High-Level Planning Assignments Sit on WBS or Project, Not TASK

What a planner means

Oracle’s Planning page (Resources → Planning) is high-level resource and role demand on a project or WBS. You use it on a proposed project without loading a detailed activity plan. You can keep that allocation through the life of the project and reference it later when you assign at activity level. The assignment is not on a TASK.

Oracle: assign labor resources or roles to a project or WBS. A resource assigned here is assigned without a role allocation. In long-range planning you may assign a role first and staff it later, after activities exist. You cannot assign material resources on the Planning page.

For each assignment you can type Total Units (hours, days, weeks, months, or years). P6 distributes that total across the timescale, or you type individual timescale values and P6 sums them to Total Units. % Allocation is the percent of the resource or role’s Maximum Units/Time; Oracle: that does not consider existing allocations and can overallocate. Changing % Allocation recalculates Total Units and the spreadsheet spread.

Committed: only committed assignments count when P6 calculates high-level availability. If Committed is on, allocated units are subtracted from under- or overallocation.

Life of Project: the assignment is for the entire project duration. You cannot type its start and finish. Synchronize Resource Dates (Actions) can set Life-of-Project assignments to the project’s scheduled start/finish, or set all planning assignments to Project Forecast Start / Forecast Finish Date. If Life of Project is off, you pick the assignment start and finish. Editing a spreadsheet interval earlier than the current start or later than the current finish moves that assignment date.

Oracle Grid Status (assignment classification): None, Draft, Filled, Submitted. That is not the REST Status field (Oracle: project or WBS status — Planned, Active, Inactive, What-If, Requested).

Search Criteria is a Yes/No link: saved resource-request criteria for staffing a role, or none.

Availability on the spreadsheet uses published and summarized data (as of last publish and summarize). Analytics & Services has two related options:

• Summarize Project based on: High level resource planning (Planning-page assignments on summarized pages) or Detailed activity resource assignments (activity-level; e.g. detailed usage vs planned allocation, or earned value). Changing this deletes the previous summary data on the next summarize.
• Publish resource and role data based on: High level resource planning (Oracle: committed Planning-page assignments on pages that use published data) or Detailed activity resource assignments (activity-level assignments). Professional Settings has the same publish choice.

This is not TASKRSRC (activity assignments). See RSRC / TASKRSRC (and Roles / Prices) and Assignment Lag. It is not WBSBUDG spending/benefit cash. See Spending Plan. It is not typed future-period buckets on an activity assignment. See Future Period Buckets Are Typed Assignment Units, Not a Curve.

Planning-page Download is Excel of the current view. That is not an XER.

XER

Oracle’s project XER map TOC lists WBSRSRC_QTY (WBSRSRC QTY). It does not list a high-level planning assignment-header table. Do not invent WBSRSRC, PROJWSRSRC, or ProjectResource as an XER %T.

WBSRSRC_QTY

Oracle labels them that way. Oracle does not label qty as Total Units or as a Planning-page Allocation cell. Do not invent assignment-header columns (Committed, Life of Project, Total Units, start/finish) on this table.

Oracle’s API: ProjectResource is the project/WBS planning assignment. ProjectResourceQuantity is “resource allocation hours per week” for a resource assigned at project or WBS, and “corresponds to a record in the wbsrsrc_qty table.” A week that spans two months is two quantity rows (same week start, different month start). That is the API store. It is not a second XER table name.

PROJECT.fcst_start_date is Project Forecast Start. PROJECT.sum_assign_level is labeled sum_assign_level. Oracle did not say that column is Summarize Project based on or Publish resource and role data based on. Do not invent that it is. The cited PROJECT map has no publish-based-on column.

TASKRSRC is activity assignments. WBSBUDG is spending/benefit plan. Neither is this object.

Microsoft Project

Desktop Project has no WBS-level resource planning assignment. Do not invent one. Do not map these rows to Task Usage, Resource Usage, or a budget resource on the project summary task. Do not claim MPXJ can write a real MPP.

Don't

• Treat Planning-page assignments as TASKRSRC, or draw them on a TASK bar.
• Treat them as WBSBUDG spending/benefit cash, or as typed future-period buckets on an activity assignment.
• Invent a WBSRSRC / PROJWSRSRC / ProjectResource table on a project XER parse.
• Invent that WBSRSRC_QTY.qty is Total Units, or that the *_crv TASKRSRC columns are these rows.
• Invent that PROJECT.sum_assign_level is Summarize/Publish “based on”.
• Treat uncommitted assignments as counting toward high-level availability (Oracle: committed only).
• Treat Grid Status (None / Draft / Filled / Submitted) as REST Status (project/WBS status).
• Assign material on this object, or treat a role-only planning row as a named person.
• Invent an MSP analog, or claim MPXJ writes a real MPP.