This feature is currently being rolled out across Float. If you don’t see it in your account yet, it will be available to your team in the coming weeks—stay tuned!
Role-based planning lets you build a project timeline using required roles rather than assigning specific people right away. So instead of allocating Alex Smith specifically, you can plan for roles such as Senior Designer, Backend Developer, or QA Engineer, and assign the right team members later.
Role-based planning supports project planning and estimating. It helps you:
Scope work before staffing is finalized
Forecast demand and hiring needs
Estimate budgets and margins accurately
Plan future or tentative work with confidence
Smart assign
If your team uses role-based planning, Smart assign helps you find the best people for unassigned roles. When assigning a person or swapping someone on a project, it recommends people from your team based on role fit and availability.
Recommendations are shown only when:
The project has been saved (a project ID exists), and
The project has start and end dates set (if you have already added allocations, the project dates adjust automatically).
If these conditions are not met, recommendations will not appear. Smart assign requires both a saved project and a valid date range to calculate availability.
Recommendations appear directly in the person selector so you can review, compare, and assign in just a few clicks.
You can use Smart assign in:
How recommendations work
Smart assign uses machine learning–based semantic matching to recommend people for a role. In simple terms, the system behaves like a smart search tool:
It analyzes how closely a person's role title matches the planned role (role match).
It checks how much availability that person has within the relevant project dates (capacity fit).
It ranks the best matches and shows them in the Smart assign section.
Smart assign does not automatically assign people or make staffing decisions. It simply surfaces recommendations so you can choose the best option.
Role match
Smart assign recommends people whose roles are a strong fit for the planned work on the project. It uses a matching approach that goes beyond simple keyword or exact title matching, so you’re not just picking anyone who happens to be free.
For example, if the planned role is Senior Designer, Smart assign may recommend:
Senior Designer, Designer, Junior Designer, or Art Director. This flexibility ensures relevant matches beyond exact title matches.
Availability (capacity fit)
Smart assign checks availability against a defined date range.
If allocations already exist for the unassigned role, availability is evaluated against those exact allocation dates.
If no allocations exist yet, availability is evaluated across the entire project duration.
If no date range exists, Smart Assign won't generate recommendations.
Privacy and data handling
Smart assign is designed to respect team privacy and keep you in control of staffing decisions. It uses machine learning and semantic matching, but not generative AI. It behaves more like a smart search that understands the relationship between role titles and combines that with availability to suggest potential matches. For example, it can recognize that roles like Senior Designer and Art Director may be closely related, then check who with similar roles is available.
Smart assign does not:
Access personal or sensitive employee data
Identify or analyze people based on personal attributes.
Learn from your data over time
Send your data outside Float
Automatically assign or override your decisions
Smart assign simply evaluates roles and availability within your workspace to produce recommendations. It does not know who someone is by name—only how closely a role matches the one you're trying to fill.
Smart assign a person to an unassigned role
To assign a recommended person to an unassigned role:
Open a saved project in Project view, Project plan, or the project side panel.
Ensure the project has start and end dates set.
Click the unassigned role.
Review the Smart assign section in the person selector.
Select the best match.
Confirm with Assign person.
Smart swap a person on a project
To smart swap someone on a project:
Open a saved project in Project view, Project plan, or the project side panel.
Ensure the project has start and end dates set.
Click the action menu next to the person’s name.
Select Swap person.
Review the Smart assign section in the person selector.
Select the best match.
Confirm with Swap person.
📝Note: Swapping people deletes any time that has previously been logged for the original person on this project (if any).
Reviewing suggested people
When assigning or swapping someone, recommendations appear at the top of the Select a person dropdown under Smart assign.
Each recommendation includes:
Role match options:
Strong role fit - Role match
Related role - Adjacent role
Weak role fit - Possible role match
Availability match option:
If availability is based on existing allocations: X% available for allocation
If availability is based on project dates: X% available for the project
You are not limited to the suggested options. While Smart assign prioritizes strong role and availability matches, you can still assign someone who was not recommended. You can scroll through the full person list, select anyone manually, and override the recommendations whenever needed.
💡 Here's a tip: If you frequently assign people to roles that differ from their assigned roles, review your team’s role structure on People page to ensure roles accurately reflect skill sets. Keeping roles up to date improves future Smart assign recommendations.
Assigning someone with a different role and/or rate
At times, you can assign a person whose default role differs from the project-specific role - that's when they will be assigned a project role. What happens next depends on the project’s budget type.
No budget is set or the project uses Fixed hours budget type.
If you assign someone whose default role differs from the planned role (for example, assigning a Designer to a Senior Designer role on a project), their role for this project will be updated to match the project role.
The project uses Time & materials or Fixed fee budget type.
If you assign someone whose default role differs from the planned role:Their project role will be updated.
Float will prompt you to choose which bill rates to use for this project and its phases (if any):
- Keep the unassigned role’s default bill rate (assigns the project role rate), or
- Use the selected person’s bill ratesThis gives you flexibility to maintain pricing consistency or reflect the individual’s standard rates.
Additional notes
The Smart assign feature is enabled by default for all teams. Currently, turning it off is not supported.