Planning weeks ahead

On the website, open Jobs › Schedule › Planning board. Its first tab, Plan by day, is the board: each job has a row of its own with the days across the top, and under it a row for everyone and everything planned on it, drawn as a bar from their first day to their last. Weekends are shaded and today is marked with a line.

• 4 weeks, 6 weeks and 8 weeks set how far the board looks. ‹ Previous week and Next week › step a week at a time; This week comes back.
• On the left is everyone and every machine, with a strip showing their weeks: gray where they are planned, amber where they are off (or a machine is down), red where they are planned twice. Use Find and Show to narrow it to a trade or a kind of machine.
• The other two tabs are for the same planner. Crew and machine demand is what every job wants over the next twelve weeks, by trade and machine class, against what you have: weeks, not days. Look-ahead scorecard is how the weekly look-ahead is going (see the look-ahead guide).

1. Choose how long a drop lasts.

   When dropped, plan for is the length a new plan gets: the rest of that week (to the Friday), a day, or one, two or four weeks. You can change it afterwards.

2. Drag them onto a job, at the day they start.

   Drag a person or a machine from the list onto any row of a job, over the day they start. The bar it will make shows while you hold it there. Let go, and it is planned.

3. Or use the keyboard.

   Choose a name in the list (or Plan… beside a job) to open Book on…: pick Who or what, the Job, the First day and the Last day, and a Note if it helps, then Book it.

When you know a job needs two operators in three weeks but not which two, plan a placeholder. Under Not named yet, choose the trade or kind of machine and How many, then drag the dashed chip onto the job (or choose it to plan by date). It counts against what the job needs just as names do.

To name one, choose the dashed bar and pick someone under Fill one with, then Fill it. People of that trade (or machines of that kind) are listed first. A placeholder for two becomes one named plan and a placeholder for one, on the same days; the last one filled becomes the named plan itself. The trade it was planned as stays with the name.

• Drag a bar to other days, or onto another job, to move it. It keeps its length.
• Drag either end of a bar to make it longer or shorter.
• Or choose the bar to change the job, the days, the note or how many, then Save; Remove takes it off the board.
• After each change the board says what it did, with Undo to put it back as it was.

Each job's own row shows, every working day, what is planned against what it needs: 2/3 is two planned of three needed, red when it is short. Point at a day to see it by trade and kind of machine, named and not yet named.

What a job needs comes from its schedule and forecast, the same numbers as the crews and machines on Projections: the hours left on each cost code, spread over the weeks it is scheduled in, split by the trades that have been doing that work, at forty hours a week each. Work on a code nobody has done yet can't be given a trade, so it shows as Any trade, and whoever is planned on the job beyond its other needs counts towards it. A job with no schedule behind it shows only what is planned.

Nothing is refused: a bar with a clash is marked ⚠, and every clash is listed under Needs attention in plain words.

• Double-booked: planned on another job on some of the same days.
• Off: marked off, sick, on vacation or at training on the dispatch board on those days.
• Down: a machine marked down for repair.
• Dispatched elsewhere: already dispatched to another job that day.
• Not available: no longer an active employee, or a machine not in service.
• Certification: a person with no certificate on file that their trade needs, or one that runs out before some of the days planned.

Make tomorrow's dispatches from the plan puts everyone named on a job tomorrow onto that job's dispatch for the day — adding to one not yet sent, or starting one. Pick Another day and choose Make dispatches to do the same for that day. Nothing is sent: open the dispatch board to look it over, choose who runs each crew, and send it.

Some are left for you to decide, and the board says who and why:

• anyone already dispatched to another job that day, marked off, or a machine marked down;
• anyone planned on two jobs that day, since the plan doesn't say which;
• anyone whose job has only a dispatch that has already been sent, so a foreman's phone doesn't change under them;
• placeholders, since nobody is named yet.

Plans penciled in (Pencil in (planners only) in the plan's form, drawn hatched on the board) are left out altogether until they're booked. See the look-ahead guide.

Making the same day again adds nobody twice.

On a phone the board is a list, By job or By person, with the days each plan covers and any clash under it. A job that is short says on which days and in which trades. Plan…, Change and Fill open the same form as on the desk.