Scheduling Craftspersons Using the Planning Board

The below image outlines the organization of the Planning Board.

• The left side of the Planning Board shows the Task Tree of problem types, work requests, and estimations of trades.
• The right side of the Planning Board shows a calendar of each craftsperson's work grouped by trade, and organized by the current day, work week, 7 day week, or month.
• Click down through work type and work request to see the estimated work you need to schedule.
• The gray bar under the trade estimations in the hierarchical tree indicates the percentage of work that has already been scheduled

• To schedule work, you drag and drop a trade estimation from the hierarchical tree on the left onto a craftsperson's date cell on the planning board. For more information, see Scheduling Using the Planning Board.

• If you have not estimated the work, click on the work request number to expand the section. A New Task bar appears. You can click and drag this bar to schedule this task, or you can use this bar to schedule an additional task for work that has been estimated. It is not necessary that you first estimate your labor requirements before scheduling craftspersons. You can schedule a craftsperson for a work request without first estimating the labor by dragging and dropping the New Task bar onto a craftsperson's calendar and defining work details with the dialog that the system presents.
• Tasks on the planning board are colored according to their work request status:
• Approved
• Assigned to Work Order
• Issued
• Completed

The calendar can be displayed for the current day, work week (5 days), week (7 days), or month. By default, it shows a week.

You select the calendar you want to see by clicking the buttons at the top of the calendar showing trades and craftsperson.

• Click 1 to see a single day.
• Click 5 to see a five day work week.
• Click 7 to see a seven day week.
• Click 31 to see a full month.
• Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate to the previous or next day, work week, week, or month.
• When the Planning Board shows the week or month view, you can click on a day indicator at the top to see the information for the selected date.

Note: When scheduling jobs that are estimated to take several days, you will want to set the display of the calendar to 7 or 31 days, because the system schedules only for the displayed dates on the calendar. For example, if the calendar is set to display five days, and you want to schedule a 60-hour job, the system will schedule as much of the 60 hours as it can on the visible five days. The gray bar at the bottom of the task will indicate the percentage of the job that you have scheduled. To schedule the entire 60 hours in one step, you should set the calendar to display 31 days.

The list of craftspersons consists of all craftspersons belonging to the same Work Team as the Supervisor, as well as all craftspersons without a specific Work Team assignment, organized by trade.

Craftspersons are shown in an accordion style list; click the arrow next to a trade to see or hide the list of craftspersons for that trade.

Click on a craftsperson in the list to see a pop-up window with the craftsperson's details and all work request assignments. This enables you to see the craftspersons assignments beyond the dates shown in the calendar.

Select the work request in the Task Tree, click Show Menu at the top of the Task Tree, and select Show info from the submenu. The Work Request Information window shows details for the work request.

To find a work request's tasks on the calendar, select the work request in the Task Tree, click ShowMenu at the top of the Task Tree, and select Highlight Entries. The system will highlight all tasks for this work request on the calendar and gray out all other tasks. Note that if there are no highlights, this might be because the task is scheduled during a different time frame than the calendar shows. Change the calendar display to show a different time period.

Examine the highlights to be sure that the work will be done in the appropriate manner. For example, if three tasks are required for the job, is one task scheduled to occur several days later, delaying the completion of the entire job? Similarly, are the two separate trades scheduled for the exact same time? Should they be rescheduled so that one follows the other?

Cancel the highlight by clicking Show Menu, and then selecting Clear Highlights.

When you expand the Problem Type in the Task Tree, and then click on the work request, the New Task bar appears.

There are two situation in which you would use the New Task bar:

• If you have not estimated the work, the work request does not include the colored bar showing the work request's status. Instead of dragging this bar, you use the gray New Task bar to schedule the work.
• When reviewing the details of a work request, you may find that the work requires an additional task. You can use the New Task bar to add an additional task.

