Revolutionizing Studio Management: NIM 7.0: Transforming Studio Scheduling with Visual Solutions

PH: NIM 7.0 was developed in response to one of the biggest challenges in studios: scheduling. Can you walk us through how the drag-and-drop scheduling tools help streamline workflows for creative teams?

Andrew Sinagra: Scheduling complex events — which you can just think of as a booking of time in NIM — is not always intuitive.  So we redesigned the scheduler, so our users could drag-and-drop resources with ease. This aligns much more with how they think about their assignments. 

In the past, NIM forced users to create an event, associate it with a production job, and then add users and resources. This process wasn’t ideal and required people to go through multiple steps to create the assignments, effectively slowing down the scheduling process.  

With the new redesign, a user can simply drag and drop artists and other key employees onto a job’s timeline. They can then drag other resources onto that event, including workstations, licenses, etc.  In addition, we’ve added the ability to drag entire user groups over to create a single event that lets you manage an entire team or department at once. To round things out, we have also introduced the concept of bundles to the schedule, allowing users to build custom combinations of users and resources that can be reused on different events. For example, if a user is always assigned a particular workstation and a set of licenses that combination can be saved as a bundle and directly dragged and dropped onto a job’s timeline. This vastly simplifies the scheduling process and increases overall productivity.

PH: Andrew Sinagra mentioned that visibility into a studio’s capacity is crucial. How does NIM 7.0 enhance this visibility, and what kind of impact can it have on a studio’s decision-making process, especially in high-stakes projects?

Andrew Sinagra: Users can now visualize the utilization vs. total capacity for any cross-section of users or resources.  At a glance, users can see if they are taking full advantage of their workforce, filter down to compare staff vs. freelance utilization, or track software license usage to determine if more licenses will be required for future projects. Understanding not only what resources you have available, but also knowing to what capacity they are being utilized, can help users when optimizing the studio schedule, as well as assist in determining overall staffing and purchasing decisions. 

PH: NIM 7.0 introduces a revamped scheduling UI and job-centric scheduling tools. How do these new features help teams manage global freelancer pools, resource allocations, and project timelines more effectively?

Andrew Sinagra: We want you to be able to manage all of your artists, both freelance and staff, as well as any resource you use in your studio within NIM. With the updated UI, the new filter panel will allow  teams to define and save any combination of filters that will help them create scheduling shortcuts. For example, you could filter all of your freelancers by location, keywords, and user groups and then organize them based on their corresponding strengths and capabilities. 

Job-centric scheduling, on the other hand, accelerates the process of crew management. In NIM 7.0, users can now instantly assign users to the crew of a job without leaving the schedule. Entire departments can also be scheduled on a job at once, and then managed as a whole, while still allowing for exceptions for various users. The new job-centric scheduling tools provide a level of efficiency that allows production teams to work with speed when dealing with large numbers of users.

PH: Conflict detection is a standout feature in NIM 7.0. Can you share more about how custom conflict scenarios are defined and managed? How has this feature helped your clients avoid project delays or mismanagement?

Andrew Sinagra: Users can assign conflict rules per user and user group, or resource and resource group. For example, a conflict rule could be defined so that any user in the “supervisors” group can’t have two events on the same day that are both set to a “booked” status. When a conflict is triggered, the alert indicates which users and events are involved, and which rule was violated. Users can find this information in the corresponding event section or the Conflicts panel.  

Allowing studios to define their own conflict rules provides the flexibility our industry needs. Conflict detection has been a major benefit to our clients who are managing a large number of users and jobs and working with limited resources. The immediate identification of an issue allows the user to quickly resolve the conflict and maintain a healthy schedule.

PH: NIM’s utilization metrics offer teams real-time insights into resource use. What feedback have you received from studios using these metrics to avoid over- or under-utilization, and how does this contribute to overall project efficiency?

Andrew Sinagra: By and large, studios love tracking software licensing capacity and availability directly on the schedule. NIM uses a date-based capacity table to help them track this, so teams can not only see their current license count but also the dates when those licenses will expire. This provides constant insights throughout the studio, whenever users are scheduled and specific resources are being assigned. Knowing ahead of time helps studios conduct capacity planning in an informed way as production ramps up and down. And understanding when to expand and contract in production can be vital to a studios overall success.

PH: With NIM 7.0, users can now import bid line items from external spreadsheets. How has this simplified the bidding process for studios, and what specific challenges does this feature address?

Andrew Sinagra: There are many times when studios may receive a shot list from an external source and they want to use that as the basis to organize their bid. NIM allows you to import this shot list, so you can define bid sections with details and notes to build an initial structure for your estimate. Additionally, there are instances when a supervisor or artist may provide counts to the producer bidding a job from a spreadsheet. These counts can also be directly imported into a bid estimate as a starting point for your line items. This not only saves a lot of time but eliminates double entry. Allowing for flexibility in the flow of our data lets studios also adapt to their methods and procedures, so they can use NIM how they see fit. 

PH: Lindsey Morrow from Flawless AI highlighted the ability to track 'estimated vs. actual times' for tasks in NIM. Could you expand on how this feature is helping studios refine their pipelines and become more efficient over time?

Andrew Sinagra: Users can create bids directly in NIM while allocating budgets of time for specific line items. There are times in production when the bid allocations do not always correlate 1:1 with the real-world time a specific task may take. For this reason, we track the bid hours, the estimated task hours, as well as the actual hours entered in timecards for the task. This allows studios to provide the bid as they see fit to the client while maintaining transparency to the internal production estimates. 

When determining the estimated time for a task, users can see the allocated time budget for that task and how much of the budget has been used across the entire job. Understanding if you are going over the bid estimate when planning your tasks is a critical step in the budget and time management process. As production gets underway, users can see in real-time the actual hours worked on a task vs. the estimated task hours, and throughout the job, the burn-rate chart shows you if you are keeping in line with your estimates. Just seeing if you are meeting your estimates or going over consistently can not only help your scheduling and production timeline for the current job but assist studios in providing more accurate bids for future projects based on the historical information in NIM. 

PH: NIM 7.0 includes filters and presets for quick scheduling of recurring crew and resource combinations. Can you share any success stories from studios that have used these features to cut down on repetitive tasks?

Andrew Sinagra: We continually hear from studios that are looking for more efficiency in repetitive tasks. Studios are always working with a finite set of resources and users, especially staff, who typically require the same resources on every job. Allowing studios to define “bundles” of users and resources improves the speed and efficiency of scheduling productions. For example, if a particular artist always requires a workstation and two software licenses, users can save this combination as a bundle for future use. When scheduling, this bundle can be dragged and dropped as a single item onto the schedule to create a booking for all items at once.

PH: As NIM continues to evolve, how do you foresee the platform addressing future challenges in studio management, especially as studios become increasingly global and reliant on freelancers?

Andrew Sinagra: Our goal is to be the single point of truth and bridge the gap across locations to define a central hub for studios. Working with remote teams includes unique and complicated challenges. We are continually evaluating and working towards creating solutions to meet these challenges and evolve the way we manage our studios. By providing immediate answers to the questions at hand, we can help studios better understand their business and provide the tools they need to make informed decisions for their future.

PH: Looking ahead, what other key features or updates are you most excited about for NIM users in upcoming versions?

Andrew Sinagra: We have some big things in the works that I can’t speak to at the moment. I wish I could... It’s pretty awesome. I will say that every new feature we release gets us one step closer to a vision we have always maintained for a unified management solution that deals with all aspects of our business. NIM 7.0 is just another piece of the puzzle.