How to find available people for a project

New work incoming – who can do it?

Written By Matti Parviainen

Last updated 8 days ago

Overview

When a new project comes in or an existing project needs more people, you need to quickly answer: who is available, who has the right skills, and who could start when?

Operating gives you several ways to find the right person for a position: filtering the people timeline by availability, using the Suggest feature on open positions, and saving reusable views for ongoing staffing work. This guide walks through each approach.

Prerequisites

Approach 1: Use the people timeline to find availability

The people timeline is your primary tool for seeing who is free, when.

Open the people timeline

Navigate to the Dual timeline and select People from the toggle in the top-right corner (Projects | both | People). By default, people are sorted by availability — those with the most free time appear at the top.

Filter by role, site, or group

Use the filter bar at the top of the timeline to narrow the list. Common filters for staffing:

  • Role — show only Developers, Designers, or whichever role you need

  • Seniority — narrow to Senior, Mid, Junior, etc.

  • Site — filter to a specific office when the project requires on-site presence or a particular time zone

  • Group — show people in a specific practice or department (e.g., Engineering, Advisory)

  • Skills — filter by one or more skills the position requires

You can combine filters. For example: Role is Developer + Seniority is Senior + Skill includes TypeScript narrows to senior developers who know TypeScript.

Read the availability bars

Each person's row shows a summary bar indicating how booked they are. The color and fill tell you:

  • Empty / light — the person has free capacity during that period

  • Fully filled — 100% allocated, no room for additional work

  • Exceeding 100% — the person is overbooked (this can happen intentionally with tentative allocations)

Hover over a person's summary bar to see the breakdown by project. Click the row to expand it and see all their individual allocations.

Look at the right time period

Use the timeline zoom and date controls to focus on the period when you need someone. If the project starts in three months, scroll or set the start date so you can see who has capacity at that time — someone fully booked today may be free by then.

Approach 2: Use Suggest on an open position

If you have a position in a project that doesn't have a person assigned yet, Operating can suggest candidates based on the position's requirements.

  1. Open the project timeline and find the project with the open position (shown without a name, just the role).

  2. Click the open position to expand it.

  3. Click Find Person… (or the Suggest button, depending on the view).

  4. Operating shows a list of people who match the position's role, seniority, and skills. People with more free capacity during the allocation period are ranked higher.

  5. Select a person to assign them to the position.

This approach works best when the position already has a role, seniority, and optionally skills defined — the more information on the position, the better the suggestions.

Tip: If the suggestion list doesn't show who you're looking for, check whether external people are being excluded. Under Settings → View Options → External People, you can control whether external contractors appear in suggestion lists by default. See View Options.

Approach 3: Use the Positions list to see all open needs

For a broader view of all staffing needs across the organization:

  1. Navigate to the Positions list.

  2. Filter with Person is None to show only positions that haven't been assigned to anyone yet.

  3. This gives you a list of all open positions across all projects — your staffing to-do list.

  4. From this list, you can use Suggest on each position to find matching people.

Tip: Save this as a view (e.g., "Open Staffing Needs") and pin it to your sidebar for quick access. If multiple people handle staffing, each person can create their own view by adding a filter for Staffing Owner is me (requires the Secondary Project Owner feature to be enabled in Settings → Projects — name it "Staffing Owner" or similar).

Save and share views for repeated use

Staffing is a recurring activity — you'll come back to the same filters regularly. Rather than rebuilding filters every time, save them as views.

  1. Set up the filters you use most (e.g., Role is Developer + Person is None, or Group is Engineering sorted by availability).

  2. Click the Save view option that appears in the filter bar.

  3. Give the view a name and optional description.

  4. Share it with relevant groups in your organization (e.g., share your "Engineering Bench" view with the Engineering group so all staffing managers in that practice can use it).

Saved views are personal by default but can be shared with groups. See Views (Saved Filters) for details.

Useful saved views for staffing

Here are some views that staffing teams commonly create:

  • "On the bench" — People timeline filtered to people with 0% allocation in the current or upcoming period. These are the people who need work most urgently.

  • "Open positions" — Positions list filtered to Person is None. Your active staffing to-do list.

  • "My staffing needs" — Open positions where Staffing Owner is me. Your personal to-do list.

  • "Tentative pipeline" — Projects filtered to Project Status is Tentative. All projects that haven't been confirmed yet — these represent upcoming staffing demand.

  • "Overbooked people" — People with allocations exceeding 100%. These need attention: if a tentative deal is won, conflicts need to be resolved.

Deciding between candidates

Once you've found a shortlist of available people, consider these factors:

  • Skill match — Open a person's profile (click their name → Open Full Profile) to see their full skill list, including levels and feelings. Someone marked "Expert, Tired of" on a skill is available but may prefer different work.

  • Confirmed vs. tentative load — A person with 100% tentative allocation might still be available if that deal falls through. A person with 100% confirmed allocation is truly booked. See Understanding confirmed vs. tentative allocations for more on this distinction.

  • Employment dates — Check that the person's employment covers the project period. Someone with an upcoming employment end date may not be suitable for long-running work.

  • Cost implications — If you have access to cost rates, compare the margin impact of different candidates. A more senior person costs more internally but may also command a higher billing rate.

What to do next

Once you've found the right person:

  1. Assign them to the position — either from the Suggest flow or by adding them to the position directly.

  2. Create allocations — plan their time on the project with the right dates, percentage, and status (confirmed or tentative). See How to manage allocations.

  3. Communicate — let the person and relevant stakeholders know about the assignment. Operating makes the plan visible, but staffing decisions often need a conversation alongside the system update.

For a complete walkthrough of the staffing process, including building the team setup and handling changes, see How to staff a project from scratch and the Staffing Routine with Operating guide.

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