Use placeholders in projects

Use placeholders to schedule a project when you don’t yet know who will be performing the work. Like people, placeholders can have a role, discipline, and a custom bill rate, so you can see how their assignments impact your project budgets.

Who can use this?

Plans:

  • Resource Management

Permissions:

Resourcing Administrators

Find out if this capability is included in Smartsheet Regions or Smartsheet Gov.

Use placeholders to schedule a project when you haven't assigned specific people to do the work. With placeholders, you can:

  • Budget a project: Create assignments for specific roles and disciplines, without impacting anyone's actual schedule or utilization. You can set up the placeholder with any bill rate you choose for improved budgeting accuracy.
  • Access Resource Manager workflow: Managers can use placeholders to request a team member from a Resource Manager. An assignment for a placeholder lets the Resource Manager know someone needs to be assigned to that project.
  • Project staffing needs: Use placeholders to schedule future projects. Once they’re scheduled, utilization reports show you what disciplines can handle the workload and where you may need to hire help. You can estimate how future hires will impact estimates. When you hire, you can reassign those assignments to the new person on your team.

Create a placeholder

  1. Open Settings.
    • In Resource Management in Smartsheet, select the kebab menu in the top-right corner, then select Settings.
    • In standalone Resource Management, select Settings > Account Settings.
  2. From the list on the left, select Placeholders.
  3. Select Add.
  4. Configure your Placeholder, including Placeholder title, Abbreviation, and Color. While optional, Discipline and Role are helpful for filters and assignments.
  5. Select Show More to review additional settings for Bill Rate, Location, and other custom fields for Language, Travel Locations, Skills, and Project Management.  
  6. Once you complete your settings, select Save.

You've created a placeholder. 

Placeholders have an auto-generated image based on an abbreviation and a color. You can change them in Placeholder settings.

Add placeholders on the project page

Add placeholder assignments from either the project schedule or the project worklist.

On the schedule: 

  1. Select a phase or click any white space on the schedule.
  2. Select Add Team Member to apply filters or to search for the name of the appropriate placeholder.

On the worklist: 

  1. Hover over or select the name of the project or phase.
  2. Select Add Team Member.
  3. Search for the name of the appropriate placeholder.

Add and filter placeholders on the schedule

You can add placeholder assignments to the schedule, just like an assignment for any person.

To create a new assignment, click on any white space on the schedule and select New Assignment.

Use filters to find the placeholders you want to add. Placeholder assignments appear semi-opaque, indicating that those assignments belong to a placeholder.

placeholder assignment on the project schedule

Use the assignment status filter to view assignments for the staff or for placeholders. Confirmed assignments are staffed to people in the account, while placeholder assignments are specifically for placeholder team members.

Find placeholders in reports

  • Group your reports by team member type to separate placeholder assignments from confirmed team member assignments.
  • Change your filter criteria to find the placeholders, people, and projects you’re looking for.