How to do it
Turn the new schedule on and pick a day layout
Select Schedule (Alpha) in the side navigation, choose Try the New Schedule, and toggle it on. During the preview you can switch back whenever you want. Then pick Shift day vertical, which gives each team member a column, or Shift day horizontal, which runs each person's day left to right along a timeline. Vertical suits a shop dispatching four or more trucks. Horizontal reads better for two.
Learn the three visit types, because one of them is where work gets lost
A scheduled visit has a date and a time. An anytime visit has a date but no specific time. An unscheduled visit has neither. Unscheduled visits are real jobs sitting in a drawer, not ideas. If you have never opened that panel, open it now and see what is in there.
Work the unscheduled panel every morning
Click the unscheduled visits icon to open the drawer. Sort it by highest value, then by oldest first. You can also drag visits inside the panel to set a manual order. Five minutes on this list before the day starts is the single highest-return habit in the whole tool.
Assign the crew at the job, not visit by visit
Assigning a team member while creating the job applies to every visit on it. Editing one visit only changes that visit unless you choose Save and update future visits. For a recurring maintenance contract, doing this per visit is how one tech ends up on weeks 1, 3 and 7 and nobody knows why.
Reassign by dragging between columns
In day view, drag an appointment from one team member's column to another to reassign it. Drag from the unscheduled panel onto the day to schedule it. In month view you can drag an appointment to a different day. That is the whole dispatch workflow, and it is faster than any form.
Use Find a Time instead of eyeballing the gaps
The Find a Time button highlights open availability and accounts for both the length of the appointment and drive time, which is the part people get wrong by hand. It is on the Grow and Plus plans. If you are on a lower plan, you are doing that math yourself, so keep the map panel open while you do it.
Say yes to the client notification when you move something
When you reschedule a visit, Jobber prompts you to send a rescheduling notification by text or email and lets you edit the wording first. Send it. On a recurring job the prompt only covers the one visit you changed, so if you moved the whole series you still have to tell the customer yourself.
Where this goes wrong
The parts most guides skip, and the ones that actually cost you money:
- Anytime visits read as scheduled to everyone except the person who made them. An anytime visit shows a date with no time, and it sits at the top of the team member's column. The office sees it as booked. The tech sees it as whenever. Decide as a shop what an anytime visit means, in writing, or stop using them.
- Day sheets and list view are gone in the new schedule. Both were retired. If your crew leaves the shop with a printed day sheet every morning, that habit has to change before you switch, not after. Sort that out first, because a dispatcher discovering it at 6:45am is a bad morning.
- GPS waypoints need the app and location services, and your crew should hear it from you. The map panel shows daily appointments, and waypoints appear on today's map when team members take actions in the Jobber app with location services enabled. That is useful for dispatch and it is also location tracking. Tell people before they find out, and say what it is and is not used for.
- Color coding only helps if you know the defaults. Without custom calendar colors, visits are green, tasks blue, events yellow, requests bronze and reminders red. People assign meaning to colors that was never there. Either learn the defaults or set your own on purpose.
- Better dispatch will not fix an overbooking problem. If the schedule is full because you say yes to every call regardless of margin, a drag-and-drop calendar just shows you the pileup in higher resolution. The fix there is pricing and a job minimum, not software.
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Common questions
What is the difference between an anytime visit and an unscheduled one?
An anytime visit has a date but no specific time assigned to it. An unscheduled visit has no date and no time. Anytime visits appear on the schedule for that day. Unscheduled ones live in the unscheduled panel until somebody moves them.
Does the customer get told automatically when I move a visit?
Not automatically, but Jobber prompts you at the moment you reschedule and lets you send a text or email and edit the message first. On recurring jobs the prompt only applies to the visit you actually changed.
Can I filter the schedule down to one crew?
Yes. The team filter dropdown lets you select one or more team members to show only their schedule, and Clear resets it. There are also Type and Status filters, which is how you get an unscheduled-only or requests-only view.
Do I need the top Jobber plan for this?
No. The schedule is available on all plans. Find a Time, which highlights open availability, is the feature that requires Grow or Plus. Everything else in this guide, including drag-and-drop reassignment and the unscheduled panel, works without it.
Sources
- Schedule Overview | New Schedule — Jobber Help CenterMonth, Week and Day views; the unscheduled visits drawer and its sort options including highest value and manual drag order; the team filter with multi-select and Clear; Type and Status filters; default colors of green visits, blue tasks, yellow events, bronze requests and red reminders.
- Day View of the Schedule | New Schedule — Jobber Help CenterDrag and drop appointments between team members to reassign, and from the unscheduled panel onto the day; vertical layout gives each team member a column with anytime visits at the top; the Map icon adds a panel of daily appointments; GPS waypoints appear when team members act in the Jobber app with location services on; scheduling accounts for appointment length and drive time.
- Visits — Jobber Help CenterScheduled, anytime and unscheduled visit definitions; assigning team members at job creation applies to all visits while editing one visit needs Save and update future visits; rescheduling prompts a client notification by text or email that applies only to the changed visit on recurring jobs.
- New Schedule — Jobber Help CenterHow to switch on the new schedule via Schedule (Alpha) and Try the New Schedule; Shift day vertical and Shift day horizontal layouts; Find a Time is on the Grow and Plus plans; day sheets and list view were retired; the schedule itself is available on all plans.
Related guides
- How to use ChatGPT for scheduling and dispatch
- AI for HVAC scheduling and dispatch
- AI for cleaning company scheduling
- Automatic invoice follow-ups for HVAC
- How to use ChatGPT for job notes
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