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About this lesson

When you add resources to a project, you do so by using the resource sheet view. In this view, you can add named, generic, material, and many other types of resources.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2019/365.

Quick reference

Add Resources to the Project

When you add resources to a project, you do so by using the resource sheet view. In this view, you can add named, generic, material, and many other types of resources. You can import resources from other locations but I recommend you avoid doing so until you become more familiar with Microsoft Project.

When you add resources to your project, you are not adding resources to tasks. When you add resources to tasks, you are performing a resource assignment. 

Further Discussion

Technically, you only need to enter the name of a resource to use it on a project, but you might want to add more detail as well. For example, you might want to mark the resource as generic or add an hourly standard rate.

If you happen to be using Microsoft Project Server, it has a centralized resource pool in the database. You can use this central pool rather than hand-typing resources.

Steps

To add resources, follow these steps:

  • Click the View tab.
  • Click the Resource Sheet icon.
  • Add any resources you require just like you would add new tasks.
  • Insert the generic column if the resource is not a proper named person.
  • Add a standard rate if the resource has an hourly rate.
  • Fill in any other fields you deem appropriate.
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  • 00:04 We have been following some industry best practices.
  • 00:08 And one of those is to start from left to right in our estimation.
  • 00:13 Here on the left, we estimated the task names.
  • 00:17 Then we move further to the right and estimated the duration.
  • 00:21 And then we moved even further and estimated the predecessors for our tasks.
  • 00:26 Successors got filled in for us, but we could have entered those as well.
  • 00:31 Remember the start and finish dates are driven by the duration and
  • 00:36 the predecessor-successor relationship, so
  • 00:40 we should never enter a start or a finish date.
  • 00:44 We only do that in instances where there's an absolute requirement that
  • 00:48 something must start on a certain day and must finish on another day.
  • 00:53 We let Microsoft Project's scheduling engine calculate the dates for
  • 00:58 us based on duration and the predecessor-successor relationship.
  • 01:03 Now as we move further to the right, we need to add resources to our project.
  • 01:07 But we can only do that by putting resources in what's called the resource
  • 01:12 sheet.
  • 01:12 Some might also refer to this as the resource pool.
  • 01:17 So that's what we're going to do in this lesson.
  • 01:19 Let's get to the resource sheet by going to the View tab.
  • 01:24 In the View tab, there's a Resource View section and
  • 01:28 you'll find a Resource Sheet icon, go ahead and click that icon.
  • 01:33 And now you're in the resource sheet.
  • 01:36 Here's where you can enter the names of resources.
  • 01:40 You can also enter their cost and even add calendars to the resources.
  • 01:46 For purposes of our fundamentals lessons,
  • 01:49 we're not going to add calendars to individual resources.
  • 01:53 We're going to keep this very basic.
  • 01:55 Now, in the resource names,
  • 01:57 we want to enter the names of people that will be doing work on our project.
  • 02:02 Since we're estimating the work, though, we may not know who those people are yet.
  • 02:07 In other words,
  • 02:08 we might only know that there's generic people working on the project.
  • 02:12 So in order to build this house, we know that we need the Home Owner.
  • 02:19 We might want a Project Manager.
  • 02:24 We may also want to include a General Contractor.
  • 02:31 Contractor, and an Architect, and a Designer.
  • 02:39 If there's other resources we need along the way, we'll go ahead and add them.
  • 02:44 Now, if I double-click on one of these resources,
  • 02:47 I'm going to do that now, I'm going to double-click on Home Owner.
  • 02:52 You can see there's a number of details available to us.
  • 02:55 And these are all columns that we can insert in the resource sheet.
  • 02:59 But one of the ones that I'm going to point out here is Generic.
  • 03:02 If I make a homeowner generic, then this is considered,
  • 03:06 from reporting purposes, not to be a human being.
  • 03:10 In other words, it represents a human being.
  • 03:13 However, that's not an actual name, so this makes sense.
  • 03:17 The homeowner is a generic person.
  • 03:19 If I was a homeowner, then this would say William Raymond, and
  • 03:23 it wouldn't say generic here.
  • 03:26 So click OK, and you can see that there's no column displaying whether or
  • 03:31 not this is a generic resource.
  • 03:33 We can add that column.
  • 03:35 So right-click on the Type heading,
  • 03:38 choose Insert Column, and type generic and press Enter.
  • 03:44 Now you can see there's a Generic field and
  • 03:46 some of these other resources aren't generic.
  • 03:49 Just like Excel, I can come up here onto this generic column and
  • 03:54 there's this little box here to the bottom right of it, and
  • 03:59 I can click and drag this and make all of these resources generic.
  • 04:04 Now, I might also want to add a standard rate to these resources.
  • 04:09 So I can do that by coming over here.
  • 04:12 The Home Owner is probably going to be free because they don't charge anything
  • 04:16 for this project.
  • 04:17 Let's say the Project Manager charges $150 an hour.
  • 04:21 The General Contractor charges $350 an hour.
  • 04:26 The Architect charges 250 and the Designer charges 175.
  • 04:32 Click the Save icon.
  • 04:36 By the way, if you haven't been pressing Save, get familiar with that.
  • 04:39 And the shortcut key is Ctrl+S, that's Ctrl+S to save your work.
  • 04:45 At this point, we've added some resources to our resource sheet, but
  • 04:49 what we haven't done is added them to our project.
  • 04:51 So if I come back here to the Gantt chart, I'm just clicking on the View tab and
  • 04:56 then clicking on the Gantt chart icon.
  • 04:59 You can see if I stretch out the screen here,
  • 05:01 there are no resource names assigned.
  • 05:04 That's because we need to do this.
  • 05:06 So the resource sheet represents the resources that we can put on our project,
  • 05:12 and the Resource Names column represents resource assignments.
  • 05:17 And that's what we'll do in the next lesson is assign resources.

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