As you already know, the new version 1.4 of the Visual Jobs Scheduler, our add-in for visual project planning in Dynamics NAV, that has been released in November, has a lot of new mighty features to show. In my last post, you learned how to best use the new time filter options. Today I'd like to show you how you can avoid multiple resource allocations.
Since the NAV resource allocation table is not only used by the Jobs module but also by the Service and the Assembly module, it could easily come to double allocations if, e.g., the resource Linda, is already assigned by the Service module and at the same time is needed for the Jobs module. To avoid those double resource allocations and to gain more control of resource utilization with Dynamics NAV, the VJS now visualizes the resource allocations of the Service and the Assembly m,odule and also of jobs that are not currently loaded into the VJS (e.g. due to filter settings).
Up to now, resource utilizations were indicated in the VJS's histogram area and in the histogram view by dark grey columns or red ones in case of an overload.
The VJS now offers new ways of indicating allocations coming either from the two other modules or jobs that are not currently loaded into the VJS. This way, the planner always knows whether a resource can be used or not and to which extent.
Allocations of the modules Service and Assembly and from jobs that are not currently loaded into the VJS and that have already caused an overload at the corresponding resource, are indicated by a red bar in the diagram area and a corresponding capacity curve in the histogram. The histogram's tooltip (also available in the Histogram View) informs you which module/job is blocking the resource.
Allocations that don't cause overloads and don't lead to a full capacity usage are represented by a light grey capacity curve in the histogram which lets the planner directly recognize that the resource is only partly assigned and therefore could be taken into account for the planning. Here again the histogram's tooltip informs you which module/job is blocking the resource.
There are two reasons for a resource to have no work capacity at a certain date: