Job Schedule & Dispatch

1. THE BOARD -- KANBAN VIEW

Job Schedule opens on the Kanban board by default: four columns, Draft / Started / On Hold / Finished, one card per Job. Drag a card into a different column to change that Job's status, using the exact same valid-transition rules as its own detail-page status buttons (a Draft or On Hold Job can start; a Draft, Started, or On Hold Job can finish; there's no dragging a card back to Draft -- matching the fact there's no "un-start" action anywhere else in the app either). Cancelled Jobs never appear on the board -- a cancelled Job isn't active work, and cancelling stays a detail-page action.

An Assigned To filter above the board narrows it to one Employee (or Unassigned) at a time -- the same Assigned To field described in the Leads, Quotations & Job Conversions guide, section 2a. Each card shows its Job number, customer, due date, and whichever of its Scheduling Resource or Assigned To employee it has (a colored left-edge stripe matches the assigned resource's own color from section 3).

2. THE CALENDAR VIEW

Switch to Calendar (top of the board) for a time-grid view instead of a status-column view -- Day or Week, with Today/Prev/Next navigation. An Unscheduled sidebar lists every Job with no scheduled time yet; drag one onto the grid to give it a start time (rounded to the nearest 15 minutes) and a default 60-minute duration. An already-scheduled Job can be dragged to a new time or day the same way -- this is a pure time change, never a status change, so it's logged separately from status history and never shows up as a phantom "status changed" entry.

The same Assigned To filter from the Kanban board carries over here too, and (when Scheduling Resources are configured) a second Resource filter narrows the calendar to one Team/Technician/Unit at a time.

2a. RESOURCE LANES -- WORKING IN PARALLEL

This is the core of what makes the board usable for more than one crew at once. With at least one active Scheduling Resource configured (section 3), the Calendar's Day view stops being a single time column and becomes one lane per resource instead -- an Unassigned lane plus one lane per active Team/Technician/Unit, side by side, each showing just that resource's own Jobs for the day. Drag an Unscheduled Job (or an already-scheduled one) into a specific lane and it's both scheduled to that time AND dispatched to that resource in one motion. Week view stays a plain date-per-column grid -- a full resource-by-day matrix is a bigger redesign this build doesn't attempt.

Because each resource gets its own lane, two different Teams, Technicians, or Units can freely have a Job scheduled at the exact same time on the exact same day -- that's the whole point. What the board WON'T allow is double-booking the SAME resource: dropping a Job onto a resource's lane at a time that overlaps another Job already dispatched to that same resource is rejected with a clear message naming the conflicting Job, both from the drag-and-drop board and from editing a Job's schedule directly. Different resources overlapping is normal and expected; the same resource overlapping itself is the one thing this guards against.

3. SCHEDULING RESOURCES -- TEAMS, TECHNICIANS & UNITS

Settings > Sales > Services > Quotations & Jobs has a Scheduling Resources subsection for managing your dispatch roster: a table of every resource with Add / Edit / Delete, and each one has:

• Name -- your own terminology ("HVAC Team A," "Van 4," "John Smith") -- there's no fixed vocabulary imposed.
• Type -- Technician, Team, or Unit, a label only (no behavioral difference between them -- pick whichever matches how your business actually talks about its crews).
• Color -- shown as a lane header dot on the Calendar and a left- edge stripe on Job cards, so a resource is visually recognizable across the whole board at a glance.
• Active / Inactive -- an inactive resource disappears from every picker and from the Calendar's lanes, but stays on record; deleting a resource that's still referenced by any Job deactivates it instead of removing it outright, so past Jobs never lose their label.
• Linked Employee (optional) -- ties a Technician-type resource to one specific Employee record (from Employees, not a login account), so the resource's own management table can link straight through to that person's profile. This is entirely optional -- a Team or Unit resource, or a Technician you haven't linked yet, works exactly the same without it.

A Job's own Scheduling Resource field (on the Job form, alongside Assigned To) lists every active resource -- picking one is the same as dispatching that Job to it, and is exactly what the Calendar's resource lanes read from.

4. SCHEDULING RESOURCE vs. ASSIGNED TO -- WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE

A Job carries both fields, and they answer two different questions:

• Assigned To (see the Leads, Quotations & Job Conversions guide, section 2a) -- who OWNS this record. An Employee, purely informational, shared by Leads/Quotations/Jobs/Subscriptions alike, with no scheduling meaning of its own.
• Scheduling Resource (this guide) -- who's actually DOING the work, when. A Team/Technician/Unit from your dispatch roster, drives the Calendar's resource lanes and the double-booking guard, and has no equivalent on a Lead, Quotation, or Subscription -- it's a Job-only concept.

The two are independent and both optional -- a Job can have an Assigned To owner with no Scheduling Resource yet (not dispatched), a Scheduling Resource with no individual Assigned To owner (dispatched to a Team as a whole), both, or neither.

5. SETTINGS & PERMISSIONS

Job Schedule view -- Settings > Sales > Services > Quotations & Jobs, on/off, default off, independent of the base Quotations & Jobs toggle -- a business can run Jobs without the schedule/dispatch board turned on at all. Per-user access to the board itself follows the standard "Job Schedule" row on the User Permissions grid (View/Edit -- editing covers dragging cards and rescheduling; a view-only user can watch the board but not move anything on it).

Managing the Scheduling Resources roster itself (section 3) is a Settings action, following the same access rule every other Settings page in Business Settings > Sales uses -- the business owner, or a user explicitly granted delegated Settings access.

6. HOW IT CONNECTS TO THE REST OF THE SYSTEM

• Leads, Quotations & Job Conversions -- a Job however it was created (direct entry, converted from a Quotation or Lead, started from a template) lands on this same board and picks up Assigned To/ Scheduling Resource/scheduled time the same way regardless of its origin.
• Employees -- both Assigned To and a Scheduling Resource's optional Linked Employee draw from the same Employees roster, not login accounts, so someone doesn't need system access to be assignable or dispatchable.
• Production / Work Orders -- dispatch scheduling here is independent of Production's own shop-floor scheduling (see the Production Scheduling & Shop Floor guide) -- a Job's Work Order, once created, is tracked on its own production timeline.

7. WHY IT SCALES FROM SMB TO ENTERPRISE

Quick Reference

  Job Schedule board (Kanban) ....... Services > Job Schedule
  Calendar view (Day/Week) .............. Job Schedule > Calendar toggle
  Schedule an unscheduled Job ...... Calendar view > drag from the
                                             Unscheduled sidebar onto the
                                             grid (or a resource lane)
  Reschedule a Job ......................... Calendar view > drag its block
                                             to a new time/lane
  Change a Job's status .................. Kanban view > drag its card to
                                             a new column
  Filter by Assigned To / Resource Job Schedule toolbar (both views)
  Manage Scheduling Resources ...... Settings > Sales > Services >
                                             Quotations & Jobs >
                                             Scheduling Resources
  Set a Job's Scheduling Resource /
  Assigned To ......................................... Job detail page
  Turn Job Schedule on/off .............. Settings > Sales > Services >
                                             Quotations & Jobs > Job
                                             Schedule view
  Per-user access to the board ..... Settings > Users > [user] >
                                             Permissions > Job Schedule row