What are the options for when assignees are notified about schedule tasks?

This setting determines when the "Task visible to partners" icon shows on the Published Schedule, which then determines which e-mail notifications are sent.

There are three different methods the system can use to determine when to notify assignees about their tasks:

Stable predecessors OR when the tasks are a certain number of days away

This mimics how you likely coordinated your schedules prior to CoConstruct. You start with the first task and confirm that the dates are set with your subs. Then you go to the next dependent task and confirm those dates with your subs. You work your way down the schedule until someone cannot confirm. Do you then call the sub for the task after that? Of course not, since until you have the predecessor’s dates stabilized, you’re just wasting your time giving out more dates that will likely change.

CoConstruct uses that same logic in sending out notifications to partners. There are a number of factors to determine if a task’s predecessor is stable, such as if the predecessor has been confirmed by its partners or if the task is already complete. Even if a task is not visible to a partner, you can always click the "Notifications/Confirmations" link and force CoConstruct to send an individual work request anyway. That will make it visible going forward.

Just in case you and your partners are not keeping on top of marking items as confirmed or complete, this option allows you to also have the system send out notifications when a task is getting close, whether the dates are "stable" or not. For example, if you put in 14 days, CoConstruct will let your assignees know about the task once the dates are stable or two weeks before the task starts, whichever is sooner.

This is our recommended choice, usually with a setting of 14 days.

Stable predecessors

This works just like above, except that the system will wait until the dates are stable before sending notifications about a task, even if the task's dates are getting close.

Once an assignment is made

With this option, CoConstruct will make any and all tasks that have been assigned to a partner visible to those partners, no matter how far in the future they may be. The result will be many more e-mail notifications sent to partners as downstream dates fluctuate on your schedules.

"Do not notify" limit

Even if all of your partners have confirmed their tasks, you may decide you'd like to limit how far into the future CoConstruct will notify subs about upcoming tasks. This is a smart move to avoid overloading your team and subs with notifications that are just too far into the future to be relevant.

So, you can use this last setting to specify at which point you want CoConstruct to wait on sending notifications. For example, if it is April 1st, and you have a setting of 31 days, CoConstruct will not send out notifications on tasks that are scheduled to start after May 1st.

Depending on your other settings in this section, CoConstruct may not even be sending out notifications that far in advance. But this option is your backstop so you know that you're not over-alerting your people.