Beast Mode Scheduling with ControlBoard®

ControlBoard® lets you schedule three different ways.

You can view jobs in a calendar and assign resources to job activities.

You can view resources and resource types in a calendar and assign job activities to them.

You can view groups of resources, called crews, and assign them to job activities.

But sometimes that’s not enough for a complete long-term plan. Say you want to schedule a whole day on a job in one shot. Say you have a couple dozen allocations and you need to move them all at once to tomorrow, or next week. Say you have all your allocations lined up on one job and need that exact group again later, on a different job.

You need Beast Mode.

Basic Beast Mode scheduling is grabbing several resources and scheduling them at the same time. Click to choose multiple resources (click again to deselect). Then drag them to the job and day to schedule them in one shot. No need to drag and drop each separately. And of course you can mix types of resources — crews, equipment, labor — in a single drop operation. For long-term assignments that need granular control, use Split By Day. You can take a two-week allocation and instantly break it into separate, single-day entries. This is perfect for when you need to swap out a single person or piece of equipment in the middle of a long job without re-doing the whole block.

Now consider a rain day. You have an outdoor job that lasts two weeks, starting tomorrow. Twenty resources are scheduled, each with a two-week duration. It rains, and you need to shift every resource forward by a day, while maintaining the two-week duration. Enter Beast Mode. Select all of your allocations by clicking in the job cell (or click the date header to select the entire day), and click the Shift button, at the top left. Choose the number of days you want to shift – one is the default, and back shifts with negative numbers are also supported – and apply. You’re done. Note that because of our advanced shift management, off-days, like Saturday and Sunday, remain skipped. There’s even an option for shifting the entire job, not just the allocations you’ve chosen. If shifting your schedule creates overlaps, don’t worry about fixing them one by one. Use the Resolve Conflicts button in the toolbar to automatically clear resource double-bookings across your entire selection in bulk.

You’ve got tomorrow’s job all scheduled. But now a similar job comes in, starting two days later, and you want the same assets on it. Once again, Beast Mode to the rescue. Choose the Copy radio button at the top left, then select all of your allocations on the first job. Drag them to the new job and day, and that’s it. The first job stays exactly as it was. Beast Mode tricks work on every schedule screen — Job, Resource, and Crew — while still respecting all ERP and accounting sync rules. And there’s one more that will save you time. You already know you can delete allocations by dragging them to the trash icon at the top left. Clicking that same icon clears your entire selection. And if you make a mistake while in Beast Mode, Undo has your back. It doesn’t just revert single deletes anymore; it tracks all your edits and bulk moves in reverse order, so you can experiment with complex schedule changes risk-free.

ControlBoard® is so simple that anyone can learn to schedule efficiently in five minutes. But for complex scheduling problems, there’s Beast Mode.