CoConstruct's scheduling and task management tools allow you and your team to stay connected and on track with your projects - from the office and the field.
Mastering the items below will put you on track to execute your project schedules and manage ad-hoc priorities with efficiency and ease.
- Leverage templates to build out your project schedules
- Utilize and manage to-dos
- Keep project schedules up-to-date
- Communicate with Team Members and Trades on tasks
- Master the Task Manager for tracking and planning
- Report on performance using the Baseline
- Track your team's work
Leverage Templates and Build your Schedules
All of your projects are different, but most jobs of like type will follow a similar progression from planning to completion. CoConstruct's schedule templates allow you to build out your workflow and efficiently apply that to each project, continually increasing efficiency as you go.
Your CoConstruct account has a few schedule templates pre-loaded that you can utilize or you can build out your own.
- Build out your project schedule
- Create a template from your project
- Go to Templates in the top navigation bar > Schedules
- Select Add a new schedule template
- Use the Create template from existing project schedule > select the project name > Create template
- Make any needed changes to the template and Publish
- Use your new template on future projects by selecting on the project setup page or the "Copy Template" button within the project schedule
Utilize and Manage To-dos
A project's to-dos is a great way quickly enter and assign tasks that may fall outside of the original planned process. This might include picking up special orders, moving equipment to a different job site or calling attention work that needs to be revisited after walk-throughs.
To-dos can quickly be added from the mobile app or from most pages of the project (look for the + Add To-Do button at the top right of the page). Once assigned, to-dos show up on your team and trade partners' task lists just like schedule tasks so all of their activities can be managed in once place.
Like Schedule tasks, To-dos can support file and photo attachments and have their own comment thread for discussions needed about the task.
If you need to alert more than one individual about the to-do, use the Comments section to tag (use @ and select the individuals to be included) to loop them into the details of the task and future conversation. With to-dos, one team member and one trade partner will be responsible for ultimate completion - that should be the task assignee.
Keep Project Schedules Up-to-Date
Part of running your projects efficiently is accurately tracking where you are on each project. There will always to be changes from the original plan when it comes to your project progression, but recording those in real time to keep everyone informed and track performance is a key element in increasing efficiency.
Project schedules can easily be updated from the full site or the mobile app - through the project itself or the Task manager - and reflect to everyone on the job in real time.
Set expectations for your team to review and update project schedules daily. This will help you and your team stay on top of completed tasks, important notes from assignees and keep dates accurate so everyone is on the same page.
Communicate with Trades and Team Members on Tasks
Throughout the job, there will be important communication between your team members and trade partners on tasks. Each schedule task and to-do has its own comment thread to help keep conversations organized and keep the right people informed of updates and important information.
When users receive a task assignment email, they can easily respond to that email notification. Their response will show up in CoConstruct on the comment thread of the related tasks. This allows individuals to easily communicate through email as they're used to but keeps everything recorded in the system and alerts the right people to each response without having to worry about keeping track of CC's or email forwarding.
For more details on task notifications and communications within tasks, check out our help center article here.
Master the Task Manager
Building and managing individual project schedules is great, but you probably have more than 1 job running at a time. CoConstruct's Task Manager allows you to pull up all of your project schedules and tasks into one view.
At a high level, this data allows you to manage your pipeline and resources - When can you start the next job? What resources can you allocate where to keep things running at maximum capacity?
The Task Manager also allows individuals on your team to quickly access and manage their specific tasks for the day or week. The Task manager within the mobile app is especially valuable in keeping your team in the know of where they should be and when.
Report on Performance Using the Baseline
The Baseline view of your project's schedule is invaluable in tracking the changes that occur throughout a project. With all that's going on on a daily basis, it's sometimes impossible to understand why you're running two weeks behind the promised delivery date.
Being able to effectively look back and identify where delays - or time savings - occurred allow you to make the necessary adjustments to your planned workflow, teams and trades or client management to improve ongoing efficiency in your jobs.
- Step #1 - Set your project's Baseline at the start
- Step #2 - Keep your projects updated daily (see above)
Track your Team's Work
Scheduling out where your team should be and what they should be is one thing - managing and reviewing that is another story.
CoConstruct has two effective tools for allowing you to track your team's work and ensure that your plan is actually being executed. Both the Time Clock and Job Log are easy, quick tools that your team can utilize immediate and can access from anywhere using the mobile app.
- Step #1 - Set up your Time Clock* and Job Log flags
- Step #1 - Require your team to clock their time by job and activity in real time
- Step #2 - Require your team to submit daily job logs
- Step #3 - Use the Job Log report to review entries
- Step #4 - Share Job Log entries with clients** to keep them informed
With these tools under your belt, you're well on your way for building, managing and executing efficient project plans.
*The Time Clock feature is only available on CoConstruct's Standard and Plus plans.
**Sharing Job Log entries with clients requires client login access. This feature is only available on CoConstruct's Plus plan.