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Cookbook · Planning workflows

Ad-hoc service planning with drag and drop

Planner ~5 min

When work shows up and needs to be slotted in today, the planning board is the right tool. Pull from the open tasks grid, drop on a resource and time, adjust by dragging. No project structure required - just react to what's coming in.

Before you start​

This is the reactive workflow: work arrives, it needs slotting in today, and there is no project structure to respect. If your work spans weeks and has dependencies, you want the Gantt chart instead.

Know which kind of taskTaskA unit of work that belongs to a job. It appears in the open task list until it is scheduled to a resource. you are looking at, because only one of them can be dragged. The open tasks grid holds two kinds:

  • Planning tasks are independent units of work. Drag one to a board and you have created an appointmentAppointmentA task scheduled to a resource for a specific period - the scheduled instance you see on the planning board..
  • Project tasks belong to a projectProjectA job seen as a whole in project planning: a body of work with a budget, a team, dependencies and a deadline. Its tasks are still planned as ordinary appointments on the board. and are managed by the Gantt chartGantt chartA timeline view for long-term project planning, showing tasks, durations, dependencies and milestones.. They cannot be dragged onto the planning boardPlanning boardThe main graphical scheduling surface where dispatchers drag tasks onto resources across a timeline. at all. To schedule one, open its project from the row's context menu.

The Task Type column tells them apart. If you work with both, put that column on the grid, otherwise you will eventually spend a few minutes trying to drag something that will never move.

1. Open the open tasks grid​

The grid is the planner's inbox: every task the back officeBack officeThe ERP or business system Dime.Scheduler plans for - most often Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. It owns the master data and remains authoritative over what it receives. sends that still needs scheduling appears here until it lands on a board.

A task stays open until it is entirely planned. Budgets can require a certain amount of working time before a task drops off the list, which is what lets one task be split across several appointments rather than disappearing after the first.

2. Narrow to the work you can actually plan​

Tasks arrive carrying filter valuesFilter valueA single value inside a filter group, used as a qualification on a resource or a requirement on a task. from the back office: skillsSkillA qualification a resource holds and a task can require, typically modeled as a filter group. Skills drive resource filtering, the project team view and the solver’s choice of who can do what. required, regions covered, departments involved. The filter icon next to a row turns those into a one-click resource filter, narrowing the board to the resources eligible for that work.

If a resource filter component is on the workspace, it picks up the same values automatically.

Watch the clear-filter button: it turns red while a filter is active. That is the tell when the board looks emptier than it should.

3. Drag it onto the board​

One gesture. Drag a row, drop it on a time slot on the planning board, release. The drop position sets both things an appointment needs at once: the resourceResourceAn entity that can carry out work - a person, vehicle, tool, or room - that you schedule on the planning board. is the row you drop on, the time is where along the row you drop.

Three variations are worth knowing, because they are the difference between this being fast and being tedious:

  • Several tasks at once. Select rows with the checkbox, CTRL-click, SHIFT-click, or the header checkbox for the whole page, and drop them as a group. By default they line up consecutively on the same resource.
  • Simultaneously instead. Hold CTRL while dropping and the selected tasks go on at the same time rather than back to back. This is what you want when several resources do the same work together.
  • Ignore a container for once. A task container bundles related tasks, for example loading a lorry at the depot and unloading it at the customer. Planning any task in a container plans all of them, which is usually the point. To plan just the one task in hand, hold SHIFT before you start dragging. Note that it is before the drag, not during the drop, unlike the CTRL modifier above.

4. Adjust in place​

Once it is on the board, refine it there rather than reopening dialogs. Drag to move, drag an edge to change duration, and use the appointment card for anything the gesture cannot express.

Verify​

Confirm the task left the open tasks grid. If it is still there, it was only partly planned, which is expected behavior when a budget requires more time than the appointment you just created covers.

Last updated on by Hendrik Bulens