People and resources

1. Click Resources on the ribbon.

2. Type their name in Find or add a person. If you have used them in another plan, they are listed under From your library: click them to bring them in with everything you set before (see Your resource library). Otherwise click Add "name" as someone new, or press Enter. (Add resource still adds a person called New resource for you to rename.)

3. Pick a colour for them, if you like.

4. Type their Role (what they do, like Electrician) and Group (their crew, firm or department), if it helps. Both are optional, and the boxes suggest what you have typed before.

5. Type their Rate per hour or Rate per day. Fill in one and the other is worked out. Leave it at zero if you don’t track costs.

6. Set their Availability if they aren’t all yours: 60% for someone you have three days a week, 300% for a crew of three. It starts at 100%. It only changes how much work they can take before they show as overbooked – not dates, work or cost.

7. Add Notes if there is anything else worth knowing: a phone number, has a van.

8. Set their Working week, Working hours and Days off if they differ from everyone else’s. See Working days and holidays.

Enter keeps what you typed and takes you to the next box: from the name to the role and group, then the rates, then Availability.

Two people in one plan can’t have the same name.

Finding someone. The same Find or add a person box filters the People list by name, role or group. Sort by puts the list in order of name, role or group; Plan order is the order you added them in. Each person’s role and group show under their name.

Desktop Plan remembers everyone you add to any plan on this computer: their name, role, group, notes, rates, availability, working week and days off. You don’t do anything to fill it – adding or changing a person in a plan keeps it up to date – and nothing in it is shared with anyone.

• Bring someone in. Start typing their name in Find or add a person. Each match shows their role, group and the plan you last used them in. Click one to add them with everything they had. The plan gets its own copy: it never needs the library, and you can send it to anyone.
• When the library knows better. If you change Sam’s rate in one plan, other plans with Sam aren’t changed behind your back. The next time you open one of them, a line under the toolbar says so: Your resource library has a different rate per hour for Sam Patel. Update this plan? Click Update to take the change (Ctrl+Z puts it back, and leaves your library as it was), or Not now to leave the plan as it is.
• Plans from someone else. When you open a plan made on another computer, its people are added to your library too, and stay the same people: change their rate in your own plans later and that plan is offered the change like any other.
• Two people with the same name. Desktop Plan never decides that two people are one because their names match. Two Sam Patels are listed separately, with their role and group to tell them apart. If they really are one person, select Sam in the Resources panel: under Also in your library click These are the same person. From then on they count as one person in the Workload chart, and other plans with the other Sam are offered the change when you open them. This can’t be undone.

People added from plans saved before this version keep matching across plans by name, as they always have.

In the grid: double-click the task’s Resources cell, or click it and press Alt+Down, to tick people from a list. Each person is shown with their colour. Anyone on the task at less or more than 100% shows their percentage beside their name; change it in the task form (see below).

Or just type their names, separated by commas: Architect, Roofer. Capitals don’t matter. A name that isn’t on the list yet isn’t accepted. Instead, Desktop Plan opens the Resources panel with that name ready, so you can add the person first and then assign them.

In the task form: under Assigned to, pick a name from Add someone…. Click × beside a name to take them off the task.

Each person on a task has an allocation: how much of their working time the task takes. It starts at 100%, all of it. Someone who spends half of each day on the task is at 50%. A crew of three bricklayers can be one person at 300%. The most is 1000%.

In the task form: type the percentage in the box beside the person’s name under Assigned to, and press Enter. The % sign is optional. Enter takes you on to the next person’s box, so you can set everyone’s share in one go.

In the grid: the Resources cell shows it after the name, as Bricklayers [300%], Roofer. Anyone at 100% is shown with just their name. You can type it the same way, or as Roofer 50%. A name typed without a percentage is 100%. Typing replaces the whole list, so keep everyone you want on the task. While you type, the box widens to show the whole list. If the cell is too narrow to show everyone, point at it to see the full list.

The allocation never moves a task’s dates. A 5-day task is 5 days whether someone is on it at 100% or at 25%. What changes is the work, the cost and how busy the person shows on the dashboard. (Unless you set the plan to take each task’s length from its work: see When the work sets the length.)

If you take someone off a task and put them back, they start again at 100%.

To take everyone off a task, select its Resources cell and press Delete.

