Manager

xTATTEREDx  · +FINE+  · *SUPERIOR*  · ≡EXCEPTIONAL≡  · ☼MASTERWORK☼

v50.12 · v0.47.05 This article is about the current version of DF. Note that some content may still need to be updated. More Info · V

Manager

Room requirements
Office	Meager Office
Quarters	None
Dining room	None
Tomb	None
Furniture requirements
Chests	None
Cabinets	None
Weapon racks	None
Armor stands	None
Other
Mandates	None
Demands	None
Arrival conditions
Appointed on the nobles screen.
Function
Allows large production orders. Allows workshop profiles to be set.

The manager is a noble that allows players to create multiple production orders, and also lets them set up profiles for workshops. This means that players can rapidly dispatch any number of jobs from a single screen, without having to add tasks to individual workshops.

Relevant Skills

A certain set of skills are relevant for any manager. Furthermore, certain personality traits influence whether any experience is gained in the skill. There are soul attributes that affect the skills, and other skills that affect the same attribute’s cross-training. The ones relevant for a manager are as follows:

Skill (relevant for manager)		Personality Trait (needed to gain social skill)		Attribute (affected by social skill)
				Body	Soul
Administrator	Organizer				Analytical ability
					Creativity
					Social awareness
Social - Other	Consoler	Straightforwardness (Honesty)	> 39		Linguistic ability
					Empathy
					Social awareness
	Pacifier	Cooperation (Compromising)	> 39		Linguistic ability
					Empathy
					Social awareness

The better match with the skills, traits and attributes in the table above, the better of a manager a dwarf will be. Try to avoid traits that halt experience gain for a relevant skill, otherwise time will be lost training a dwarf who will never get better at that skill.

Office

A manager only performs his duties in his office, so it is absolutely necessary to assign one. Since only a meager office is required, a single chair in the dining room will suffice.

To set up a dwarf to be the manager and give him an office:

1. Hit n to enter the Nobles screen
2. Select Manager and hit Enter. Assign a dwarf to be the manager. If nobody is particularly suited to the job, picking the Expedition Leader is a reasonable choice.
3. Build a chair somewhere or locate an existing chair.
4. Use the q command and place the cursor on the chair. Select the option to make the area into an Office and assign your manager as the owner of the office.

At this point the red [REQUIRE] under "Manager" should have disappeared from the nobles screen and you should be able to queue up work orders.

It is trivially easy for a manager to get experience in the organizer skill. Just queue a lot of jobs to produce 30 of something, such as Collect Webs, which appears first on the list. The manager will gain experience when validating the order, not when the order is finished. You can cancel the order after it is validated if you wish.

Work orders

Creating a work order works like this:

1. Hit j-m or u-m to enter the Manager screen.
2. Press q to create a new work order
3. Start typing (part of) the name of the item you want to produce. This will cause menu options that don't match the string you type to disappear from the menu.
4. Use the directional keys to select the specific type of item you want.
5. Enter the quantity of items you want to produce (0 for a perpetual order).
6. Your work order will appear in the list.

If there are at least 20 dwarves total then the manager will need to go to his office to "validate" each work order before it is acted on. If a manager is somehow occupied with other things then this might take a while, so in larger forts you might want to make sure your manager is not overly burdened with other labors. (For example, disabling hauling and cleaning for the manager might be a good idea.) The manager will also not perform his or her duties if socializing, drinking, eating, asleep or otherwise incapacitated (perhaps due to wounds). Managers don't require writing materials such as paper or scrolls to validate production orders.

To see if an order is validated, check the manager screen — validated orders will have a green checkmark, while invalidated orders will have a red X. Job orders will remain enqueued until the manager is once again in his (or her) office. An order can have the prefix of 'Ready', 'Checking' or 'Active'. A 'Ready' order only needs to be validated by the manager to become 'Active'. A 'Checking' order is waiting for its conditions to be satisfied: it will then become 'Active'.

An order can be set as a One-time order, or as a Repeating order that can restart when completed (conditions checked daily, monthly, seasonally or yearly), in the conditions menu.

You can edit the order in several ways: You can remove it, raise its priority, make it max (top) priority, change its conditions or details, or Enter limit the amount of workshops the order can be assigned to.

Conditions can be added to a work order by pressing c, and can either be based on the amount of an item in your fortress, or can depend on a currently ongoing work order.

Item conditions: To make life easier you can add item conditions from either the reagents/materials or products, or you can even add a new item condition yourself. When an item condition is selected, the following can be changed: The type (cabinets, bins etc.), material (obsidian, Acacia etc.), the traits (food-storage items, nearby items, empty items etc.), the number of the items (though this does not count items that are forbidden, built into something, or owned) and the inequality, at least (>=), less than(<), at most(<=), greater than(>), exactly(==), not(!=)).

