The October update of Dime.Scheduler is now available. It brings project management, a personal page for the people who do the work, timesheets, crew scheduling and the new planning board. Most of it is in preview, so we’d love to hear what you think.
What is new
We are expanding the scope of Dime.Scheduler, so it can also serve companies that manage more complex, long-term projects. Those projects need to be looked at from different angles and at different levels of detail: from the project portfolio for executives, through the project itself for project managers, all the way down to the project members who actually do the work. This update brings the first pieces of each level.
Planners keep doing what they have always done in Dime.Scheduler. The difference is that the people around the schedule now get a place of their own, and that they all look at the same data.
Project portfolio
Executives and project leads want to know, at a glance, how all projects are doing and where they should step in. That is what the new portfolio is for. It shows every project as a list, as tiles, on a timeline or on a board, with a health verdict on schedule, budget and resources. When a project is at risk, Dime.Scheduler doesn’t just raise a flag, it also tells you why: overdue tasks, hours running over budget, or a resource who is already fully booked.
The portfolio opens on an overview of every open project. It starts with the headline numbers: how many projects are on track, at risk or off track, and how much of the work is done. Below, you find the projects that need attention, what starts and ends in the coming weeks, a capacity heatmap, the pipeline of projects per status, how budgets compare to progress, and where your projects are on the map. Every block leads to the projects behind it, so you go from a number to the details in one click.
Projects now also have a status. That can be the value your back office sends, or a word that fits the way your organization works. On the portfolio board, you drag projects from one status to the next, just like you would with tasks on a Kanban board. When the work is done, you close the project, and finished work no longer clutters your view.
Project management
From the portfolio, you open the workspace of a project. This is where project managers spend their day: tasks, team, budget, Gantt chart, Kanban board and time, all in one place.
Planning starts here as well. You can plan the tasks of a project on a scheduling board, or in the new Gantt chart, which we built from the ground up for long-term projects. Appointments you create there stay tentative until you confirm them, so you can try out a plan before you commit people to it.
A plan is only as good as the people available to carry it out. The team view shows, week by week, how much each member is planned on this project and on other projects, compared to their capacity. That way, you see conflicts coming before they become a problem.
Finally, how healthy a project is should not depend on who is looking at it. Health rules are therefore set once for the whole organization, so the portfolio and the project page always tell the same story. On the project page, the health view shows which rules raise a warning and which tasks are behind it, so you know exactly where to start.
Read more in the documentation.
My work: for the people who do the work
The people who carry out the work have mostly been on the receiving end of the schedule. With My Work, they get a page of their own. Technicians and consultants see their own schedule, today’s route on a map, their tasks on a Kanban board, and the projects they belong to. They update the status of their work themselves, which in turn feeds the progress of the project.
My Work is also where time registration starts. People track their time on the web or in the mobile app while they work. Team leads review it on the new Timesheets page, where they see who logged their time, what is still missing and what is waiting for approval. The hours then go to Business Central time sheets. That closes the loop: from the plan, to the work, to the hours spent on it. More information is available in the documentation.
Crews
Many of our customers don’t send individual people to a job, they send a team. Crew scheduling is here to support that. You can group resources into crews, pools and departments, and plan a whole crew at once on the new crew planning board. Pools let you reserve capacity first and decide later who will do the work. Read more about crews.
New planning board
The planning board remains the heart of Dime.Scheduler, and we are rebuilding it on a modern foundation. The new resource scheduling board is available in preview, and you can already use it for your day-to-day planning. The settings planners use most, such as snapping, conflict checks, capacity charts and travel time, are right on the board, and changes made by your colleagues appear live. We'll keep adding to it in the coming releases, and your feedback helps us decide what comes first.
Tags, traffic and optimization
Tags are color-coded labels you can put on tasks and appointments. They show up as badges on the planning board and give planners extra context at a glance, such as a required certificate, a VIP customer or a job that needs special equipment.
The new route traffic check compares the drives in a resource’s day with current traffic and warns you about delays, so you can inform customers or move appointments before anyone arrives late.
For customers with the Field Service Optimizer module, the solver run page has been redesigned. You can compare a proposal with the live plan before you apply it, so you stay in control of what the optimizer changes.
What's next
This update is the first step, not the last. In the coming releases, we'll continue to build out project management, at every level from the portfolio down to the individual, and refine the previews based on your feedback. We're also working on an update of the mobile app, so the people in the field get the same benefits on the go.