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On Demand / SLA Console

Preventive Maintenance / SLA Console

Adding an Estimation or Scheduling Step for Work Requests

Your site may require that a work request's estimated cost be calculated and approved before work commences. This helps to control costs and can spread out the cost of work throughout the year. Similarly, your site may require that all work be scheduled for execution, and optionally that the schedule be approved. This helps to ensure that work is done in a timely, efficient manner.

To add estimating and scheduling steps to your SLA, choose the Add Estimation and Add Scheduling links in the Optional Steps section for either the Work Request Approved status or the Work Request Assigned to Work Order status.

The estimation and scheduling buttons are available for all on demand work requests that are approved or assigned to a work order, but the step is required only if you include it in the SLA. Defining this step as part of an SLA ensures that you get estimation and scheduling information for each work request handled by this SLA.

If you wish, you can add a Confirmation step to approve the cost estimate or approve the schedule. See Adding a Confirmation Step for Work Requests.

How estimating or scheduling works

Here is how estimation and scheduling work:

• When a work request is estimated, the estimator enters the trades needed for the work, can estimate the hours, reserve parts, and enter other costs as needed. Other costs are any costs that are not labor or parts.
• When a work request is scheduled, the scheduler assigns the craftsperson and estimates their hours. The application uses this information to calculate estimated costs. The assigned hours are used to calculate the craftsperson's available hours.

How Estimators and Schedulers are determined

Estimators and Schedulers are craftsperson who have the following settings:

• Estimators have their Is Estimator? field set to Yes. This is done using the Define Craftsperson task These users appear in the Employee field when you are adding an estimating step.
• Schedulers have their Is Planner? field set to Yes. This is done using the Define Craftsperson task. These users appear in the Employee list when you are adding a scheduling step.

Setting the order of execution for optional steps

Note that you must enter the steps in the order in which the SLA should execute them. For example, if you want to estimate the cost, have the cost approved, schedule the work, and have the schedule approved, you would create the following steps in this order:

• Estimation
• Confirmation (Approve Estimate)
• Schedule
• Confirmation (Approve Schedule)

When you add optional steps, the SLA wizard shows the buttons to edit or delete the steps, or to change the order of execution as shown in the below image:

The "Work Request - Approved Status" and "Work Request - Assigned to Work Order" statuses

Note that the estimating, scheduling, and approving steps can occur for either the "Work Request -Approved" or the "Work Request -Assigned to Work Order" basic statuses. They are the same steps, and use the same forms.

Note: You can add an estimation or scheduling step for an Approved work request only if you are not auto-creating the work order or auto-issuing the request.

By offering the estimate and schedule steps for both statuses, the system provides for a flexible work flow. For example, a fairly common use case calls for work requests to be estimated before the requests are assigned to a work order. Then, when a work order is assigned or created, the work defined on the work request is scheduled.

Procedure

Note: This procedure describes the selections available for the estimation and scheduling steps that are included with the application 'out-of-the-box'. However, these steps are configurable. If your system integrator has changed these steps, the step definition would differ from the description below. For more information, see Manage Service Desk Steps.

To set up an estimation or scheduling step:

1. From the Step 2 - Workflow form of the SLA wizard, select the Add Estimation or Add Scheduling link in the Approved or Assigned to Work Oder section of the workflow.

   The Specify who must estimate the Trades, Parts, and Other Costs for the Work Request form, or the Specify who must schedule a Craftsperson or Tools to the Work Request form appears.

2. Enter the following in the form:

   Type. From the Type field, select Estimation or Scheduling depending on which type of step you are adding.

   Condition. Optionally, enter a condition for the step by selecting a criteria, operator and value from the lists provided. For example, you could set up a condition so that only requests for specific divisions within a building require estimation or scheduling, or that only requests for specific pieces of equipment require the step.

   Select one of the follower to be the estimator or scheduler

   • Employee. The Employee list shows estimators or schedulers, depending on the type of step you are adding:
     • If you are adding an estimation step, the Employee list shows the Craftsperson who have their Is Estimator? field, set to Yes.
     • If you are adding a scheduling step, the Employee list shows craftspersons whose Is Planner? field is set to Yes.
   • AFM Role. To specify a user role, rather than a specific person, select the role from the AFM Role field.
   • Service Desk Role. Select from this list to specify a service desk role. You must have defined a role for this step to make this selection. See Understanding Service Desk Roles.

   Notify Responsible? To send the person responsible for this step an email notification when work requires this step, select Yes for this field.

3. Click Save.