Tasks

Pipelines & Stages provide a linear, customizable workflow that you can tailor to many real-world processes. It's intuitive to use, but its utility can suffer diminishing returns when you reach a certain number of Stages. Additionally, complex business processes don't always lend themselves to a consistent, chronological order of events; if you have different workflows for different types of solar projects, Pipelines & Stages can fall short. Same goes for processes that take parallel tracks, or where the order of milestones might vary from Project to Project. Lastly, Stages don't offer much detail–they can't be scheduled, assigned, commented on, or beefed up with relevant documents. The Tasks feature offers granularity not inherent to Pipelines & Stages; tracking Tasks is more targeted and condensed than simply running Projects through the Pipelines. Working in conjunction with Pipelines, Tasks will allow you to get downright obsessive with your order of operations.

Tasks allow more detail than Stages

Tasks can be assigned to Users

Tasks can be scheduled

Photos and files can be attached to Tasks

Each Task keeps its own history

Task parameters

Task lists: Group individual tasks into and tie them to a Stage.

Due dates: Set–and meet–schedule expectations, and improve timeliness of delivery.

Descriptions: Provide detailed context and instructions when assigning tasks.

Attachments: Include photos and supporting docs, and gather task-related information.

Assignments: Assign Tasks to specific Users

Stages as checklists, Tasks as line items

It may be helpful to think of each Stage as a milestone in your workflow, with a checklist of specific Tasks. While a Task list can belong to a Project at the root level, you can also create Tasks as children of a Stage. Each milestone, say Design, Permitting, and Installation, might have its own list of specific Tasks; you'd make sure they were all checked off before advancing the Project to the next Stage.

Task Templates

Most solar projects follow a fairly uniform process, but with frequent exceptions: some jobs don't require a permit or municipal inspection, for instance. Some require HOA approval, but many do not. Your company may perform a different scope of services in different markets, depending on the resources in different locations. Jigawatt Fusion lets you build out Task lists and store them as templates, so you can quickly load a list of prebuilt Tasks, saving considerable management time. And of course Tasks can be added and removed on a one-off basis.

Task Lists

Task Lists allow you to create - as the name implies - lists of tasks and their associated subtasks. With a prepopulated Task List, you can set tasks that cover different categories or project stages, applied all at once. For example, you can build out one task list to be applied to each new project with tasks for each project stage: New Project (acquire customer documentation), Site Survey (submit necessary photos), Design (provide proof of customer approval of design), and so on. With these pre-built lists, everything can be applied at the same time, so nothing gets skipped or forgotten. If a certain office supply company hadn't beaten us to it, this feature might as well come with a button that tells you how easy it was.

Flexibility is key to building out and managing efficient, effective processes. Tasks provide a dimension of flexibility above and beyond the Pipeline, and Task Lists help you keep your Tasks in order.