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.
Fusion's Tasks feature is essentially the fulcrum of how the actual work gets done and tracked. It's powerful enough that it's functionally replaced the idea of "Milestones." It offers granularity not inherent to Pipelines & Stages, and is much more flexible than a baked-in linear milestone setup. Tracking Tasks is more targeted and condensed than simply running Projects through the Pipelines.
Fusion Tasks will allow you to get downright obsessive with your order of operations.
Anatomy of a Task
Breadcrumb: Name of the Project task belongs to, followed by Task parents (if applicable)
Task Name: Duh!
Description: Provide detailed context and instructions when assigning tasks.
Members: Company users that are assigned to contribute to the completion of a Task.
Due dates: Set–and meet–schedule expectations, and improve timeliness of delivery.
Upload destination: A preset path for media organization
Checklist: Other Tasks or Media required to be fulfilled in order to complete a Task.
Resources: Sample photos and supporting docs to assist in desired outcomes.
Activity: Notes and events pertaining to this Task
Tasks and Stages as "Milestones"
It may be helpful to think of each Pipeline Stage as a milestone in your workflow. Tasks are often built with a similar structure, with top-level Tasks mirroring your Stages. 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 Groups and a Task Library, which function as templates. You can quickly load a group of prebuilt Tasks, saving considerable management time. And of course Tasks can be added and removed on a one-off basis.
Task Library
Library Tasks are reusable "source of truth" tasks that can be populated into a Project directly, or into Task Groups (more on that below). Treat these tasks as universal Tasks that you'll want available on most of your projects, or in multiple Task Groups.
Library Tasks can belong to any number of Task Groups and Task Checklists. In this configuration, edits to a Library Task will carry across to every instance that it belongs to.
Conversely, a Library Task to a Project is effectively a snapshot of the Task at the moment. It gets cloned into the project as-is, and is not connected to the source.
Edits to a Library Task will not affect any tasks it has previously spawned on a project.
Task Groups
Task Lists allow you to create - as the name implies - groups of tasks and their associated checklist. With a pre-populated Task Group, you can set tasks that cover different categories or project stages, applied all at once. For example, you can build out one Task Group 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 groups, everything can be applied at the same time, so nothing gets skipped or forgotten.
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.