Resourcing interacts with different audiences across different tools. In this article, we will apply what we learned in the other resourcing articles to walk through an example working session– and see how it all comes together using real-world situations and data.

Before going through the example working session, it's important to note the details of everything that is set up on the studio side. This allows you to understand the intention and more easily follow the mental map throughout.
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In the next few sections, we will walk through how the statuses are set, who our available resources are, and what our sessions look like.

In Talent & Crew, I have a number of users added to act as my resources– users with varying skills, unique user properties, email addresses for contact, rates, and assigned agencies.

In my Planning Calendar, I have added Sessions for each day of the week through the month. The sessions vary by Production Type and have custom properties for unique qualities about the shoot. They are also assigned across two different sub-locations in my main location, Set A & Set B.

When setting up my calendar view for working, I will first enable the Session Lane, and then choose to group it by Production Type – so I can more easily see what I am booking for.

For my Resource List display settings, I will choose to group the list by Skills, and save it as a view I can easily access later.

For the Sessions where the apparel is grouped to a specific gender, I will also create an additional saved view where the Resource List is sub-grouped by Gender.

With my Sessions created, my resources all set, and my views configured, I can now move into the actual resourcing work for the session.

For the availability phase of resourcing, my goals are simple– I need to review the planned sessions and request availability for users who have the correct skills for the session.

Despite some sessions having special requirements, I know all sessions will need at least one photographer. This is a great use-case for combining the skill grouping with bulk-availability requesting.

After releasing, I see the new Calendar Entry pop-up, with all of the resources I previously bulk selected added to the list, and the days I slid across as the range.
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When the request has been sent, I can click the 'x' on the Quick Island Bar to deselect the users and prepare for my next resource group.

For other more general roles, I will repeat the same steps until I have requested availability for Photographers, Art Directors, Hair & Makeup, & Stylists.

For more speciality roles, or for sessions requiring more than what we would normally book for a set, I will review the custom properties/session notes and isolate the specific days they will be needed. Then I will send manual requests for those users for that specific date.

I will also address Models separately, as I need to consider that some are gendered shoots, some dont require models at all, that the agency may not appreciate a blanket availability request, as well as other details– like that some of my brands prefer certain models.

As resources enter the booking portal and respond to requests, their confirmed availability or unavailability will populate live on the calendar view.

With the availability answers in, we can begin to select candidates for each role via an optional shortlisting process.

In the shortlisting phase, we will build a shortlist of candidates for the required planning sessions internally– none of the changes made in this phase will be reflected externally to the resources we select. To do this, we will utilize our 'Option' booking status that we configured previously.

Because Option is hidden from the portal, there's no email and no notification– the calendar is now a working document for the studio. During this phase, we will:

If we set multiple resources as Options, we can also consult with other stakeholders– then use the 'confirmed' state of the Options to narrow down and mark the final selection. Since Options are hidden, it won't affect anything other than the marker.

With our options set and shortlisting complete, we can move on to the true booking phase of our resourcing process loop.

Because true booking involves informing our available and selected resources of our intention to book them for a set, we will need to reach out with a new non-hidden status. In our demonstration example, we will be using the Hold and Confirmed statuses, respectively.

For our non-selected options from the shortlisting round, we will use the Hold status to let them know they are an option but not currently tied to the session.

For our selected option from the shortlisting round, we will use the Confirmed status to let them know they are selected for the session and need to confirm.

From the resources side, they receive either an acknowledgment of the hold status or a request to confirm for the confirmation status.

With all my selected resources informed and confirmed, I can now assign my confirmed candidates to the set they will be working on. I can optionally send them a notification to check and see the set details, or include an optional note.

The link is two-way. Once assigned, the resource appears on the Session's Team tab in the session panel, and additionally, via an assignment bar marked on their calendar row for the session days.

So you can read it either direction: open a session to see who's on it, or look at a resource's row to see what they're on.

When comfortable with our selections, confirmations, and assignments, we can loop back and release our holds using the 'Release' status, which is acknowledge-only.

The resourcing user will receive an automated message that states their status has changed from 'Hold' to 'Released' and prompts them to acknowledge the change.