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Today a user asked how to make BigWave calculate the schedule date for an activity that occurs after a work order’s Requested Date.  To make this happen is fairly trivial, but I thought of an interesting way to check the dates quickly without having to do an export or inspect individual work orders one by one.

To have BigWave calculate a date for an activity that occurs after the work order’s Requested Date (aka the “install date”), simply change the activity’s lead time value to a positive number.  As you can see in the example below all activities except for the final one have negative lead times.  The final activity has a positive lead time of 14 days.

After making the change to the lead time value recalculate the schedule by going to the project’s Schedule Options area and click the “Click to recalculate the schedule” button.

For this example we choose the first option which is to recalculate only those items without actual dates entered and click next.

Once the process is complete, you may be wondering about an easy way to check the results.  We can do this with search.

Go to the search area and create a new search on the activity in question (in this example we search for “Remove Time D”).  Hit the Search button once the criteria is added.

This creates a report containing all the “Remove Time D” schedule entries for all work orders in this project.  If we click the “Modify Columns” link we can add the Requested Date field from the work order and compare the two side-by-side.

Firstly we click on the column we want to show (Requested Date).  Then click the right arrow button to push the column into view.  The click the “Move Up” button to where the Requested Date field is at the top of the list.

When you are done it should look something like this.  Click the Save button.

As you can see below the Requested Date field is shown in the search results.  Sorting by the Requested Date column will show all sites that have a Requested Date together, and you can quickly audit the dates of the “Remove Time D” activity!

You may notice some discrepancies between the Scheduled Events report and a Search done on scheduled dates.

The reason is the two reports actually use slightly different search criteria.  Both reports search on scheduled start dates at the appropriate Scheduling Level (Work Order, Activity, Task).  However the Scheduled Events report filters on additional criteria including work order status and actual dates.

So the Scheduled Events report will never show more records than a search on the same set of dates.  However, it generally will show lower counts since it filters out those items that are completed by the criteria the actual date is entered or a work order status is closed.

BigWave offers 2 different ways to import scheduling information. The basic schedule import enables you to quickly import schedule dates and requested dates by site id. The advanced schedule import enables you to import the entire schedule including requested dates, scheduled dates and times, and actual dates and times. This article will discuss use of the basic schedule import in a real life project setup scenario.

Basic schedule import enables you to import via a common format found in many spreadsheets that are exchanged between the team in a rollout. This option enables you to open a spreadsheet, enter site id’s in the first column, enter dates in the second column, and upload it.

There are some requirements when working with this type of upload:

a) This import only works for those projects that have one work order per associated site. Older BigWave projects that have more than one work order per site (in a single project) are not able to use the basic schedule import and must use the advanced schedule import.
b) This import only works for schedule dates and work order requested dates and only for date values (not date/time values). If you need to upload actual dates, then the advanced schedule import must be used. If you need to upload date/time values (vs simple date values), then the advanced schedule import must be used.
c) Column A must contain your site id’s.
d) Column’s B, C, and on must match the name of an activity or task you are affecting depending upon your scheduling level setting for your project. For work order requested dates, you must use the column header ‘Requested Date’.
e) Row 1 contains your column headers.
f) Rows 2 and on contain site id’s (Column A) and date values (Columns B and on).

Let’s take a real world scenario.

A project manager is setting up a project in BigWave that contains 100 sites. The sites, already uploaded to the customer master site database, have been brought in and associated to the project.

Once the sites are associated, the PM must create a work order template that will contain the plan to be executed for each site. Each site in this project will go through 3 milestones that are tracked in BigWave. These are Site Survey, Ship Equipment, and Install, and each will become an Activity in the project.

The customer has given us hard dates that for the Surveys and the dates don’t really follow any pattern so these must be either manually keyed or uploaded into the project. Since we don’t want to hand-key 100 dates, we will choose to upload these.

The customer supplied a Requested Date for each site (aka the deadline for when each site must be complete), and rather than hand-key this, we will upload it as well.

The other two activities Ship Equipment and Install may be calculated based upon the Requested Date. We know that the equipment should arrive at least one week before the site is scheduled for installation, so in our model for each site we will make the lead time for Ship Equipment 30 days (just to be safe). The Install activity date is equal to the Requested Date so the lead time for this will be 0 days. You may recall that lead times calculate off the Requested Date. One final note, the duration for each of these activities we set to a single day.

So for this project our work order template will look like the following:

We will never want BigWave to calculate the Site Survey dates, so by leaving Lead Time and Duration blank, BigWave won’t touch these dates when asked to recalculate schedule dates. Lead time for Ship Equipment is set to 30 days, so if the Requested Date for a site is March 15th, then the Ship Equipment activity will calculate to February 14th. Since the duration is one day both the scheduled start and scheduled end dates will be February 14th for this activity. It follows that the Install activity will schedule on March 15th since the lead time is 0 days.

After this simple work order template is set up, the PM is ready to generate the work orders for the project. The PM does so.

100 work orders now belong to the project and the PM is ready to upload the dates. The PM creates a spreadsheet formatted to the above rules (or he can download a preformatted one using Export). The completed spreadsheet looks like the following:

The Site ID’s are in Column A, Columns B and C contain date values for Requested Date and the customer dictated Site Survey date. The rest we will leave up to BigWave.
This upload is accomplished with the Import / Export Center found in the project Setup tab.

