Creating & Managing Your Job Schedule

The Job Schedule gives you a visual timeline of every task, trade and milestone on a job, viewable in Planner, Gantt, Calendar and List views. From here, you create and edit schedule items, assign teams or contacts to them, and keep everyone informed as dates shift. Building your schedule directly in JACK keeps your team, suppliers and subcontractors working from the same up-to-date timeline, rather than chasing updates across emails or spreadsheets.

A schedule item represents a single task, trade or block of time on a job's timeline. Each item has a start date, duration and end date, and can be assigned to staff, suppliers, subcontractors or teams. Schedule items can be viewed and managed in all available job schedule views.

Navigate to Jobs > select Job > Project Management > Schedule. Click + Item in the top right of the screen to add a new item to your Job Schedule. This opens the Edit Schedule Item drawer, where you set the item's Name, Phase, Task Colour, Start/End Date, Time and Duration.

Under Assigned To, choose whether the item is assigned to a Contact or a Team. Under Predecessor, you can link the item to another schedule item and set a Lag (in days) to control how it follows on.

If you have schedule templates saved in JACK, you can apply one instead of adding items individually. Click the arrow beside + Item and select Use Schedule Template. In the pop-up, set a Start Date, choose the relevant Template Name and then click Populate Schedule. If the job schedule already has existing items, items from the template are added beneath them rather than overwriting them.

The icons on the left of the drawer give access to further functions:

All data in the schedule item can be downloaded as a PDF or printed by clicking the printer icon at the bottom left of the drawer.

To add an item that isn't tied to a specific job, navigate to Schedule on the main left menu, then click + Item. At the top of the pop-up, toggle off the Job-Related switch. This is typically used for staff leave, holidays, travel between jobs, or other tasks unrelated to a job, and it helps prevent scheduling conflicts.

In addition to viewing and editing a schedule within a specific job, JACK offers a global Schedule view, providing a centralised overview of all jobs' schedule items. To access it, click Schedule on the main left menu.

You can create and edit schedule items in the global view the same way you would from within a job. One difference is the Completed check button, located in the top-right corner of the Edit Schedule Item drawer, which lets you mark a schedule item as complete. This button is available only when editing a schedule item in the global view, not in the Project Management > Schedule tab for an individual job.

The global view also lets you bulk publish or hide job schedules using the Manage Visibility button in the top right. From here, you can either toggle each job's visibility individually, or click Toggle Visibility to change the status of all jobs at once. Whether toggling individually or in bulk, click Save and Close to apply your changes, including when switching a schedule from Visible to Hidden; changes are lost if you switch away without saving first.

As with an individual job's schedule, if a hidden schedule with changes is made visible, the Schedule Notification drawer opens here as well, letting you notify assigned suppliers and contractors of the change.

To change the colour of a schedule item, locate it in the Schedule and click the traffic lights icon to open the Edit Schedule Item side menu. Click the square beside Background or Text, then choose from the 10 pre-set colours, or select Other to pick a custom colour using the dropper or an RGB code. Save your changes so they're reflected in both the Gantt and Calendar views.

Select the relevant schedule item and click the traffic lights icon to open the Edit Schedule Item drawer, then click the Reminder icon. From here, choose one or more contacts to receive reminders, and set how many days before the item's start or end date the reminder should be sent. Remember to save before exiting. You can also set reminders directly from the Schedule tab by clicking the notification bell icon beside the schedule item's assignee icon.

The Gantt view gives you a timeline layout of your schedule, with a row of shortcut icons beside each schedule item:

You can link schedule items together to show their sequence in two ways: set a Predecessor from within the Edit Schedule Item drawer (traffic lights icon > Edit Item), or hover over a schedule item in the Gantt chart until a small circle appears on its right side, then click and drag the broken line to connect it to another item. You can also link items in bulk by toggling Auto Link Schedule Items at the top of the schedule item list. To delete a link, double-click the link line and confirm the deletion in the window that appears.

Use the Zoom bar at the top of the schedule item list to adjust the Gantt view's timeframe, from hours in a day to a full-year view.

Click the Phases button to show or hide phases across the Gantt view. You can further customise your schedule view, and JACK will remember your view settings when you return.

Navigate to Job > Project Management > Schedule > Planner view > Filter to create a Quick Filter, either globally or for a specific job. Select your filters, click Save as Quick Filter, then name the filter in the pop-up that appears. You can filter your schedule view by Status, Contact, Job, or Lead, then apply it using the Quick Filter dropdown.

JACK can automatically notify subcontractors, suppliers and staff of changes to a Job Schedule. To edit a schedule item's dates, horizontally drag and drop it on the timeline in the Planner or Gantt view. In the Calendar view, double-click a schedule item to edit it; in the List view, a single click opens it for editing.

When you create or import a Job Schedule, its status is set to Schedule Hidden by default. Once you're ready to publish the schedule, click the Schedule Hidden button in the top right of the Schedule tab. This opens a Schedule Notification drawer that lists all suppliers and contractors assigned to a schedule item, allowing you to send email notifications to all, some, or none of them. The job schedule status then changes to Schedule Visible.

Before publishing, check that all subcontractors have an email address in their contact record, as this can't currently be edited from within the Notifications drawer.

You can export your Gantt schedule as a PDF, an XML (MS Project) file, or an Excel file. Whether exporting your global schedule (Schedule > Gantt view) or an individual job schedule (Jobs > relevant job > Project Management > Schedule), click Export, select your preferred file format, and click Export again to start the download.

Allow up to 60 seconds for an individual job schedule download to complete. Exporting from the global view may take an extended period of time, depending on the file type selected and the number of jobs and schedule items within each job schedule.

Together, these tools let you build, refine, and communicate a job's schedule from a single screen across the Planner, Gantt, Calendar, and List views. Once your schedule is set up, subcontractors may propose their own changes for you to review; see Responding to Subcontractor Schedule Proposals for that workflow.