Best Practice for Visual Project Planning in Dynamics NAV Jobs Module

As profound expert of Microsoft Dynamics NAV you are well aware of the fact that the proven tool for (not only) simplifying the management of projects, jobs, and resources can sometimes be a bit awkward to handle. You also know our Visual Jobs Scheduler (VJS) add-in and have already disocvered some of its handy functions for reducing or even bypassing this awkward behavior in NAV.

This blogpost wants to draw your attention to a slightly unnoticed but nevertheless powerful visual project planning feature helping the planner to save much time: See how a complete project can be postponed or brought forward with just one mouse interaction.

The problem

Imagine a big project with lots of tasks - everything is about to start but bang! the project manager falls ill or the customer has to postpone the project for some reason or other. So our planner is under a lot of pressure: He has to react quickly and on short notice and at the same time has to make a well-founded decision while the successful completion of the job is at stake. 

Changing dates manually in NAV:  Potential error source

Normally, and without being able to rely on the VJS, the planner would have to postpone the project by changing all the dates in NAV for each and every single job planning line, having to open all the necessary cards until finally reaching the right one.

Changing dates manually in this dialog can lead to various errors. To mention just a few:

• Typing errors: To track and correct them afterward would cause a whole lot of trouble.
• Changing the date by the "Change Date Expression" field: You won't see whether the new date will be a weekend (and you might receive perplexed calls from the employees concerned).
• Setting the project to a "Fixed date":  All Job Planning Lines will start and end at the same date without considering their sequence.
• You have to pay careful attention to the filter settings so that your changes will be applied to the desired parts of your plan. If you, e.g., want to postpone the whole Job you have to delete the filter concerning the " Job TaskNo". 
• You only can guess whether your modifications will lead to double resource allocations. 
  
  

The solution: Move complete Dynamics NAV jobs in the Visual Jobs Scheduler by just one click

As we have seen, postponing or bringing forward a project in NAV is quite awkward and, moreover, prone to errors.

So why not use the advantages of visual project planning and move projects by just one mouse interaction? And - above all - see the results of your action immediately! Which implies that you can also correct things immediately.

Have a look at the example below. It's quite a big project with lots of job planning lines. To move the project, just click on the project's top bar and start dragging. The current dates are shown in the tooltip and are constantly being updated.

Please note that this only works for job planning lines that haven't been posted yet.

Your benefits

Postponing or forwarding projects by mouse interaction with a visual project planning add-in brings considerable advantages for the planner. He can

• save time
• avoid typing errors
• recognize the consequences of every move directly on the screen - including capacity overloads - and immediately intervene if neccessary
• just discard the changes by not saving them if the results are not satisfactory

Your next steps

Want to refresh your knowledge of our Gantt chart add-ins? Watch our webinars about some selected features of the VJS and the VPS .

Or perhaps you'd like to learn about another useful feature of the VJS? Read how to speed up project planning with the VJS by starting from a Dynamics NAV page.