People and placeholders

Anyone who appears on the schedule is a person — added on the Resources page. This page covers adding real people and editing their details, using placeholders for roles you haven't filled, booking external parties you hand work to but don't manage, and archiving someone who leaves.

TIP

A person on the schedule doesn't get a CapacityLens sign-in, and inviting a member doesn't put them on the schedule. These are deliberately separate — see Roles and permissions.

Add a person

1. Open Resources.
2. Click Add resource.
3. Fill in the fields below and save.

At normal dialog widths, the resource details use compact label-and-control rows. They stack vertically on a narrow screen, while the Working days grid remains full width.

• Name — required.
• Role — a free-text label, for example "Senior Designer". Optional.
• Discipline — which group this person shows under on the schedule, and where their colour comes from. Only shown if your company uses disciplines, which is the default. Disciplines themselves are created and coloured on the standalone Disciplines page in the main navigation, not here — see Settings for the on/off switch.
• Engagement — choose Studio for someone regarded as part of the core studio or Supplementary for additional capacity. This is separate from both their contract status and their discipline, and it doesn't change how utilisation is worked out.
• Working days — use the compact radio grid to choose Full day, Half day or Not working for every day from Monday to Sunday. A full day is eight hours, a half day is four hours and a non-working day is zero hours.

Working days drive the utilisation figures directly: CapacityLens compares that fixed 8/4/0-hour pattern with the person's bookings to decide whether they're over capacity. The days that count are those in both this pattern and the company's global working days — a day outside either holds no capacity for this person. Set the pattern correctly, or the overwork indicators on the schedule will be wrong for that person.

Open Engagement to choose between the two company-facing groups. The current choice has a tick. Saving Supplementary moves the person into that section immediately; it does not change their discipline, role or working days.

The new row appears on the schedule immediately, ready for allocations and time off. There's no account to create and nothing for the person to sign in to.

Edit a person

1. Open Resources.
2. Click the edit icon next to the person's row.
3. Change any field and save.

For example, if someone goes part-time, open their row and change the relevant days to Half day or Not working. Existing allocations aren't rewritten, but every utilisation figure you see after saving reflects their new working pattern.

Existing working patterns are preserved after upgrading: a day that was selected remains a full day, and a day that was unselected remains not working.

Find people quickly

By default, the Resources page separates people into Studio and Supplementary sections, followed by the existing Placeholders and External sections. An Editor, Admin or Owner can turn Group resources by engagement off in Settings to combine people into one list. Rows in each section are alphabetical, while the Disciplines page is alphabetical too.

People and external parties have a star beside their edit and archive actions. Select it to add that row to the company's favourites; the star fills yellow and the row moves to the top of its engagement section while favourites and non-favourites each stay alphabetical. The schedule likewise keeps Studio before Supplementary within each discipline and favourites first inside each partition. When grouping is off, favourites lead the combined People list and each discipline instead. The External group keeps its own favourites-first order. Favourites are shared company data, so everyone sees the same order. Placeholders cannot be favourited.

Placeholders

A placeholder is a slot on the schedule for a role you know is coming but haven't hired or assigned yet — "a Design Lead" instead of a named person. Placeholders are off by default; an Owner or Admin turns them on for the company in Settings.

Once turned on, the Resources page shows a separate Placeholders section with its own Add placeholder button. A placeholder's name is optional — you can leave it blank and it shows by its role instead — but it must be bound to a project, since a placeholder only makes sense as capacity you're planning to book against specific work. Placeholder rows carry a small "placeholder" badge so they're never mistaken for a real person, and the same hatched styling carries through to their row on the schedule. A placeholder has no personal working pattern, so its capacity and ordinary allocations follow the company's working days.

Turning placeholders off in Settings doesn't delete them — it hides the section, the schedule rows and the assignee picker entry, and everything reappears if you turn the setting back on.

External parties

An external party is an outside company you hand work to but don't manage — a print shop, an overflow studio, a freelance agency you brief rather than schedule directly. They can appear on the schedule so you can see the handoff, but they carry no hours and never count toward your team's capacity or utilisation.

Use an external party instead of a placeholder when the work is genuinely leaving your team — there's no working-hours or working-days figure to set, because there's no capacity to track. Use a placeholder instead when you're planning to fill the work with someone on your own team's capacity, even if you haven't hired or named them yet. An external party's bookings use their literal start and end dates.

External parties are off by default; an Owner or Admin turns them on for the company in Settings.

1. Open Resources.
2. Under External, click Add external party.
3. Fill in Company (required) and, optionally, a Descriptor — for example "Print" or "Overflow dev" — and save.

Turning external parties off in Settings hides the section and its rows the same way placeholders do, without deleting anything.

Archive someone who leaves

Deleting a person outright isn't the first step — removing a row from the Resources list archives it instead. Archiving hides the person from the schedule and the assignee picker but keeps their history, so past allocations and reports aren't rewritten.

1. Open Resources.
2. Click the delete icon next to the person's row.
3. Confirm Archive resource?

Owners and administrators see grouped archived resources at the bottom of the Resources page: Archived Studio, Archived Supplementary and Archived External, followed by Archived placeholders when needed. Restore someone there, or delete the archived record to begin the 30-day retention period before permanent deletion becomes available in Settings.

What's next

Projects and allocations covers booking a person's time against real work, and Time off covers marking them unavailable.