Some useful item conditions are tricky to specify:

• "refined coal" is just simply item=bar material=coal,
• specific flour is item=powder, material=required flour name (not the plant name), trait=cookable
• specific alcohol is item=drink, material="alcohol name" (not the plant name)
• the trait "lye-containing item" (not to be mistaken with "lye-bearing item") is only available for "make soap" job,
• item=liquid material=lye ignores lye in buckets,
• the "unused" trait cannot be chosen manually, only reagents/materials key sets it for "make clothing" type of jobs.

Order conditions: The condition can depend on another order being completed, or another order becoming active.

The details of an order specify the type of material used in the making of the item (if applicable). Setting the max number of workshops that the order applies to can be especially useful to ensure that multiple orders for the same type of workshop (e.g. a Mason's Workshop) are worked on at the same time. After a production order is validated and Active, corresponding tasks will be automatically added to applicable workshops until the production quota has been met. An announcement appears when each order is completed. For repeating orders, the order then becomes inactive and the manager checks at the selected time interval for the conditions to become true again before restarting the order.

In repeating work orders, the quantity of items is treated as a batch size rather than a target number for total items to be produced. The quantity is set when creating the work order, and cannot be changed without redoing the entire order, conditions and all. A repeating work order will not abort mid-batch due to job cancellation or failed conditions. It must wait until the end of the batch before stopping. Be forewarned that perpetual (infinite) orders only check their conditions the first time they become true, since the (infinitely-sized) batch never completes. This can lead to confusion and frustration, as the order will never stop, regardless of failed conditions!

A guide to setting up functional work orders may be found in this thread.

Setting workshop profiles

The manager also allows players to change a workshop's "Profile". To edit a workshop's Profile, select a workshop with q and press P.

The workshop Profile enables players to restrict the dwarves that can use it and the minimum and maximum skill level required to use the workshop. They can choose who specifically can use the workshop by pressing enter on their name to permit/forbid their use of the workshop.

Additionally, using the Work Orders tab on the Profile screen will allow the manager to queue work orders specific to that workshop. Pressing Enter on the Work Orders tab will toggle whether or not the workshop will accept general work orders or only those set through the workshop's Profile.

Dwarves with strange moods seem to be able to claim a workshop even if they do not meet the profile criteria.

A note of caution: workshop profiles persist^v0.31.12 even if the manager is killed, which can lead to workshops becoming unusable if the manager is killed and the dwarves permitted into the workshop die or are reassigned. Furthermore, workshop profiles seem to be slightly buggy. Adequate (rusty) weaponsmiths have been seen using a forge with the skill min/max both set to "Dabbling". This may be somewhat irritating if peasants are undergoing training.

Disadvantages

One disadvantage of the work order system is that no work will be performed until the manager finishes validating the order. Work order validation appears to be fairly high priority, but it's best to ensure your manager has ample free time and isn't typically called far from the office for timely order validation.

A second disadvantage is that if there is more than one workshop which can fulfill a particular job set (such as several ordinary glass furnaces dedicated to sand collection, plus several magma glass furnaces for actual glass production) then the manager will distribute the jobs amongst all those workshops. While this can be an advantage (for example, if you want to speed up the work orders by having multiple workshops), this will make it difficult to dedicate different workshops to different tasks. This can be prevented by entering the profile of specific workshops and moving to the Work Orders menu; setting "general work orders cannot task this shop" will prevent the manager from assigning tasks.

Raws
[POSITION:MANAGER] [NAME:manager:managers] [SITE] [REQUIRES_MARKET] [NUMBER:1] [RESPONSIBILITY:MANAGE_PRODUCTION] [APPOINTED_BY:EXPEDITION_LEADER] [APPOINTED_BY:MAYOR] [PRECEDENCE:160] [DO_NOT_CULL] [COLOR:5:0:0] [DUTY_BOUND] [REQUIRED_OFFICE:1]

V · T · E Nobles and Administrators
Appointed	Bookkeeper • Broker • Champion • Chief medical dwarf • Dungeon master • Hammerer • Manager • Messenger
Military Ranks	Militia captain • Militia commander • Sheriff • Captain of the guard
Elected	Expedition leader • Mayor
Aristocrats	Baron • Count • Duke • Monarch
Other	Consort • General • Outpost liaison
Unused	Captain • Diplomat • Lieutenant
Elven	Druid • Acolyte • Ranger captain