Top 3 favorite project planning features of the Visual Jobs Scheduler

After demoing the Visual Jobs Scheduler for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central I came to realize our customers pointed out a couple of reasons to why they chose the Visual Jobs Scheduler as their ERP enhancement again and again.

In this this blog, I highlight the top three features.

They all point out that visual scheduling isn't a “nice extra” but instead a “must have”. Either for the complexity of the orders, for data safety or to have a better control over the projects in general.

Feature 1. Seamless Integration: Double-clicking anywhere in the schedule opens the corresponding tables and cards in BC.

When we say full integration, we mean it. All information shown in the schedule comes from information previously entered in your environment, from the calendar entries, the capacities to the jobs themselves. Likewise, all information you change or create with the Visual Jobs Scheduler updates your ERP data.

As a result, changes in the schedule will show up in Business Central and vice versa.

Feature 2. Support to scheduling jobs, job tasks or job planning lines with dependencies.

With this feature we enhanced the standard Business Central by allowing you to create links between jobs, job tasks and job planning lines. Afterwards we ensure every time you move an element in the schedule the dependencies are respected. (watch the "how to video" if you want to learn how to create these links)

This means if you set up a finish-start relationship, and you move the first or preceding job task, the second or succeeding job task will move out automatically as it cannot start until its predecessor has finished. Another example is, that the VJS will postpone a succeeding operation if you set up a link with start-to-start and moved the first one.

With the VJS you can link throughout all levels of the job hierarchy. Also, we most recently added the capability to also work with a link duration. 

Feature 3. Unassigned Resources: assigning first to the group and then to the individual(s).

This third feature is what allows you to rough plan on the long term and get into the details at a later stage. This is to plan first at the resource group level, a function not available in standard BC, and then go in and reassign these group level tasks to individual resources with simple drag & drop movements.

The major benefit being that you won’t have to worry about the specifics early in the job yet you can compile the costing from the group level. Even though this feature is not in standard BC it is easy to implement it in the VJS. By simply adding the prefix $VJSRG$ to a resource's number will make the resource an "unassigned" resource.

This means that you can recognize differently from your other resource living in resource planning. You can learn more about this function in another "how to" video.

In a nutshell,

The Top 3 favorite features of the Visual Jobs Scheduler are:

• Feature 1. Seamless Integration
• Feature 2. Support to dependencies
• Feature 3. Unassigned Resources: assigning first to the group and then to the individual(s).

More information

Topics: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Resource scheduling, project scheduling