When you open iVSS, you'll see a sign-in page. Enter your email and password. Your administrator will have set up your account and assigned you a role (more on roles in the User Management & Roles article).
Once signed in, you'll land on your default dashboard.
iVSS has a simple navigation structure. Here are the main areas you'll see:
This is the heart of iVSS. It shows you two boards side by side:
This is where supervisors and planners spend most of their time.
This is where you turn raw orders into buckets. You'll see a list of open line items (work that hasn't been bucketed yet), and tools to group them into appropriately sized buckets.
The Schedule view lets you manage the sequence of your buckets. You can adjust rankings (priority order), release buckets to the floor, and manage the flow of work.
This is where iVSS shows you deeper analysis of your shop's capacity and constraints. It identifies bottlenecks (called CCR — Capacity Constraint Resources) and can recommend changes to your bucket sequence to improve throughput.
This area is most useful for managers and planners who want to optimize beyond the basics.
The Analytics section gives you reports and charts:
This is where managers configure how iVSS operates for your shop:
Changes here affect how the entire system behaves, so access is limited to managers.
This is where managers add, edit, or remove user accounts and assign roles.
Every user can access their own profile to update personal information.
Throughout iVSS, you'll see status labels on buckets:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Pending | The bucket has been created but not yet scheduled. It's in the queue. |
| Scheduled | The bucket has been assigned a rank and is waiting to be released. |
| Staged | The bucket is next in line — materials and setup are being prepared. |
| Released | The bucket is on the floor. Work is actively happening. |
| Completed | All work in this bucket is done. |
| Cancelled | This bucket was removed from the plan. |
| Color | What it means |
|---|---|
| Green | On track. This bucket is progressing well. |
| Yellow | Needs attention. This bucket is falling behind schedule. |
| Red | At risk. This bucket is significantly behind and may miss its delivery date. |
Every bucket has a rank number. Rank 1 is the highest priority. Lower rank numbers mean higher urgency. When you see buckets listed, they are typically sorted by rank — the most important work is at the top.
iVSS uses live connections (WebSockets) to keep your screen up to date. When a bucket moves, gets released, or changes status, you'll see it update on your screen without needing to refresh. This means multiple people can watch the same board and stay in sync.
Ineffectiveness — are you doing what you should NOT do?
Unreliability — are you NOT doing what you SHOULD do?
Now that you know where everything is, the next articles will teach you about the building blocks of iVSS: Orders & Line Items, Buckets, Work Centers & Routing, and the Velocity Board in detail.
