of entries, told apart by the Status column:

Status	Meaning
Suggested	The forecast found that this person's booked work drops to a low level for a sustained period within the forecast horizon. Nobody has confirmed the person yet.
On bench	A confirmed member. An authorized user put this person on the bench, either by confirming a suggestion or by adding them directly. Confirmed people stay on the list until someone removes them, whatever the forecast says.
Review needed	A confirmed member who is booked again. The person stays on the bench until an authorized user removes them; the status only points out that the situation has changed.

Your administrator can switch on options on the Bench forecast criteria page that add these statuses or change their meaning:

Status	Meaning
Available now	Replaces Suggested while suggestions are split by start: the free period starts within the next few weeks (two by default).
At risk	Also replaces Suggested when split by start: the free period starts later within the forecast horizon.
Dismissed	A suggestion someone hid, until a chosen date, or until its free period ends or the person's bookings change. Dismissed people appear only when you filter for this status.

With the option Base “Review needed” on the forecast, a confirmed member needs review when their free period has not started within the current seven days, or when it ends within the Available now within period (two weeks by default). The status hover names the reason: booked in the current week, free only from a later date, no free period of the minimum duration within the forecast horizon, or booked again from a date. A member the forecast has not assessed yet stays On bench.

Suggestions come from a tenant-wide calculation, so every user with access sees the same suggestions. Personal filters narrow what you see; they never change who qualifies. A person you remove from the bench who still meets the criteria goes straight back to Suggested. A person who no longer qualifies leaves the list.

You see the people your ‘View bench’ permission covers. The people you may add and remove are those your ‘Manage bench’ permission covers as well.

Substitutes act with the reach of the person they represent (see Delegations). When some of the people on the bench are visible to you only for that reason, a notice above the list says so.

Columns

Column	Description
Name	Name and avatar. Opens the profile.
Status	One of the statuses above. If you may manage the person, click the status to add or remove them. Hovering it explains the suggestion.
Team lead	The primary manager of the person's team.
Available from	The first day of the low-occupation period the forecast found. Empty when the person is not suggested.
Occupied from	The first day after that period on which the person is booked again, if the forecast can see one within the horizon.
Follow-up	Shown only while tentative work is kept out of the calculation: Planned when soft bookings and reservations would cover the free period, Partly planned when they cover part of it.
Occupied capacity	How much of the person's capacity is booked in the current week, as a percentage of the standard working time your company uses in the Resource Plan (or of the person's own working time, if your administrator chose that).
Open applications	How many internal marketplace applications the person currently has open. Shown when you can open the internal marketplace; filled only for yourself and for people covered by your ‘Marketplace applications’ permission. Click the number to open that person's applications (your own row opens My applications).
Added to bench	When the current bench membership began. Empty for suggestions. This is the date of the decision, not the start of the low occupation.

Sort by Name, Available from or Added to bench, and filter by Name, Status and Team lead. The Name and Team lead filters only offer entries that match your other filters: the people on the list, and their team leads. If there are many, search within the filter to find one. While suggestions are split by start, the list opens sorted by Available from. The list is paged; filters and sorting apply to everyone you may see, not only to the current page.

Actions

Action	Description
Add person (plus button in the header)	Opens a search over the people you may manage who are not on the bench yet, including people the forecast does not suggest and people who are fully booked. Select a person and choose Add to bench.
Add to bench / Remove from bench (click on the status)	Confirms a suggested person or removes a member. Removing a person who would then disappear from your current view asks you to confirm first.
Find matches in the internal marketplace (icon at the end of each row)	Opens the Internal Marketplace with this person selected, so the open requests are matched against their profile. Shown for people you may look up there.
To resource plan (header)	Opens the Resource Plan for the selected people. Without a selection, it opens every person the current filter matches, not only the current page. It works for up to 500 people; with more, reduce the selection or narrow the list with a filter first.

Adding and removing takes effect immediately and is recorded with who did it and when. Two people changing the same entry at the same time cannot overwrite each other: the later change is refused with a note to retry on the refreshed entry.

Bulk actions for selected people

When you may manage people on the bench or open the Resource Plan, each row starts with a checkbox. The checkbox in the header selects everyone the current filter matches, on all pages, not only the current page. The selection is kept while you page through the list. When you change a filter, only the selected people the new filter still lists stay selected. The same happens when a change, such as a status change, takes a selected person on the current page out of the list. The selection is cleared when you click Clear selection, untick the header checkbox, or a bulk action completes.

While people are selected, the page header shows, next to To resource plan, Clear selection with the number of selected people and, if you may manage people on the bench, the Actions menu. Each action shows in brackets how many of the selected people it applies to. Without permission to manage people on the bench, the selection only decides whom To resource plan opens. The Actions menu offers:

Action	Description
Add to bench	Puts the selected people on the bench.
Remove from bench	Removes the selected people from the bench. You are asked to confirm first, with the number of people concerned.
Dismiss	Hides the suggestions of the selected people until a date you choose (at most two years ahead), or until each person's free period ends or their bookings change, whichever comes first. A later free period of the same person is suggested again. If the forecast sees no end to a free period within its horizon, that suggestion stays hidden until the bookings change. Offered while your administrator allows dismissing.
Show again	Ends the dismissal of the selected people, so they are listed as suggestions again if they still qualify. Offered while your administrator allows dismissing.

Each action applies only to the selected people it fits and skips the rest: for example, Add to bench skips people who are already on the bench, and Remove from bench skips people who are not on it. An action is unavailable when it fits nobody in the selection, or while the selection contains someone you may not manage. Hovering an unavailable action tells you why and names the people you may not manage.

If an entry changed in the meantime or the person no longer qualifies for the action (for example, they are no longer suggested when you dismiss them), that person is skipped and the others are saved. A note tells you how many people were skipped, and the list refreshes.

How the forecast works

The forecast looks at each person's confirmed bookings over the coming weeks and compares them with the standard working time your company uses in the Resource Plan. A person is suggested when their occupied capacity stays at or below a threshold for a minimum number of consecutive weeks, and that period starts within the forecast horizon. A week here is any seven consecutive days, so a free period may start on any weekday. Absences count as unavailable time, so a holiday does not look like free capacity.

Your administrator can change parts of this: measure people against their own working time, leave absences out instead of counting them as occupied, or keep tentative work out of the calculation. See Bench forecast criteria.

Soft bookings and reservations count only with the share your administrator assigns to them, so tentative work can be treated as partly secured, fully secured, or not at all. The Status hover names when the calculation last ran and whether tentative bookings were involved.

Team bookings, which reserve a team's capacity without naming a person, do not count towards anyone's occupation. Only bookings on the person themselves do.

The horizon, the threshold, the minimum duration and the two contribution shares are set once for your company on the Bench forecast criteria page. They govern suggestions only. Anyone within your permissions can be added by hand, whatever the criteria say.

The calculation runs shortly after a booking or profile change for the people concerned. Absence and working-time changes are picked up within about five minutes. Once a day, everyone marked as a resource in their profile is recalculated. Nothing is recalculated while you look at the page; if a result is missing or could not be computed, the last successful one is kept. The list does not update by itself: reload the page to see newer results.

When the ‘Bench management’ setting is switched on, everyone marked as a resource is calculated straight away. With many people, it can take a while until the list is complete. While the calculation is still running for people you may see and nobody is listed yet, a note in the empty list says so. The note is not shown while a filter is set.

Note: The same membership appears as the bench marker in the Resource Plan, where you can add and remove people without opening this page.