Buildertrend’s construction project scheduling feature is getting a new look

Buildertrend’s construction Schedule is one of the most widely used features within our platform. It serves many purposes such as the job planning calendar and project timeline management as well as Daily Log information tracking and assigning To-Do’s.

We refer to the Schedule as the backbone of the Buildertrend platform, because it’s the feature that holds everything else together. It’s often the starting point for our customers and is essential for construction project scheduling.

The Schedule feature is also one of the original features within Buildertrend and was ready for a few updates. In order to get inside scoop, we chatted with product design experts Gabby Colson, Engineering product manager and Sadie Lewman, Engineering product designer.

What prompted the redesign of Buildertrend’s Schedule feature?

A recent internal systems overhaul has allowed the Product team to make improvements and additions to the software much more efficiently. This in turn has a positive impact on the way the user experiences and interacts with Buildertrend.

“After the conversion, there were a few places where we saw opportunities to make more impactful changes that would improve our customer’s experience,” said Colson. “The Schedule was a clear candidate for that treatment, as it is one of the most highly regarded and used features within the platform, but also one of the oldest and least efficient technically.”

What are the biggest updates our customers can expect with the redesign?

The newly redesigned construction Schedule feature makes it easier than ever for our customers and their teams to create or review their construction project scheduling and quickly get back to work. By focusing on the user experience and design, the new Schedule boasts modernized visuals and easier methods of navigating with these updates:

• Visual refresh: The Schedule was a perfect candidate for an overall visual refresh. While in most ways it functioned very well for our customers, it was missing some of the elements that people have come to expect from a modern digital calendar, and it had an outdated look. One highlight of the visual refresh includes accessibility compliance such as colorblind-friendly Schedule item titles, improved scaling on the Gantt tab and relabeled baseline data.

• Updated navigation: The original Schedule offered nine different tabs. This made it difficult to know which tab was best for the work our customers were trying to do. Some of the tabs showed Schedule items in different ways, while others mainly served as reports. We wanted to make it easier for our customer to move around the Schedule and find the best view for the task at hand.
• Schedule and Baseline tabs: Within the new design, we have the main two tabs, Schedule and Baseline. These tabs makes it easier than ever for our customers to compare their pre-planned timeline to their real-time project schedules. Baseline tracking plays a huge strategic role in helping builders dial in their scheduling process over time, so we made sure it had a higher placement in the redesign.
• Hourly view and reimagined Agenda view: Frequent users of the Schedule will know that the Day view has very limited information and isn’t really useful, while the Month view can become dense and clumsy to interpret. Our Calendar is now better optimized to allow customers to zoom in to the level of detail they need. This ensures the Month view doesn’t get too cluttered and overwhelming with the Week and Day views doing the heavy lifting for complex construction project scheduling.
• Updated views for all users: Builders aren’t the only users who will experience the improvements to the Schedule. Subs and homeowners will now have access to the updated Calendar, List and Gantt views as well. However, this will not affect the permissions and view settings. All users will be able to interact with the Schedule in a better way, but accesses set by business owners will not change.

Effortlessly navigate and manage your job schedules

With everything we do here at Buildertrend, we know there’s always room for improvement. Whether it’s feature redesigns or product updates, our end goal remains the same. To provide the best experience possible for our customers and ensure their continued success.

If you’d like to learn more about the Schedule feature redesign or have questions about modernized look, feel free to reach out. We’d love to chat. Or if you’re new here and think Buildertrend could help with managing your construction business, schedule a demo today.

About The Author

Chelsea Cole Chelsea Cole is a senior content marketing specialist at Buildertrend