Contents
Orders describe the work to be carried out by the users who use the program. Each order corresponds with the projects that the companies are going to offer their clients.
An order consists of one or several order lines. Each order line corresponds with the planning the works on the order should follow when being implemented. Order lines are organised hierarchically without any limitations on depth. The fact that order lines are organised hierarchically shows how several inheritable features work, such as labels.
The following sections will describe the operations that users can carry out with orders and order lines.
An order is a project or work that a client requests from a company. The order for the planned works identifies the project in the company. The difference with comprehensive management programs such as "NavalPlan" is that they only need to use certain order details. These details are:
However, the actual order has other entities that make it more complete:
Editing or creating an order can be carried out from various locations in the program:
From the "order list" in the company overview.
- Editing is carried out by clicking the edit button on the chosen order.
- Creating a new order is carried out by clicking "New order".
From an order in the Gantt chart and changing to the order details view.
Users can access the following tabs from the editing order option:
Editing orders
Order element list
Assigning hours attributed to the order by the workers
Order labels
Order criteria
Materials. A screen where users can assign available material to orders. The material can be selected from among the material categories available in the program. Materials are managed in the following way:
- Users select the tab shown in the lower part of the screen called "Search materials".
- Users can enter text to search for materials or select the categories for which they want materials.
- The system then filters the results.
- Users select the materials they want (users can select more than one material on the list by pressing the "Ctrl" button).
- Users then click "Assign".
- The system then shows the list of materials that has already been assigned to the order.
- Users select the units and the status they want to assign to the order.
- Users then click "Save" or "Save and continue".
- If users want to manage the receipt of the material, they can click "Divide" to change the status of a partial quantity of material.
Material associated with an order
Quality form associated with the order
Editing order elements is carried out from the "Order element list" tab by clicking the editing icon, which shows a new screen from which the user can carry out the following:
The following subsections describe each one of the operations in depth.
Editing information about the order element includes the editing of the following details:
Editing order elements
The "Assigned hours" tab enables users to view the work reports associated with an order element and also how many of the estimated hours have already been carried out.
Hours assigned to order elements
The screen is divided into two parts:
Entering types of progress and the management of order element progress has been described in the "Progress" chapter.
Labels, as described in the chapter on labels, enable users to categorise order elements. Consequently, users can group planning or order information based on them.
Users can assign labels directly to an order element or even to a previous order element in the hierarchy. From the moment a label from one of the two previous methods is assigned, the order element and the related planning task are associated with the label, and used for subsequent filtering.
Assigning labels for order elements
As can be seen in the image, users can carry out the following procedures from the labels tab:
Both an order and an order element can be assigned criteria that need to be fulfilled for it to be carried out. Criteria can be direct or indirect:
Apart from the required criterion, one or various hour groups that are part of the order element can be defined. It all depends on whether the order element contains other order elements as child nodes or if it is a leaf node. In the first case the information about hours and hour groups can only be viewed, but leaf nodes can be edited. The latter case works as follows:
The system creates an hour group by default, which is associated to the order element. The details that can be modified for an hour group are:
- Code for the hour group if it is not automatically generated.
- Type of criterion. Users can choose to assign a machine or worker criterion.
- Number of hours in the hour group.
- List of criteria to be applied to the hour group. To add new criteria, users have to click "Add criterion" and select one from the search engine, which appears after clicking the button.
Users can add new hour groups with features that are different from previous hour groups. An example of this would be when an order element must be carried out by a welder (30h) and a painter (40h).
Assigning criteria to order elements
Materials are managed in the projects as a list associated with each order line or an order in general. The list of materials is made up of the following fields:
Working with materials is carried out as follows:
Searching material
Assigning materials to order elements
For subsequent monitoring of materials, it is possible to change the status of a unit group of the received material. This procedure is carried out as follows:
The advantage of using this dividing tool is the possibility of receiving partial deliveries of material without having to wait to receive it all in order to mark it as received.
Some order elements must certify that certain tasks have been carried out in order for them to be marked as complete. This is why the program has quality forms, which consist of a list of questions that can be considered important if they are answered positively.
It is important to mention that a quality form has to be created previously so that it can be assigned to an order element.
To manage quality forms:
Assigning quality forms to order elements
The program has a search engine for quality forms. There are two types of quality forms: according to element or percentage.
- Element: Every element is independent.
- Percentage: Every question increases progress in the order element by a percentage. It must be possible for percentages to be increased to 100%.
Users select one of the forms created in the administration interface and click "Assign".
The program assigns the form chosen from the list of forms assigned to the order element.
Users click the "Edit" button on the order element.
The program displays the questions from the quality form in the lower list.