You can put people on a phase (summary task) too, but only as a note of who looks after it. They don’t change the phase’s dates, work or cost, which come from the tasks inside it. Point at a phase’s Resources cell to see who is working on the tasks inside it.

If a phase loses its last task and becomes an ordinary task again, its people stay on it and start to count: the app tells you when that happens.

• The calendar. A task with exactly one person follows that person’s working week and days off.
• Work. The Work column counts person-days: the duration × each person’s allocation, added up. A 3-day task with two people at 100% is 6 days of work; with one of them at 50% it is 4.5.
• Typing over Work changes the allocations to match, and leaves the dates alone. Type 3d on a 3-day task with one person on it, and that person goes to 100%; type 1.5d and they go to 50%. You can type hours too: 12h on a plan with 8-hour days is 1.5d. With several people on the task, the work is shared between them as their allocations already share it. Clear the cell to put everyone back to 100%. A task with nobody on it can’t take a typed figure: assign someone first.
• Cost. The Resource cost column is each person’s rate × their hours on the task. See Costs and budget.

Assigning people doesn’t change a task’s duration. Two people on a 3-day task still take 3 days. Change the duration afterwards and the allocations stay as they were, so the work grows or shrinks with the task.

Adding someone to a task, taking someone off, or changing a percentage changes the task’s work. When it does, a line appears at the bottom of the window:

Click the button to keep the work as it was: the task gets shorter (or longer) to fit the people now on it. Ctrl+Z puts the old length back. Ignore it, or click ×, and nothing changes; it goes away by itself as soon as you do anything else. Typing over Work never makes this offer, because then the figure you typed is the work you want.

Some work is estimated in hours rather than days on the calendar: 400 welds at 2.5 man-hours each is 1,000 hours of work, however many welders you put on it. For plans like that, you can make the work set each task’s length instead.

Settings → General → Task length comes from:

• Duration (what every plan starts with): everything above. People change a task’s work, and its dates stay.
• Work: people change a task’s length, and its work stays.

In a plan set to Work:

• Type the work, in days or hours, and the task’s duration changes to match. Type 1000h on a welding task with two welders at 100%, on 8-hour days, and it becomes 62.5 days.
• Add someone and the task gets shorter: a third welder makes it 41.67 days. Take someone off, or lower their percentage, and it gets longer. The work stays at 1,000 hours.
• Type the duration and it changes as usual. The percentages stay, so the work follows.
• The Work heading in the grid has a small ▸ beside it, so anyone opening the plan can see why adding a person shortened a bar.

After someone is added or taken off, a line at the bottom of the window offers the old length back:

Click it if you added the welder to get more done in the same time, not to finish sooner.

A few things never change length when people change, in either setting: phases (their length comes from the tasks inside them), milestones, and tasks that are finished or have an actual finish. Their work follows their length, as before.

Some things to know:

• A task with nobody on it counts as one person. Take the last person off and its length becomes the work for one person at 100%.
• If everyone left on a task would be at 0%, there is nobody to do the work, so Desktop Plan refuses the change and says why.
• Removing a person from the plan in the Resources panel changes the length of every task they were on, and the bottom of the window says how many. Ctrl+Z puts it all back.
• Switching between Duration and Work changes nothing in the plan. It only decides what your next change moves.
• Work is counted in days of the Hours per day set in Project details. Changing the hours per day changes how many days of work a task shows, not how long it is.
• Someone opening the plan in an older version of Desktop Plan sees it as a Duration plan, and if they save it, it stays that way. Nothing in it moves.

The first time you type work in hours (like 120h) in a plan set to Duration, a line at the bottom of the window points this setting out. Click Show me to go straight to it, or × to carry on. Once you answer it, it does not come back.

The Workload chart on the dashboard page shows each person’s booked hours for the next twelve weeks, against the hours their own calendar allows. Booked hours follow the allocation: two overlapping tasks with someone at 50% on each fill their week exactly, and aren’t over capacity. Darker cells are busier weeks. A red cell means over capacity: the person is booked for more hours than they work that week, usually because two of their tasks overlap.

The same person in several open plans – the same person in your resource library, not just the same name – is one row, so you see everything they are booked for. Two different people who happen to share a name stay two rows, except people from plans saved before the resource library, who still match by name. To see a whole trade or crew at once, choose One row per → Role or Group at the top of the chart: each row then adds up everyone with that role or in that group, and goes red when any of them is over.

