As a project manager, resource requests let you ask for the right people without creating bookings yourself.
Instead of booking people for services in the budgets and deals you manage directly, you define what you need such as skills, period, and allocation and submit a request that a resource manager can review, discuss, and resolve.
This keeps planning transparent and avoids manual coordination outside Productive.
📌 Note: Your ability to create, edit, or track resource requests depends on your permissions in Productive. Learn more about resource request permissions here.
Where Project Managers Create Resource Requests
Resource requests are created in budgets or deals.
Navigate to the relevant budget or deal
Open the Resource Requests tab (this is where you'll see all existing requests for that budget or a deal)
Click + Request in the upper right to start drafting your new request
Creating a Resource Request
When you create a resource request, a sidebar opens with the following sections.
1) Basic details
Request title
Add a request title so you and the resource manager can quickly understand what is being requested.Service
Preselected based on the budget or deal. This helps connect the request to planned work.
2) Period and allocation
Define when and how much capacity you need.
Date range – select start and end dates
Allocation – choose one of:
Total hours
Hours per day
Percentage of the user's capacity (based on their cost rate)
3) Cost expectations (optional)
Max cost per hour (set the maximum hourly rate to filter the request to only include people whose cost matches their defined cost rates)
Currency (pre-filled according to the budget currency)
Total cost (calculated automatically)
📌 The total cost is calculated based on: working days (date range) × max hourly cost
This helps resource managers understand and set cost expectations before any bookings are created.
4) Requested person profile
Use this section to describe the person you’re looking for.
Employee and custom fields
Select any fields your organization uses to describe people, such as:Job title
Workplace
Skills
Seniority
Role-related attributes
📌 What you can select here will depend on the employee details and employee fields you created and filled in for your team.
Note
Add free-text context or clarifications, such as:Must-have vs nice-to-have skills
Flexibility on requirements
Saving and Tracking the Request
Once saved:
The request status is set to Pending
A feed is created where you can:
Add comments
Respond to questions
Track updates
You can always return to the Resource Requests tab on the budget/deal to check:
Status
Who created the request
When it was created
Editing or Canceling a Request
As the requester, you can:
Edit your request if details change and update it
Cancel the request if it’s no longer needed
Delete it entirely if it was created by mistake
Tip: Copy an existing request instead of creating one from scratch. That's especially useful when you only need to change a few details.
📌 All actions are recorded in the request’s feed.
What’s Next
After creating a resource request, you might wonder: what happens to my request next?
1) Notifications
Resource managers with the right permissions receive an email and in-app notification that a new request has been created. You, as the requester, will also get updates when comments are added or when the request status changes.
👉 Learn more about resource request permissions, notifications, and subscribers.
2) Resource Manager Review
Resource managers evaluate your request, suggest the best-fitting people, and can resolve, reject, or discuss the request.
👉 Learn more about resolving resource requests.
3) Result if Approved
If the request is approved, the best-matching users are assigned and bookings are created.
Communication between the project manager and resource manager can continue in the request’s feed if clarification is needed.
📌 Important: Approved requests create bookings, but assigned users may not automatically be included in the budget.
Project managers and resource managers should make sure that all booked users are added to the relevant budget or deal. This ensures their time can be tracked against the correct services.
At the moment, Productive allows bookings to be created for users who aren’t explicitly included in the budget/deal, which can cause issues with time tracking.
You can add a user either directly from the booking (using the violet Add button) or via the sharing options on the budget or a deal.
