A new version of the Visual Service Scheduler, our add-in for visual service order planning with Dynamics NAV, is available. Several new features further support you in precisely and comfortably scheduling and dispatching your service orders.
As always, the description of all new features and fixed bugs can be found in the release notes.
See below what we've come up with.
10 useful features to schedule service orders visually in Dynamics NAV
1) Histogram View
This new view
- displays all histograms of resource groups and resources in the same order as in the other two views
- highlights the resource groups in a darker grey than the resources
- indicates overloads in red
2) Storable Filters
Create several different data filters for the service schedule (Gantt chart) and the order backlog and store them for later use. This is done in the new dialog "Filter List" that pops up on starting the VSS or can be opened by clicking either the "Configure Schedule Gantt Filter" icon or the "Configure Order Backlog Filter" in the "Setup" dialog.
3) Show detailed information about external allocations
A new context menu item allows to show detailed information about allocations caused by the Dynamics NAV jobs and assembly module. These settings can be customized by modifications of the C/AL code.
4) New fields for searching a Service Order
The searching functionality was enhanced so that you can now search for a Service Order not only by Order ID but also by the fields Customer and Zip Code. This applies for both order backlog and planning board.
5) More clearly structured order backlog
Gain better overview of your order backlog by showing/hiding parts of your Service Orders you are currently focused on or not. Click the according icons 
to collapse or expand items in the order backlog.
6) Specify the collapsing level
If you want to start the VSS with the order backlog collapsed to a certain level, you can specify this in the “Setup” dialog, the meaning of the levels being as follows:
| 1 | = | Priority |
| 2 | = | Service Order |
| 3 | = | Service Item Line |
7) Capacity overload indicated in table
A new warning symbol in the table area helps drawing the planner's attention to a capacity overload (only, if the overload occurs later than the work date).
8) Focus on planning data that fit within the planning horizon
If you have lots of service orders to deal with and not all of them lie within your specified planning horizon, you can hide these service orders by ticking the new “Response Date in Timespan” option in the “Setup” dialog. This is only available for the order backlog.
9) More planning flexibility by creating temporary worktime
The new context menu item “Create Worktime” enables creating additional working time, thus allowing to place bars in work free times. This applies to this one interaction only and will neither appear in the calendar nor will it cause a permanent capacity increase.
10) Tooltip and bar label enhanced
You can now create even more telling tooltips and bar labels by selecting from newly added NAV data fields:
More information
- Webinars about selected features of our visual scheduling add-ins.
- Some best practice wanted? Read how to simplify service order scheduling with the VSS.
- More information about Visual Scheduling for Microsoft Dynamics NAV is available in this ebook:
