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[Thorfinn]

Just thought I'd pick it up again after a few year hiatus, and initially, as vanilla as I can handle. Things like DFHack's labormanager and extended inventory are pretty much essential, IMO. Way to painful to try to line everyone up in a hallway to do something like skill management. So I tried it this time without workflow.

I've been running EVERYTHING through the manager since about day 2, and here it is summertime already and I still have no more points in Organization than the 500 I embarked with. And when I say, "EVERYTHING", I'm not bothering with infinite or repeating orders -- everything has been in orders of no more than 5 at a time, and lots of them onesie-twosies. There have been a minimum of 50 orders processed in the kitchen and 40 in the brewery, maybe a couple dozen in the remaining shops, and bupkis.

Am I doing something wrong? It just seems I might as well switch back to workflow if I have to struggle so hard with the system and get nothing to show for it. Apart from the goods, which I could have had with almost none of the effort.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Interesting.  According to the wiki, having the manager approve work orders should train the “organizer” skill...

[Jundavr]

I don't have the game right now to test it, but in a small dead civ fort I easily got a bunch of dwarves to legendary+5 organization by letting them be a manager for a couple minutes and setting a macro to generate work orders. If it doesn't train organization anymore, it's either a bug or a removed feature.

[Thorfinn]

I've played 4 quick games through about the first year or so, and have not had any improve yet.

On the other hand, the in-game work manager is next to useless. I typically set up craft shops near each material, and the only way I can make sure the idiot manager chooses the right workshop to send the work order is to fill every remaining slot in every other workshop with something quick and dirty that I don't have materials for, like silk, then clear a in the workshop I want it done in. Otherwise, he's sending wood to the bottom of the mines instead of the shop right next to the stockpile of wood, and lugging a stone from the bottom of the mines to the workshop on the surface.

But that means I'm basically using only one workshop at a time, or the idiot stuffs jobs that don't belong there. And then make sure there are not any other jobs in j-m-q he can stuff into that open slot or he'll put the wrong one in, sure as anything.

I'm coming to the conclusion that the manager is pretty much only useful when there is only one shop where the task can be assigned. Far easier to just go to the workshop and issue the order there than it is to have to go around to every workshop and make sure it's not possible for the job to be assigned there.

[mightymushroom]

Individual workshops have a 'P'rofile that can be set from their 'Q'uery menu.

Among other items, a Profile allows you to toggle which labor(s) is used for "general" orders at that workshop. For something like crafting, this means you can divide into wood crafting, stone crafting, etc. For tasks where rather different tasks use the same labor maybe not as useful.

Profile also issues orders (including conditions) just for that individual shop, so you don't have to play tricks with all the other ones. AFAIK these shop-linked orders don't count as general orders for the above restrictions.

Makes the in-game manager quite a bit better, in my experience, but several things I'd like to do are still a hassle.

[orius]

Yeah you don't need junk orders any more; the workshop's profile lets you set a manager oder to the workshop directly.  It takes a little getting used to, but it's really useful.

[Thorfinn]

A very common case is that I want some marble doors for general living quarters and some magma-safe doors in the lower reaches. Maybe some special olivine or petrified wood furniture for nobles.

Another common situation is that I know (for instance) the cheap stone near my kitchen and still is schist. It would be really nice to j-m-q "schi pot" and it selects the correct workshop, or at least let me choose from the list rather than sending the order to the shop that maximizes carrying of raw stones AND finished products. Or "silt nes" chooses the shop near my rookery to make nest boxes with nearby material. As it is, it's easier to just hit "w", select the burrow named for that workshop, and enter the order.

Limiting by artisan or craft type could be handy for some things, but not generally the kinds of things I need to do.

[EDIT]
Or, ooh, what JUST happened in a new game I started an hour ago or so. I created an order for marble mugs, and it did it correctly the first few times (marble being, I don't know, level 10 or so), then I noticed someone was carrying marble clear down to the shop between the third cavern and the magma sea to craft the mugs there. And then they have to be carted all the way back up to the trade depot. Yeah, that's part of Urist's charm and all, but why bother with the hassle of setting up a manager when it's actually easier to issue orders that Urist can't screw up...?
[/EDIT]

[mightymushroom]

Yeah, for something like that you mostly want to put orders on the workshop. If you're making mugs or doors only occasionally, you might as well task them directly.

But if you want to, for example, make some mugs for trade whenever your marble exceeds N amount then you can use the individual workshop 'P'rofile to make a conditional order and it will limit marble mug production to that shop, never the wrong one. If you furthermore want to split the task between multiple workshops you would need to do some extra math while writing the conditions, since I don't know of a way to extend or "band select" the orders. It's either one shop or any shops accepting that labor assignment.

[anewaname]

You can enter those orders into the workshop and set the order to restart based on Quantity Available of the product, and they will run throughout the fort's life.
 
Examples:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

mason's workshop (set to ignore general orders, linked to a stockpile of gabbro)
    order: craft 2 gabbro doors if quantity available of gabbro doors is less than 2

craftdwarf workshop (set to ignore general orders, linked to a common stone stockpile that excludes gabbro)
    order: craft 6 rock pots if quantity available of empty rock pots is less than 6

craftdwarf workshop (set to ignore general orders, linked to a marble stockpile)
    order: craft 2 rock mugs if quantity available of rock mugs is less than 6

The count for Quantity Available ignores items that are in use (including hauled), so the order will ensure more is produced as the fort grows or if you sell some. There will be some confusion with setting up the right quantity for some orders when those jobs consume a stack of items (one Brew Plant job will consume a "prickle berry [5]" item), but those can be worked through by adjusting the Quantity Available to a different amount.

[Thorfinn]

Oh, I guess I had not realized shop profiles required the manager. Makes sense, I guess, but hadn't noticed. Carpenter shop is always the first and always the same -- acabababab -- and by the time I get back to him the manager already had his chair, so he issued the orders common for all forts -- 16 or whatever nest boxes of whatever material, and roasts and brewing so they get restarted, and a basic stocking level of hatches, doors, tables, chairs, splints, etc. (Incidentally, is there a save/load way to do that, or are macros still the easiest way to make all that repeatable so I don't forget to make something important when I inevitably lose that scrap of paper with my list?) Everything else, like the marble mugs, was either just added directly to the queue or to the workshop profile. But now I see, yes, I can't access the profile before assigning a manager.

I'm guessing that's a work in progress, though. At the moment, it seems the work orders get approved instantly, which seems to me defeats the purpose of adding that step in the first place. Though, I don't know, maybe it doesn't happen if he's sleeping? 

I really would like to be able to type "jmq4 oliv tabl" and the game not only understands that I want 4 olivine tables, it lists the distance from material to workshop and lets me choose which workshop to assign it to, very similar to the way it lets me choose which material(s) to use on a build command. [EDIT]Oh, and "jmq=4 oliv tabl" tries to keep stock at 4, not just a one-time order.[/EDIT]

[mightymushroom]

Yep, the shop profile IS the manager.

If you've been playing very new and/or pop limited forts, orders are auto-approved until you reach a population of 20. That's when the manager starts sitting at the desk and doing each one up. (I wonder if that's related to the original question of not gaining XP? I haven't paid attention during my play so I'm only guessing.)

Automatic ordering an olivine table when <4 in stock and you have >=1 olivine to work on (NB: doesn't count tables in the process of hauling)
j-m-q New order: "Construct rock table", quantity 1
   'd'etails: Olivine
   'c'onditons: (setting any condition defaults to restart when completed, check daily)
      'r'eagents (shortcut detects the job input 'a'dd item condition: 'i'tem type: Stone, 'm'aterial = Olivine); 'n'umber: 1; defaults to "at least"
      'p'roducts (shortcut detects the job output 'a'dd item condition: 'i'tem type: Table, 'm'aterial = Olivine); 'n'umber: 4; q-q-q: "less than"


Sorry to say the shop profile is the only means of controlling which shop gets the order. I'm not aware of any immediate plans to add that function from the general orders menu but you can always head over to the Suggestions forum and tell Toady about your woe. You might even argue that it falls under the aegis of UI/UX work and helping noobs players of all ages navigate complexity as is the current focus. It's functionally almost the same as using the existing workshop profile to add an order, just coming round to it by a different route. Order first, then workshop, compared to workshop first, then order.

[Thorfinn]

Oh, pop 20 would explain it. I don't believe I've gotten to 20 until the second spring immigration since I started 0.47. And at that point, I've usually come up with some different loadout or biome or fort design I want to try, so that settlement goes into another directory with the thought maybe I'll play it again sometime, though I never do. But when I do play them into Spring 2, there's so much else going on that I haven't bothered to keep track of things like whether the manager is getting experience or delaying the work orders. By then, I'm pretty much always entering things directly at the workshop.

Yeah, that's kind of what I figured out queuing things up with the manager was all about. Doesn't really meet my needs, though. I'll see that I found petrified wood and think, "Hey, I want to set up a room for some noble or visitor that has all the furnishings in red!" Or orthoclase yellow. Or whatever. It's just a 1 time shot, though if my crafter is bored, I'll have him try to make better quality versions of the furnishings and trade the junky stuff away.

But for all the generic stuff, crutches, splints, beds, most doors, tables, hatches, grates, etc., I really don't care to specify anything about them, so long as they aren't being made out of native gold or something stupid like that. Those work orders were given to the manager in the first spring, summer at latest.