Auto Assign Tasks to Project Team Members using Roles

Last Modified On: June 11, 2026

When creating your project plan, you can define the role responsible for each task. Later, when you're ready to staff the project, add your resources as Project Team Members and assign them their respective project roles. Inspire Planner can then automatically assign tasks to project team members whose roles match the roles defined on the tasks, streamlining the resource assignment process.

Step 1: Define a Role for Project Tasks

The first step is to define the role responsible for each project task. Assigning roles during project planning helps identify the type of resource required and enables automatic task assignment later when project team members are added to the project.

Helpful Hint: We recommend defining a role for each project task in your project templates. This ensures that any new projects created from the template automatically inherit the task roles, making resource planning and assignment more efficient.

To customize the picklist values for Role, please see Admin Guide - Customize Role Picklist.

The multi-role field is a multi-select picklist which means you can select multiple roles. 

Step 2: Add Project Team Members

Once you have defined roles for your project tasks, the next step is to add your Project Team Members. Project Team Members represent the resources who will be assigned to work on tasks within the project. Each team member can be assigned a role, allowing Inspire Planner to match and assign tasks based on role requirements.

Click on the Team tab at the top of your project schedule.

Click on New.
 

Search for the resource (User, Contact, or Queue), select the appropriate Role for that resource, and then click Save. Repeat this process until all required Project Team Members have been added to the project.

Please note the following:

• If multiple Project Team Members share the same role, Inspire Planner will assign tasks associated with that role to all matching team members. This allows work to be distributed among resources who fulfill the same role within the project.
   

• When a Salesforce User is added as a Project Team Member, Inspire Planner automatically creates a Project Collaborator record with Viewer permissions by default. If you do not want the user to be added as a collaborator, set Add as Collaborator to False. You can also modify the collaborator's permission level as needed.
   

  For Contacts and Queues, selecting Add as Collaborator = True does not automatically create a collaborator record. Contacts must be added as collaborators separately using the Add Collaborator icon in the Project Toolbar.
   

  If a collaborator record already exists for a user, Inspire Planner will not create a duplicate collaborator record.
   

• Switching between tabs within a project does not automatically refresh the page. To ensure that the latest values are displayed in the Assigned To column, manually refresh the page after making changes to project team assignments.
   
• For larger projects, it may also take some time for the assignment trigger to complete processing and create the task assignments. If the expected assignments are not immediately visible, allow a few moments for processing to finish and then refresh the page to view the updated results.
   
• Completed tasks are excluded from the assignment process.

When Project Team Members are added to a project, Inspire Planner automatically assigns tasks to them when their Project Team Role matches the Role defined on the project task. A corresponding Salesforce Task is also created immediately for each assigned task.

If you prefer to assign tasks only when they are ready to be worked on, you can configure the project's Auto Assign Mode to control when task assignments and Salesforce Tasks are created. For more information, please see Auto Assign Mode.

Managing Project Teams

If you need to replace a Project Team Member, simply edit the existing Project Team record and select a different User or Contact. Inspire Planner will unassign any applicable project tasks from the previous resource and delete the corresponding Salesforce Tasks (provided no time entries have been logged). It will then assign the project tasks to the new resource and create a new set of Salesforce Tasks.

If you change the Role on a Project Team record, Inspire Planner will unassign the resource from tasks associated with the previous role and delete the related Salesforce Tasks (provided no time entries have been logged). The resource will then be assigned to any project tasks matching the newly selected role, and a new set of Salesforce Tasks will be created.

If you delete a Project Team record, Inspire Planner will unassign the resource from any project tasks where the resource is assigned and the Project Task Role matches the Project Team Role. Any related Salesforce Tasks will also be deleted (provided no time entries have been logged). The associated Project Collaborator record will be removed automatically unless the Project Team Member is the project owner.

If you change the value in the Multi-Role field on a project task, Inspire Planner will automatically unassign any resource previously assigned through the prior role configuration. The task can then be reassigned based on the updated Multi-Role values and the available Project Team Members that match those roles.

In summary:

WHEN Project Team with No Role is edited and a Role is added

THEN

• Project tasks with No Role retain their assignment 
• Project tasks with Role that match the Role added to Project team gets assigned to resource 

WHEN Project Team with Role is edited and the Role is changed

THEN

• Project tasks with former role are unassigned from the resource and related Salesforce Tasks are deleted (provided no time entries have been logged)
• Project tasks with Role that match the new role added to Project team gets assigned to resource 

WHEN Project Team with Role is edited and the Role is removed

THEN

• Project tasks with former role are unassigned from the resource and related Salesforce Tasks are deleted (provided no time entries have been logged)

WHEN Project Team with No Role is deleted

THEN

• Project Tasks assigned to the resource where project task role is BLANK get unassigned and related Salesforce Tasks are deleted (provided no time entries have been logged)

WHEN Project Team with a Role is deleted

THEN

• Project Tasks assigned to the resource where project task role matches the project team role gets unassigned and related Salesforce Tasks are deleted (provided no time entries have been logged)

In all cases above, Completed tasks are excluded from the process and will remain assigned to the original resource.