While planning projects, it is not always clear who from the team would have the bandwidth to take up the projects. 

Here, placeholders come handy while helping you plan your projects and assign tasks with precision. 

Using Placeholders in Rocketlane, you can define the different kinds of roles and expertise that are needed in the project and assign placeholders to the tasks accordingly. Eventually you can assign any team member to the placeholders according to availability and expertise.

Let's have a look at how we can create placeholders and utilise them.

Managing Placeholders

Placeholders in Rocketlane are always created for a 'Role'. 

For each role you create in the system, Rocketlane creates a placeholder for you automatically. You can also have more than one placeholders for a role.

Note: Please make sure the Use as placeholder check box is checked for the roles you wish to create and use placeholders for.

1. Go to Settings > Roles.
   
   
2. In the Roles section, click on More Actions icon for the role you want to use as placeholder.
   
   
3. Click Edit role.
   
   
4. In the Edit role dialog box, select the Use as placeholder checkbox and click Save.
   
   
5. Notice that the Use as placeholder column is now checked for your role.
   
   

   Note: In case the role you want does not exist you can create a new role and use it as a placeholder. 

Using Placeholders in Templates

You can use placeholders in your templates to mention which task is taken care of by which specific role such as customer success or implementation consultation. There are placeholders for your customers too!

1. For an existing template, go to Templates > Project Templates and select your template.
   
   
2. Select any task. In the Task details section on the right side of the view, click Choose under Assigned to.
   
   
   
   
3. You can assign the task to any placeholder. Select any placeholder from the options available under the Placeholders section.
   
   
4. You can also create a new placeholder by clicking +New. 
   
   
   
   
5. In the New Placeholder dialog box, select a role from the options available and name your new placeholder. Click Create New to create a new placeholder.
   
   You can even have placeholders for your customer.
   
   
   
   
6. You can assign multiple placeholders to a task. All the selected placeholders will be reflected under the Assignees section. 
   
   Click Done once you have assigned all placeholders for the task.
   
   
   
   
7. Click Save on the top-right side of the screen to save the changes made to the template.
   
   

Resolving Placeholders during Project Create

While creating a project using a template which has placeholders, you can assign the placeholders to your team members who are qualified to take up the responsibility.

Doing so, the team members will be added to the project and all relevant tasks will be assigned to them.

1. Go to Projects > New Project. Select the template with placeholders assigned under Choose a project template. Click Next: Teammates.
   
   
   
   
2. Choose your team members and invite team members from the customer's team too. Select Next: Placeholders.
   
   
   
   
3. In the Assign Tasks section, you can view the different placeholders with number of tasks assigned to them based on the template being used for creating the project. 
   
   Team members added to the project in the previous step will be auto-assigned based on the placeholders. You can also manually change the auto assigned team members. 
   
   
   
   
4. You can manually assign team members to placeholders. 
   
   
5. You can also select the checkbox for assigning all unassigned tasks to the Project owner.
   
   
6. Click Next: Project Fields and fill in all additional information regarding the project. Click Create project once you are done.

Resolving Placeholders globally

Easily resolve placeholders by assigning actual team members with just one click using the 'Manage Placeholder' feature.

1. Click on the "Manage Placeholder" icon on the top right corner within your project.

2. You would get a list of placeholders with the total number of tasks assigned, under each placeholder. 

Clicking on the dropdown will reveal the list of team members.

Once you select the respective team member for all the placeholders and click "Done", the placeholder gets auto resolved and the tasks will be assigned to the team members without requiring manual assignment.

Resolving Placeholders from Tasks

From Task Pane

1. From the Project Plan or List view, you can select a task and click Choose under the Assign to option.
   
   
   
   
2. Notice that the task assignees can either be placeholders or team members.  
   
   In case you add a placeholder to the list of assignees, the Find a team member feature allows you to list team members with the role selected.
   
   
   
   
3. Choose from a list of team members in the Assign Placeholders dialog box. You can even invite team members who are not a part of the project and assign tasks to them. Click Done.
   
   

From Task List

In the List view, you can assign placeholders and/ or team members to the tasks under the Assignee section.

From Bulk Edits

1. You can select multiple tasks from the left-most check-box of each task from the List view.
   
   
   
   
2. The Add assignee option under People lets you add an assignee to all the selected tasks.
   
   The Reassign to option under People lets you reassign all the selected tasks to new assignees. 
   
   

Hey! Here's hoping that this support document was useful. You can write to us at care@rocketlane.com in case of any queries.