While you plan, Desktop Plan marks overbooking day by day, as soon as it happens:

• In the Resources cell, the overbooked person’s name turns red with a ⚠. Point at it to see when and why: Sam is booked 200% on 12-Oct-26 (Dig, Pour).
• On the chart, a ⚠ appears just before the task’s bar, and pointing at the bar says who.
• Filter → Overbooked tasks shows only the tasks with a problem.

Someone is overbooked on a day when their tasks that day add up to more than their working hours times their availability – or when a task books them on a day they don’t work. A week on the Workload chart is red if any day in it is, even when the week as a whole adds up.

The marks follow the plan’s dates, from today on. A late task – its end already past but the work not done – books nobody from today, so it can’t show as a clash. Move it to its new dates and it books its people again.

Desktop Plan points out overbooking but doesn’t fix it for you. To fix it, move one of the tasks, link them so they follow each other, lower someone’s allocation, or give one of the tasks to someone else.

The team calendar shows everyone in your plan day by day: who is away, what each person is doing, and who is overloaded. Click Team calendar on the ribbon (beside Resources), or choose View → Team calendar. It opens in place of your plan; press Esc or click Back to plan to return. The team calendar is part of Desktop Plan Pro.

Each row is one person. Two switches at the top choose how you see them:

• Show → Bars draws each person’s tasks as bars, with a thin strip along the bottom of each day: pale when they have hours left, blue when they’re fully booked, red when they’re overbooked. Show → Hours writes the hours booked in each day instead, and colours the day.
• Zoom → Days gives one column per day. Zoom → Weeks gives one column per week, which fits a long plan on one screen. Click a week to open it day by day; click its heading to close it again.

Your plan remembers both switches: on a plan you can change, changing one counts as a change to save. Point at any day or week to see the hours booked, the hours the person has, and which tasks fill them. At Hours, a booking of less than a tenth of an hour shows as <0.1. Use Role, Group and Group by to look at one trade or crew.

Beside each name is how much of that person’s time is booked over the weeks shown, in red above 100%. A red ! in its place means they are booked but have no time available at all in those weeks – for example, their availability is 0%.

Choose All open projects at the top, as on the dashboard, to see everyone in every plan you have open in a tab: their bookings in all of them count, and the days run from the first plan’s start to the last one’s finish. Someone who is only in another plan is marked Only in that plan. This project goes back to the plan in front. With only one plan open, All open projects is greyed. The page opens on This project each time.

To give someone leave, click a working day in their row. To give several days, drag along the row. Click a day of leave to take it back – any day off they have, including one you typed in the Resources panel under another name. With the keyboard, Enter or Space on a day does the same as a click. Clicking a weekend or a project holiday does nothing. New leave is named Leave. The leave goes into that person’s own calendar, the same days off you can set in the Resources panel, and their tasks move straight away to work round it, taking any tasks linked after them along. The panel What moved since you opened this page lists every task that has moved, and Plan finishes shows whether the end of the plan has moved too. Ctrl+Z, or the Undo button on the page, takes it back.

In All open projects, leave is given in the plan the person belongs to, and that plan’s tasks move. Someone who is in two of your open plans has their leave given in the plan in front; the other plan keeps its own calendar for them, and pointing at the day says so. Ctrl+Z on the page takes back the last change, whichever plan it was in.

Leave can’t be given when:

• the person’s plan is read-only – for example opened view-only, or open on another computer. A note on the page says why. In All open projects, each plan decides for itself, so the people of the other plans can still be given leave;
• the person works to the project calendar rather than a calendar of their own. Give them one in the Resources panel first.

To print the team calendar or send it to someone, click Export on the ribbon while it is on screen: it makes a PDF of the calendar as you see it, over all its weeks (chapter 17).

Leave moves only the tasks a person does on their own. A task shared by several people, or one with a calendar of its own, stays where it is. If it falls on the leave, that day shows red as overbooked, so you can decide what to do about it.

In the Resources panel, click × beside their name. If they are on any tasks, Desktop Plan says how many and asks first. Removing a person takes them off every task and deletes their calendar. Ctrl+Z puts it all back.