SAP Capacity Planning in PS module; Calendar like in MS Projects

With Pool Capacity we can generally define capacity for a group of expertise in a given Work Center. Meaning that if I have 10 peoples working at 40 hours a week each, my total capacity on a weekly basis is 400 hours.

If the demands from activities in my various projects using that Work Center exceeds the 400 hours then I'll be under capacity and Gantt's in Planning Board will show in red !!!!!

However if I decide to go for Individual Capacity planning using HR module; then from what I read the individuals already defined in HR as employee number; will be tied to the Work Center and automatically taken and represented in Gantt's chart individually.

The link is to tie them as employee number to the Work Center in HR.

My question is; likewise in MS Projects; where we can define availability via the calendar; we can grey out days when an individual is on vacation or not available.

And that will reflect in the overall availability...

In PS is there a way to get an ''equivalent'' calendar !!!!

I did not see anything in PS itself to lock individual's dates !!!!!

Would this be in HR ???

Mainly when I want to reserve vacation time ahead for indivial labour resources..!!!!

I am not an expert in this area but I know a bit about it (I made it in a customer, but at the end I had to undo it). Actually I cannot work with networks so all I have it is my memory.

The pool capacity works as you say, but it seems that you are using the capacity availabality feature. I understood that if you use that, the system only checks if there is capacity avalibale, but not makes a capacity "commitment", it means, other networks can plan that capacity as own (this is made in the "levelling" section). At last, I only used the first feature so only had a look on the second.

I do not know how to plan people from HR module but:
- In CMP9 you can assign people to networks in basis to its Work Center in individual days (but it is very boring for the user).
- In the activity tag "Personal Assignment" you can assign people to an activity. This uses the HR information (working start time, absences, substitutions...). But this is not a capacity check or plan (at the end, I used that information to make a customer-specific report).
- The function "HR_PERSON_READ_WORK_SCHEDULE" can be used to know the exact avilabilty of a person (it will show you working hours, if that day is holiday, if there is a planned absence or substitution... everything). But you need to report previously that data to the system. (if you use it, take a look to the HR_PERSON_INIT_WORK_SCHEDULE too).
- The working factory calendar of the activity it is used to plan the capacity ==> maybe you would need to make a calendar for each employee (too much work I think).

Note that in MS project when you "gray" days is for all the activities, to make that in PS you should make a factory calendar with those days as no working days. I have talking to "gray" those days for each activity.

Sorry if this is not very clear (it has taken me an hour with several interrupts).

SAP Tips by: Guillermo Lopez

I very much agree with Guillermo, and I would suggest to go for his ideea. In my opinion using personal capacity planing in PS-HR is very inflexible and deficitary.

However, the link PS-HR you are asking for,

1. In work center (Transsaction: change work center) you will have to assign the persons from HR, you will have to be carefull as in the transaction there are 2 methods/buttons to assign persons to a work center. now I cannot tell you by heart which one is effectively linking the HR with PS, as only one works, you will have to try both of them (swich to capacity view and you'll see one button sth. "Link to HR" and then the other option is in the menu bar)

2. In HR - you will have to work with your HR colleagues maybe, should be maintained some HR Infotypes: Transaction PA61,
Infotype 0007 - planned working time (e.g. 8 hr. a day)
Infotype 0005 - vacation
Infotype 2001, type pf Infotype 0100 - absences

For the infotype 0007 - you will have alreadythe Arbeitszeitplanregel "rule to plan the working time", if I translate correct from german, which will set the calender for you. This is made with another HR transaction for the HR calender ....this calender(e.g. factory calender) has to be then generated/activated for every month (separate transaction). I do not remember all the transactions codes now, but is pretty much intuitiv, as the system will give you the steps while maintaining the Infotypes.

3. Then you plan the persons in the Activities for a determined period of time. In CMP9 you'll see the availability with the standard working hours (8Hr/day, as set in HR in calender) and the absences (as planed in HR in infotypes) with empty cells (Nota Bene: these cells have in transactions CMP2 and CMP3 a change modus, are not grey or inactive !!!!!) You can change the planing then with the transactions CMP2 or CMP3, one is from project, the other from workcenter point of view . If you make changes in CMP2 or 3 you will not see the changes in Project builder for example. With CMP9 you can only view the personals planing for a workcenter, a project...

I remember there is another transaction to see the personal availability somewhere in the Infosystem> PS>capacity. You'll have to look for it and generate it from Mandant 000.

Unfortunately, there are some more constraints, which you will discover while testing.