Schedules are a great way to manage work that includes multiple phases, stages, or just lots and lots of calls to action. Many clients begin their workflow with the creation of an Estimate and Job, and then adding the Schedule later.
Please review this article to learn where and how to add a Schedule to an existing Estimate or Job.
From the Estimate page
On any Estimate in your system that does not yet have an associated Schedule, you will see an Add Schedule button in the top right.
Clicking Add Schedule will bring up a modal from which you can make some choices. Required fields are marked in blue:
- How the Schedule sets itself up is up to you - it can be based on the structure of the Estimate, or based on the structure of one of the Schedule Templates in your system. For this example, we're basing our Schedule on the Estimate.
- If you base the Schedule on the structure of the Estimate, it will by default only include time trackable Internal Services. Click the "Include External Expenses" button if you want rows for those items as well. These can then be associated to a time trackable service, and assigned out as a call to action for a team member.
- The Schedule Name and Description will pull from the Estimate, but can be edited here as needed.
- You also have the option to pick another member of your team to be the manager of this Schedule.
Click Submit when ready.
You will land on the newly created Schedule. From this view, you can easily in-line edit row content, move rows, and even add more rows of Tasks should you need them.
Helper text in each field lets you know what content to add where. You do not need to fill in every field, only those that will be pertinent to you and your staff.
To break the Tasks into smaller components you can:
- Add New Task rows
- Copy a current Task row
Once you have a new Task, assign it an amount of time to complete, as person to work on it (Assignee) and any other pertinent information.
What do those Task Types mean and where are they pulling from?
The Task Types listed here (Internal, Prospecting and Shared) are pulling from the List Maintenance area of the system. You can choose to have less Task Types available, or choose to add more, or choose to make your own in order to use wording that makes more sense for your agency.
- Internal Tasks is just our generic label for work you expect to be done by your team.
- Prospecting Tasks in another label, by which your team may wish to mark tasks that relate to the sales cycle. Follow up Tasks that you create from a Note will pre-populate as Prospecting Tasks.
- Shared Tasks allow you to have multiple people on the same task, for the same estimated amount of time.
As you add data to the Grid View of your Schedule, a couple of things to note:
- In order for a Task to be set to a status other than Draft, it will need to have a person or role in the To field.
- Task Start Dates cannot be later than the Due Date
- The PCT field (for percent complete) will not be editable if the Task is in a status of Draft.
- The Actuals content is not editable from here, as it is pulling from the related Timesheets. If the values are wrong, please edit the Timesheet.
From the Grid View, you do have options to print the Schedule. Alternately, from the Gantt View, you can share a link of the Schedule. In both cases, use the tick boxes on the far left to determine which lines of the Schedule to show or share.
From the Gantt View you can also easily add in dates for any Task. Click "set dates now" and the system will pop in dates for you. Then use your mouse to drag the dates as needed,
Create Task Predecessors and Dependencies within a few clicks as well.
From the Job page
On any Job in your system that does not yet have an associated Schedule, you will see an Add New button in the top right, where you can pick Add Schedule.
You will then have the same options to create the Schedule, and the same options to configure it further once it has been created. Click Submit to make the Schedule.
And with the Schedule now in place, as we did above, you can add more Tasks, copy Tasks, make Tasks of different types (including Shared Tasks), add Task dependencies, and view and share the Gantt version of this Schedule.
What's the Difference?
So what's the difference between making a Schedule from an Estimate and making one from a Job? A big one is that time can only be tracked when a Job is in place - so if you want your team tracking time to these Schedule level Tasks, make sure a Job exists and is live.
Another place where you would see this difference is in the Resources Link area.
If you filter this view by Forecasted (represented in yellow and orange), you will only see Tasks that are NOT associated to Jobs - the Tasks on a Schedule that has been added to an Estimate would qualify here. To appear here these Tasks also have:
- an assignee aka some person or role in the "To" field
- a Start Date
- a Due Date
- an Estimated number of hours to complete
- are in the Task Status of Draft, Assigned on In Progress
If you filter this view by Actuals (represented in green and red), you will only see Tasks that are associated to Jobs and in order to appear here these Tasks also have:
- an assignee aka some person or role in the "To" field
- a Start Date
- a Due Date
- an Estimated number of hours to complete
- are in the Task Status of Draft, Assigned on In Progress
Further Learning
There are plenty of other articles to teach you more about Schedules, Tasks and related workflows. Looks for them in their related Library section. And we welcome your questions or concerns via email: support@functionpoint.com
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