Workplan by Assignment

JobOrder has a powerful feature called 'Workplan' both in Templates and in Estimates. Workplan allows users to create Template Activities or Estimate Activities based upon the estimated hours and billing rates for individual staff Resources. This works well when the individuals who will perform the work are already known, but is awkward when the individual resources have not yet been determined. An alternative solution is to allow Workplan by Assignments. In Workplan by Assignments, users select the Assignment (such as Senior Designer or Art Director) of the person who will perform the work, but without selecting the actual individual. We have added a System Preference to select ‘Workplan by Assignment or Workplan by Resource’.

When ‘Workplan by Assignment’ has been selected, we display a tab in Templates and Estimates for Workplan by Assignment. This page looks almost identical to the current Workplan page, except it displays Assignments rather than Resources.

The Workplan page for an Estimate copied from the Template above is shown below.

When an Estimate is approved into a Job or a Template is copied to a Job, JobOrder optionally brings up a dialog for each Assignment in each Activity. It displays all Resources (with a popup to limit by Team) in a spreadsheet-like form that displays one row for each Resource and one cell for each day of the week that the new Activity is scheduled to start.

You can enter the hours to be scheduled for each Resource performing the specific Assignment. You are not required to schedule the entire hours budgeted.

The Activity will be accessible for Time slip entry by anyone on the Team specified when the Activity is created, but the Team Members without scheduled Time slips would have to select the Activity manually to enter time.

Please email if any of this information needs additional clarification.

Victor Siegle

JobOrder is practical.