Managing Orders
Add orders, split them into components, and keep your production schedule current.
Last updated 19 days ago
Introduction
An order is the unit of work you schedule, track and ship. Everything else reads from it: the schedule, what the floor picks up in the morning, and the date you can promise a customer.
An order that ships in parts splits into components, each carrying its own route.
Before you start. Set your shop up in Building Swell first: shifts, departments, projects, and the stages and steps that make up your work. You need at least one active route before an order can be scheduled.
Step-by-Step Guide
Adding an Order
Open Planning.
Click Add. The order drawer opens.
Pick a Project and enter a Name. Both are required. Names like "Unit 2002" work well because they match what your crew already calls the job.
Choose a Route. The route decides which stages and steps the order runs through.
Set a Due date.
Enter a Quantity.
Fill in anything else the order needs: Id, Cycle time, Duration, Cost Code, Finish Code, Square Footage (SF), Notes, Assigned, Tags and Work Order.
Click Save.
You set a due date, not a start and end date. Building Swell works the schedule out from the route, the cycle time, and your shifts and working days. Start date and End date appear once the order exists, so you adjust them by editing the order rather than when you create it.
The Work Order Field
An order can carry a Work Order reference, so the number your customer or your back office uses travels with the order instead of living in somebody's email.
Adding Orders in Bulk
For more than a handful of orders, import them instead of typing each one. See Planning: Import & Export.
Editing an Order
Open the three dot menu on the order and pick Edit, or click into the order and use Details.
Editing gives you fields that are not on the create form:
Start date and End date, both required once set.
Actual start date and Actual completion date, for recording what really happened against what you planned.
Change Cycle time and click out of the field, and Building Swell works out the new Duration and Start date before you save. End date holds, because the schedule is worked backwards from it.
Breaking an Order into Components
When an order ships in parts, or different parts run different routes, split it into components.
Open the three dot menu on the order.
Select Manage components.
Click Add child.
Give it a Name, a Quantity, a Route ID and a Due Date. The row saves as you fill it in.
Click Close when you are done.
Each component carries its own route, so a component that runs a longer path shows up in the schedule as itself instead of being averaged into the order.
A component set up as a delivery phase can go on a delivery from its own three dot menu. See Intro to Deliveries.
Notes on an Order
Open an order's Details and you get a Notes tab, for the running commentary that does not belong in a field: what the customer changed their mind about, why a stage got held, what the next shift needs to know.
It saves as you type, so there is no save button to forget.
Type / to reach formatting without leaving the keyboard. The menu offers:
Text, Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3.
Bullet list, Numbered list and To-do list.
Quote, Code block, Table and Divider.
The To-do list is the one that earns its keep. A short list of what is still outstanding on an order, ticked off as it goes, saves a conversation a day.
Moving an Order
Use Move on the three dot menu when work is in the wrong place. It does two different jobs.
Under another parent. Pick a Destination order, then the New parent inside it.
Into its own order. Pulls a component out so it stands on its own instead of sitting under a parent.
Nothing moves until you confirm. Building Swell works out the effect first and shows you a preview. If somebody else changed the hierarchy while you were looking, you are told the preview is out of date and given a refreshed one, rather than having a stale one applied.
Archiving an Order
Open the three dot menu and select Archive. Once you confirm, the order moves to the Archive Bin, where you can restore it later.
An order's own Archived tab lists anything archived from underneath it, so you can see what came off a job without leaving it.
Other Actions on an Order
The three dot menu carries the rest of what you do to an order day to day.
Update progress. Record how far along the work is.
Duplicate. Copy an order when the next one is much like the last.
Put on hold and Resume work. Stop and restart an order without archiving it.
Start form. Open a form against the order.
Print QR Traveler. Print the sheet your floor scans. See Using QR Codes.
Copy URL. Grab a link to the order to paste into a message.
Notifications and Follow. Choose what the order tells you about, and follow it so you hear when it moves.
Tips
Give every order a name your crew would use. The name is what people search for and what they read off a traveler, so "Unit 2002" beats "Order 14".
Set the route before the dates. The route drives the schedule, so picking it first means the dates you see are the real ones.
Import anything past a handful. Typing twenty orders by hand is twenty chances to fumble a date.
Use components rather than separate orders when parts of one job ship at different times. You keep one thing to track instead of four.
Archive rather than delete. Archived orders keep their history and come back whole.
FAQ
Why can I not set a start date when I create an order?
New orders take a Due date, and Building Swell schedules backwards from it using the route, cycle time and your working days. Once the order exists, Edit gives you Start date and End date.
What happened to suborders?
They are now components. Open the three dot menu and pick Manage components. Components do more than suborders did: each one carries its own route, quantity and due date.
Two orders ended up with the same name. Is that a problem?
It is allowed, but it makes orders hard to tell apart in search and on the floor. Give each one something distinct, or use the Id or Work Order field to separate them.
I archived an order by mistake.
Restore it from the Archive Bin. Nothing is lost when you archive.
Conclusion
Orders you keep current are what make the rest of Building Swell useful: the schedule, the floor's daily work, and what you can promise a customer all read from them. Add them as they come in, split them when they ship in parts, and archive them when they are done.
For the wider view of Planning and how to save the layouts you work in, see Planning and Planning Views.
Still need help? Ask the team