Video: Check Job Activity Types & Colors

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TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to Check Job Activity Types and Colors.

When you're new to Systemize, the quickest way to learn is by making Jobs, even practice ones. Every Job contains Job Activities to keep track of the work that needs to be done.

Your database has some default Job Activities built in. To get you started, let's take a look at where to find Job Activities, how to edit their names, color coding, and order. We'll also confirm the basic default Activities, learn how to set a duration, and default Assignees.

It's best to think of Job Activities as tasks that get assigned to a person on a particular day that have statuses associated with them.

Remember, in order to complete Jobs, every Activity in the Job must be marked, complete or canceled. That's why we recommend starting as simple as possible. Begin with the default activities, then determine if more Activities are needed after you've made several Jobs.

While you can add Activities with just a few clicks, new Activity Types will need to be added to Job Templates, Calendars, and Job Views.

See the Systemize knowledge base for more resources on creating new Job Activities.

From the left side navigation, click on Settings, Job, Activity Types. Displayed are the default Activity Types in your database.

Starting at the top, there are three buttons. All, Job, and Lead. Lead is grayed out because that Process is inactive by default. We have another video, Systemize Leads, that will show you how to use this Process. There's a link to it in the transcript below. Click on the Job button at the top to see only the Activities associated with Jobs.

Before we make any changes, look at what each Activity is named, the assigned Color, the Status, and the Dependency if there is one.

Activities like Fabrication, Install, and Invoice are set to a status of Auto-Schedule, so they'll automatically generate a date based on a Dependency.

Before we make any changes, notice several things are underlined on this page. When you see information underlined like this in Systemize, it means you can click on it to make edits.

Let's edit the Template Activity. Click on the underlined name, Template.

The edit screen allows you to change everything except the Sequence Number and Dependency. We'll cover those shortly. If you already have assigned colors for activities in your shop, and they're different from what these defaults are, click on the Color icon to select a new color.

Leave the default Status of Template as Tentative. This will allow you to select the date in each Job when you're ready.

If this Activity usually takes a certain amount of time, setting a default Duration will help scheduling your teams. If this Activity is usually assigned to a particular person, select them from the dropdown list.

To select more than one Assignee, click on the Multiple button, then check all Assignees necessary. The default Assignee can be manually changed in the Job later if needed.

Setting default Durations and Assignees will help streamline scheduling, and avoid Activities not being assigned to someone. When you create a Job, you have full control to edit any default Duration or Assignee in each individual Job. The Description field is for notes about this Activity for your internal use.

If you've made any changes, click Save. If not, click the Exit icon in the upper right corner.

Now let's talk about the Auto-Scheduled Activities and their Dependencies. Like Durations and Assignees, using Auto-Schedule will place Activities on the Calendar based on the Dependencies you set, and avoid the costly mistakes of forgetting to schedule a critical task in a Job.

These can also be manually changed within individual Jobs. They're not fixed.

Look at the default Dependencies. If they work for you to start making Jobs, great. No need to change anything. If you need to modify the number of days, click on an underline Dependency and make any edits. Leave Reverse Dependency and Ignore For Auto-Schedule unchecked.

The article Reverse Dependencies, in the knowledge base, provides more details on what Reverse Dependencies are and how they might need to be used. To remove a Dependency, click the Delete icon, then change the default Status of the Activity to Tentative. Auto-Schedule Statuses must have a Dependency rule in order to work.

Finally, let's take a look at how to reorder how Job Activities are displayed. You'll see each Job Activity has a Sequence Number.

Click on any underlined Sequence Number, then click hold and drag to reorder the Activities.

That wraps up this introduction to default Activities in Systemize. Start creating Jobs and assigning Activities, keeping Statuses up to date to determine if you need to adjust the defaults to better suit your setup.

Check out the Systemize knowledge base for more articles and videos.

If you'd like to talk with one of our friendly Systemize experts, email support@moraware.com.