Visual Scheduling Blog

The bridge between Business Central's resource utilization tables and your schedule.

What would you buy with $1,500 USD?

You could get a 75” Sony LED screen or a fancy ViewSonic projector for the largest meeting room. You could also buy a Razer Laptop, or… an all-in-one resource view for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Whether your company works with Projects, Services or Assembly, you can gather all information regarding the resources' utilization in a snapshot for just $1,500 USD. We call this solution: the Visual Resource Viewer (VRV).

I met Peik Bech-Andersen from Denmark for my first interview in the Business Central Manufacturing Show. He is a solution architect and senior developer, and he first saw Navision back in 1984. Peik and I actually got to know each other in the year 2014, when he was writing his book “manufacturing with Microsoft Dynamics NAV. A comprehensive guide to the manufacturing module in Microsoft Dynamics NAV”. Here is what Peik has to share on Business Central and manufacturing.

I decided to ramp up a podcast. A podcast dedicated to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and manufacturing. There are a few - precisely: four - reasons why I am doing this. The most important is: I am just fascinated by what manufacturers are doing, and how a system like Business Central enables them to succeed. However, I found that there are so many manufacturing specialists out there who just have more insights, more knowledge and more Business Central manufacturing experience than I have. Hence, I run the podcast to educate myself - by interviewing these experts. This is the initial episode, and I plan to issue a new episode every Monday.

Did your customer ask for a visual scheduler, but you have no idea where to begin with? You thought of us, maybe you showed a video, or we participated in a demo and now you're considering how to continue. I know what you’ll say next: “My customer wants to try the software before making a decision”. I get you. But this is when I’ll reply, “I can offer you our Quick Start Package”. Here is what this is all about and why we decided for an alternative to the free trial.

Version 1.5 of both the Visual Production Scheduler and the Visual Jobs Scheduler have been released as of lately. These releases don't offer as many new features as you may be accustomed to from us, but this doesn't mean, of course, that we have been idle. On the contrary, to further improve our products and offer you the best possible user experience we decided that in this release we would do a lot of streamlining and consequently have strongly focused on product maintenance in the form of bugfixing and performance improvement.

For you and me, this means that we have more space and time to deal with the main new feature of the VJS and explain it in detail, with a little theoretical excursion into the world of formulas. As always, the complete release information can  be found in the respective notes for VPS and VJS.

Have you ever found yourself walking and thinking about the immortality of the crab? Trying to make things that have nothing to do with each other relate? I know I have. Last year, in September 2019, I started the Eifelsteig. The Eifelsteig is a long-distance hiking trail through the Eifel low mountain range. It connects cozy little Aachen (where we are located) to the historical Trier. And as I wandered for hours reasoning about all and nothing at the same time, a thought struck me: Walking a long-distance trail is essentially scheduling many hike tasks. Let me explain this... 

Picture this: You have a routine morning session. Everyone is in the meeting room, from the new IT intern to the Senior Procurement Manager. There are even fresh cinnamon rolls and coffee on the table. The Plant Manager walks in and breaks the silence with great news, the Purchase Order for the milling machine everyone has been waiting for has finally been approved. The Production Manager seems relieved. But now the slightly bad news... the machine needs specific configuration that must be taken care of before production begins.

In other words, you have a new resource to schedule jobs in, but, in 9 months! How can you plan around this?

I hope you liked the new features of the Visual Production Scheduler I presented you with last week and are now eager to see which functionality we have on offer with the November release of the Visual Jobs Scheduler.