Powerlily’s scheduling workspace connects the project pipeline to real crew capacity, customer communication, and field status. This guide explains how to prepare crews, place work on the dispatch board, coordinate customers, and keep installation progress current.
Set up crews before scheduling
Create each crew and add its members, skills, daily capacity, and known unavailability. Accurate crew records let the scheduler identify staffing gaps and avoid presenting a team as available when it cannot perform the work.
Use skills that reflect the work your company actually assigns, such as roofing, racking, module installation, electrical work, batteries, inspection, commissioning, service, or maintenance.
Prepare the project for dispatch
Before scheduling, confirm that the project is in the correct workflow stage and contains the address, scope, expected duration, required skills, assigned branch, documents, and customer contact information.
A project can have multiple visits. Schedule site surveys, racking, electrical work, inspection, commissioning, and service separately when they occur on different days or require different teams.
Use the weekly dispatch board
Open the scheduling workspace and review the unscheduled or eligible work beside the crew calendar. Place a project on the intended crew and day, then set its work type, start and end times, duration, and other required details.
The board can support multi-day work and continuation. Use this when the job genuinely spans several days instead of creating unrelated appointments that lose the connection between visits.
Review scheduling context
Before committing the work, review the available indicators for:
- Crew capacity and staffing.
- Required and missing skills.
- Overlapping scheduled work.
- Crew or member unavailability.
- Travel distance and drive-time context.
- Weather conditions and forecast risk.
- Calendar conflicts and available free/busy information.
These indicators support the dispatcher’s decision. They do not replace local judgment about access, materials, permits, inspection timing, customer constraints, or safe working conditions.
Confirm the schedule
Use a tentative status while timing or staffing is still being arranged. Move the visit to confirmed when the crew, project, and customer timing are ready.
Check the customer-facing details before sending a confirmation. The date, arrival window, address, work description, contact information, and company branding should be correct.
Coordinate the customer
Powerlily can send scheduling confirmations, reminders, reschedule notices, cancellation notices, and crew-on-the-way updates by supported customer channels. The private scheduling link lets the customer review the appointment, respond, and add it to their calendar.
When plans change, update the schedule in Powerlily first so the board, project, field team, and customer communication remain aligned.
Coordinate staff calendars
Use crew calendar feeds or Google Calendar synchronization to place assigned work on staff calendars. Optional private free/busy checks can expose a conflict without importing unrelated personal event details into the project.
Calendar sync supports coordination, but the Powerlily dispatch board remains the operational record for crew assignment and field status.
Use the field status lifecycle
Keep the visit status current as work progresses. Available states include stages such as tentative, confirmed, dispatched, en route, on site, paused, completed, weather postponed, and cancelled.
Status changes provide an operational history and can drive customer updates or automations. Use weather postponed when weather is the actual reason, rather than silently moving the appointment and losing the explanation.
Work from Lilypad
Assigned field staff can view scheduled work in Lilypad with the project context, tasks, documents, messages, and available status actions. Keep the crew assignment accurate so the correct people receive the work and can update it from the field.
Handle changes and conflicts
- The job will take longer: extend the block or continue it to another day, then review downstream work.
- The crew is missing a skill: change the crew, add an appropriate member, or split the work into specialized visits.
- Weather becomes unsafe: mark the visit weather postponed, choose a new time, and send the customer update.
- The customer cannot accommodate the date: reschedule from the existing visit so the project retains its scheduling history.
- The scope changed: update the project and expected duration before placing it again.
Complete the visit
Before marking work complete, confirm that required field records, photos, safety forms, notes, and outstanding tasks have been added to the project. Completion should describe the real operational state, not merely that the scheduled time has ended.
Final review checklist
- Crew membership, skills, capacity, and unavailability are current.
- The project address, scope, duration, and customer contact details are correct.
- The selected crew has the required staffing and skills.
- Travel, overlap, weather, and calendar conflicts have been reviewed.
- The customer received the correct confirmation or change notice.
- Multi-day work and separate visits are represented accurately.
- Field staff can see the work in Lilypad.
- Status updates reflect the actual job state.
- Required documents, photos, safety records, and notes are attached before completion.
