Planning Sandbox
Planning Sandbox empowers the user to lookahead in their schedule to efficiently distribute workload and spot any potential issues. This feature is one of the more powerful tools in the Building Swell toolbox, and allows you to consolidate all active and potential projects into a single, comprehensive view to streamline planning and execution.
Prerequisites
- Setup your shop digitally in Building Swell, including shifts, shops, projects, orders, routes, stages and steps.
- Ensure that you have at least 1 active route.
Step-by-Step Guide
Navigate to Planning Sandbox
Planning Sandbox is accessible under the Insights tab from the main left nav bar (see image below).
Top Navigational Bar
From left to right across the top nav bar, the following can be accessed:
- Shop: Filters the projects and orders by the selected shop.
- Date selection: From/To dates narrow focus to projects that fall within these dates.
- Zoom: Narrow or widen the view of the visible projects' timelines to your preference.
- Undo: Any changes, accidental or otherwise, can be reverted.
- Assign People Icon: This icon opens a panel on the right that provides the ability to schedule workers on a project by dragging and dropping them onto it
- Apply to Production: Any changes (e.g., worker assignments, shifting project start/stop dates, etc.) made to Planning Sandbox must be saved by pressing this blue button.
Left Pane - List View of Projects
Even before production begins, the tool enables seamless tracking and planning:
- This left pane can be filter by either:
- Grouping by project will display projects as folders which can be clicked and opened to reveal all of the orders related to that project.
- No grouping will display all available orders.
- By Assigned to will allow users to view orders associated with a person or team member
- By Phase allows users to view orders associated with a specific stage of work
- The search bar will narrow the list of orders by matching typed text.
Selecting an order will pull up its details on the right side of the screen.
- Assigned to: Customize and assign orders to specific phases or team members.
- Phase: Customize and track exactly what phase your order is at.
- Overview Tab: Provides high-level details about the order, most of which can be modified.
- Time Tab: Displays the accrued hours per each stage of the order.
- Take-off Tab: Any scalars associated with the project can be found here.
- Comment Tab: Communicate and collaborate with colleagues by making comments on the order.
Right Pane - Gantt View of Projects
- The top header row displays the usage capacity on a given day.
- The second header row displays the day of the week and date. Today's date is highlighted in red.
- Projects' start/stop dates can be modified by dragging the project left to right. Be sure to click "Apply to production" button to save the desired changes to the schedule.
Legend
Tips
- Make sure to save any changes made in this view by pressing "Apply to production", the button in the upper right corner of the screen.
- Workers can be assigned to stages ahead of schedule or day of (today), allowing for effective resource planning.
Conclusion
Capacity and resource planning can be done in a snap with Planning Sandbox. Be sure to take full advantage of being able to collaborate and coordinate with your team.