The PM chooses the ‘Import’ option and clicks Next (or hit <ENTER> key on the keyboard).

Then the first Schedule import option is chosen. Hit Next (or <ENTER>).

The standard upload file screen is shown. Upload the file and the next screen appears. If you check ‘Map scheduled end dates to start dates’ then the upload dates will affect both the scheduled start and scheduled end value. If left unchecked, only the scheduled start dates will be affected.

Once you hit Next, you are committing the upload and BigWave will import the dates.

Now the PM has date values entered for the Requested Date and Site Survey. There is one final step to completing the project schedule and that is to calculate the Ship Equipment and Install dates. This is done by navigating to the Schedule Options area under the Setup tab. As a side note, notice the Scheduling Level is set to ‘Activity’. This is because the PM is managing this project with Activity items or “at the Activity Level”.

Click the “Click to recalculate the schedule” button to generate the rest of the schedule based upon your Lead Time and Duration values from the work order template.

That’s it! The concepts outlined in this article are directly applicable to the setup of almost any project in BigWave. Your schedule and plan for each site may be much more complex, but the process you follow to get it set up is the same.

Please email us at support@bigwavesoftware.com if you need further explanation on any of these concepts.

When should I use a custom field to track a date vs. tracking the date in the schedule grid?

This is a question that often comes up.  There are typically many dates that need to be tracked in a project.  However, in BigWave, only dates that need to be watched for milestone and tracking purposes should be tracked in your schedule.  A good rule of thumb is if the date is important enough that if “missed”, then you need to know about it, then that is a milestone you will want to track as part of your WBS in the schedule grid.  All of the BigWave reporting/alerting functionality works around dates in the WBS, so any dates captured in a custom field will not be scanned by BigWave for this purpose.

Let’s take an example.  For our project we must deliver documentation for each site worked.  We want to track the fact that documentation was indeed delivered and what the date was for when that occurred.

If we want to put this “Documentation Delivered” date into our project plan, then it would fall somewhere towards the end of the WBS for the site and we could track a schedule date and actual date for this event occurring.  This is workable when we can actually schedule the date for when the documentation will be delivered.

However this example is different.  The site documentation comes from many different sources several of which we don’t have direct control on when we will receive it.  Our job is to compile it all and forward it to the customer.  Since it is difficult to give this event a “scheduled date”, we simply choose to create a custom field that will hold the actual date when the documentation is actually delivered.

Typically it is fairly obvious when a date falls into the schedule, but sometimes a date needs to be tracked and only its value is significant as a data point.  In these cases a custom field is the better choice.

What are the keys to choosing the correct level for my project?

You must tell BigWave what level you need to run your project.  If you have a simple task to accomplish for each site in the project, then the “Work Order” level may be the best choice.  If you have a few important milestones to track for each project then the “Activity” level may be the best choice (as in the example above).  If you have sub-milestones to track for each major milestone, then the “Task” level may be the best choice.  Most projects are run on the “Activity” level.

If you are unsure which level to choose, the best method is to start with the highest level “Work Order” and see if that gives sufficient enough detail to meet the demands of the project.  If more milestones need to be tracked, then move down a level and see if that will fit.  You may change your level as the project is worked, so if you start with “Activity”, and halfway through the project you need to use “Tasks”, then you have the flexibility to change on the fly.

Most people are familiar with the phrase “work breakdown structure” (WBS) and understand that project plans are fundamentally defined by these.  Each item in a WBS is systematically worked until the project is completed and the overall objective accomplished.

WBS’s may be very detailed depending upon the needs of the project.  The more detailed the WBS (lots of steps and levels) means more work for the project team keeping the project plan up-to-date.  Large and detailed WBS’s are the norm for most projects, but large and detailed WBS’s for multi-site projects are next to impossible to keep current and relevant.

BigWave aids execution of multi-site projects by keeping the WBS applied to each site as simple as required to get the job done.  BigWave discourages over-engineering and over-thinking the problem enabling you to create a simple and clean WBS that is ultimately applied to each site in the project.  Typically only important milestones are tracked.

BigWave offers three “levels” to track these milestones and each successive level offers the ability to track more detail.  They are Work Order, Activity, and Task.  Work Orders are containers for Activities which are containers for Tasks.

BigWave has always had these levels, but previous versions required the user to maintain all dates across all levels.  SimpleSchedule™ eliminates the chore of entering these dates by calculating dates for the parent levels from the level you are working.

For example, if the level you are scheduling at is Activity, and your WBS for each site looks like the following…

The Work Order level dates adjust to the dates entered for each of the Activities (Check in, Install, Day after support, Sign off) as seen below.

In this example, we have chosen Activity to be the level we wish to enter dates for.  Notice the parent levels become read-only and schedule data for each milestone need only be entered in a single field.

SimpleSchedule™provides an easy means to enter and monitor scheduling data across many sites at the same time.  Here are some highlights of this exciting functionality that is now part of BigWave.

·         Less data entry.  Dates of parent schedule items now auto-calculate based upon the dates of their component parts.

·         A new health meter color codes the project schedule for easy analysis of important dates.

·         A new project dashboard keeps you on top of the important issues of the day.

·         The new import/export scheduling process is easier to use and provides even more feedback on changes to the schedule from external sources.

·         Schedule dates may be recalculated as many times as needed based upon changes to the lead times and durations in the templates.