Summary
Work Roles are part of Planhat's suite of PSA features
Work Roles are used in Workflow Templates to denote ownership of a piece of work (Task or Scheduled Time), by specifying a general job role (e.g. Project Manager or Implementation Manager), rather than referring to Company ownership (e.g. Account Owner)
This acts like a placeholder assignment
Once a Workflow Template has been applied to a Company, you would then assign your choice of User to each Work Role in the Workflow (selecting the User who has the necessary capacity/skills), and that automatically assigns the relevant Tasks / Scheduled Times to that User
Who is this article for?
Anyone who would like to learn about Planhat's Work Roles
It's particularly relevant for Planhat Users who work in Service Delivery / Professional Services / Project Management / Implementation etc.
It's also relevant to Planhat Admins who configure their Planhat tenant for their organization (e.g. Ops)
This feature is part of Planhat Service Automation (PSA), also sometimes referred to as Professional Services or Service Delivery.
If you don't have access to these features and would like to add them, please speak with your Planhat CSM.
Series
This article is part of both our Workflows article series and our PSA article series. The most relevant articles are:
Article contents
Introduction
📌 Definition
"Work Roles" are part of Planhat's suite of PSA features. Work Roles are used in Workflow Templates to denote ownership of a piece of work (Task or Scheduled Time), by specifying a general job role (e.g. Project Manager), rather than referring to Company ownership.
In Project Management, Professional Services, Service Delivery and Implementation, it's common to have a person who's responsible for a piece of work, without being responsible for the "Company" (the customer/prospect organization in Planhat).
For example, let's say there is an Onboarding Project for your new customer Company "Apple", which is "owned" in your Planhat tenant by the Customer Success Manager (CSM) "Becky Booth", but you will also need someone from your pool of Implementation Managers to run some of the training sessions.
In this scenario, you could create a Workflow Template for Onboarding, which states that some Tasks / Scheduled Times are the responsibility of the Company Owner, while some other Tasks / Scheduled Times are the responsibility of someone from the Implementation Team.
When this Workflow Template is applied to the Company "Apple", the Tasks / Scheduled Times assigned to the Company Owner have the CSM "Becky Booth", filled in, but those assigned to the "Implementation Manager" Work Role initially just state that. Then (as the leader of the Implementation Team) you can review which Implementation Manager has capacity, and assign the most appropriate User to this Onboarding. Rather than needing to select this User as the Implementation Manager for each piece of work within the Workflow, it can be updated in bulk, everywhere that the Work Role was specified.
You can also define Billing Rates and Cost Rates in Work Roles, and these feed through when e.g. you are logging time in Time Entries. Another place you'll see Work Roles is when reviewing capacity and assigning Users to Scheduled Time in the "Resource Allocation" System Report Page.
📌 Definitions
"Company" is the Planhat data model for organizations that are your customers or prospects
"User" is the Planhat data model for users of Planhat, i.e. you and your co-workers; sometimes you will see this called "Team Members"
📌 Important to note
Work Roles should not be confused with Roles within the "Settings" Global Tool, which are Planhat's version of profiles or permission sets.
What are Work Roles?
"Work Roles" are a feature within Workflows, particularly Projects. They are a way to assign the ownership of a piece of work to a team, where an individual User is assigned later, based on capacity - rather than using a dynamic reference linked to the Company.
You configure Work Roles within Workflow Templates, and then those Work Roles follow through when individual Workflows are created from them.
📌 Important to note
Work Roles are custom to each Workflow Template, so you won't see specific Work Roles such as "Project Manager" unless you set them up - we explain how here.
"Work Roles" is a tab within Workflow Templates (example shown below) and their respective Workflows.
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You can also see a "Work Role" column in the main "Workflow" tab of Workflow Templates (example shown below), and the equivalent "Overview" tab of Workflows.
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Similarly, you can see a "Work Role" column in the "Scheduled Time" tab in both Workflow Templates and Workflows.
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🚀 Tip
If you can't see these tabs or columns, please refer to our Work Roles technical deep-dive article here, where we take you through the setup steps.
When you're allocating work (Scheduled Time) via a "Resource Allocation" System Report Page, you'll see that that is grouped by Work Role.
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Why use Work Roles?
Work Roles are particularly applicable to PSA (Professional Services / Service Delivery / Project Management) use cases.
The general concept is that you are configuring processes via Project Workflows, and in Workflow Templates you define who is responsible for each step / piece of work.
You could always use dynamic references such as "Account Owner", meaning once the Workflow Template was applied to a Company, the Owner of that Company would be responsible for that step. However, that didn't solve for the scenario where you have an Implementation Team, Onboarding Team, Project Team or similar, who are not directly responsible for or linked to a Company, but instead are allocated to fixed-term projects based on their capacity at the time.
For example, let's say that a designated CSM is the Owner of each Company, and manages them in the long term, but an Implementation Manager runs most of the initial training sessions for new customer Companies.
Work Roles mean you can specify in Workflow Templates that these teams (Implementation Managers in this example) are responsible for certain pieces of work (e.g. training sessions). Work Roles act a bit like placeholders in Workflows, but once you have identified which User will fulfil each Work Role (e.g. Stefano Marino will be the Implementation Manager for Gong's Onboarding Workflow), you can apply this allocation in bulk, quickly and easily.
How to set up and use Work Roles
Here's a quick summary of the most common process.
🚀 Tip
When you're configuring a Company Project Workflow Template, click into the "Work Roles" tab, and add your Work Roles
You can have one or multiple
At a minimum, you need to give a name to each Work Role; you can also add Billing Rate, Cost Rate and Currency
Typically you don't fill in an Assignee at this Workflow Template stage, as it will be allocated per individual Workflow
Each Work Role is specific to the Workflow Template where it's created
Within the "Workflow" tab of the Workflow Template, use the "Work Role" column to select a Work Role for any relevant Task step
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Similarly, make sure that each associated Scheduled Time (as shown in the Scheduled Times" tab) has a Work Role selected if necessary
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Once you have finished configuring your Workflow Template and activated it, apply it to your choice of Company to create a Workflow for that Company
You will see the associated Tasks and Scheduled Times created for that Company
Bulk assigning: in the "Work Roles" tab of the Workflow, specify your choice of User for each Work Role (in the Assignee column)
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In the "Overview" tab, you will see that the Owner of each Task step has now been assigned, based on those Work Roles:
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And similarly, in the "Scheduled Times" tab, you will see that the "Assignee" of each Scheduled Time has been filled in as per the Work Roles:
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🚀 Tip - bulk reassigning: you can similarly make changes to which User is assigned to which Work Role in the "Work Roles" tab of the Workflow - e.g., let's say an assigned User is now needed elsewhere and so a Work Role is reassigned to a different User - the User will be automatically updated for the relevant Tasks and Scheduled Times too
As well as bulk assigning Tasks and Scheduled Times via Workflows, it's also possible to bulk assign Scheduled Time to Users via the "Resource Allocation" System Report Page. The unassigned work is organized by Work Role as well as Workflow, and you can use the utilization (capacity) table on the right-hand side to identify which User should be assigned to that group of Scheduled Times.
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Further reading
This article has summarized some key points of Work Roles.
For further details, check out our technical deep-dive article here.