You can add a new task for a work request by locating the work request in the Task Tree and dragging the New Task bar onto a craftsperson's calendar. When you drop the task onto the calendar, you can enter the task details in the Schedule form that automatically appears.

The system will update the work request in the Task Tree by listing this new task.

Note: It is not necessary that you first estimate your labor requirements before scheduling craftspersons. You can schedule a craftsperson for a work request that has not been estimated by dragging and dropping the New Task bar onto a craftsperson's calendar and defining work details with the dialog that the system presents.

You schedule a task by dragging  from the left side of the screen a trade estimate for a work request (such as an estimate for a Painter to work for 3 hours) and dropping it onto a craftsperson calendar for a specific date. When you drop the task, the system does the following:

• On the selected date for the selected craftsperson, the system displays a block whose size represents the estimated hours of the job.
• The system labels the block with the work request number. The work request number may be only partially displayed, but you can mouse over it to see more details.
• In the database, the system updates the Date Craftsperson Assigned and Time Craftsperson Assigned fields.
• In the Task Tree on the left pane, the system displays a gray bar beneath the task to indicate the percentage of the task that has been scheduled.
  
  For example:
  • If you have scheduled the entire task, the bar will be the length of the task.
  • For estimated, unscheduled tasks, no bar appears. If a task is partially scheduled, the length of the bar indicates that proportion that has been scheduled. For example, if you split a task into two blocks on the calendar and then remove one of the task blocks, the task’s gray bar in the tree view will be reduced by half.

As with the Scheduling task, you are not limited to scheduling craftspersons of only the trade that you have estimated. For example, if you have estimated that you need three hours of work by a Junior Carpenter, you can drag this requirement to any trade, not just the Junior Carpenter trade. This feature allows for maximum flexibility in scheduling. However, you should be careful not to schedule too far off from your estimated labor. For example, you might want to use this feature to schedule a Senior Carpenter craftsperson for work that you estimated as Junior Carpenter work.

Note: When scheduling a craftsperson, you specify the start time and scheduled hours; for example, you might enter a start time of 10:00 for a 2-hour job. However, the system does not prevent you from scheduling this craftsperson again during this time. For example, the system would permit you to schedule the craftsperson for another job between 10:00 and 12:00 for this same day. This allows for multitasking when appropriate. You can update the system with the craftsperson's actual hours worked on the job. See How to Update Work Requests.

Note: If you drop a job onto the craftsperson's calendar (the gray bar is 100%), the system permits you to still place this job on another craftsperson's calendar. In this case, when you drop the job onto the calendar, the system will automatically default the scheduled hours to 8 hours, which you can then edit.

When scheduling work, examine the existing blocks on each craftsperson's calendar to maximize craftsperson time. For example, if a painter is scheduled to work 5 hours on a task and you have a 1-hour painting task to schedule, add this 1-hour job to the same day as the 5-hour job. You can review the location and other details of the job to be sure that these jobs will logistically make sense for the craftsperson by selecting the task in the tree, clicking Show Menu, and selecting Show Info from the menu.

With the graphical interface of the planning board, you can quickly see craftspersons who are under-scheduled. By simply dragging and dropping tasks between craftspersons, you can fill up a craftsperson's day with tasks and avoid unfilled blocks of time.

You will find that you may need to split a task between multiple craftspersons, or have a craftsperson work on the task for multiple days. For example, suppose a painting task will take 8 hours. You can drag the task onto a craftsperson's calendar. You can then right-click on the task, choose Split, and the system will convert this 8-hour block into two 4-hour blocks. You can now assign the two 4-hour blocks to two craftspersons. Or, you may wish to right-click on the new 4-hour block to create two 2-hour blocks and divide the task between more painters.

Similarly, you might want one painter to split an 8-hour job over two days. Drag the estimate onto a calendar, right-click on the task, choose Split, and the system converts this 8-hour block into two 4-hour blocks. You can now assign one of the two 4-hour blocks to another day.

Note:  Be aware that the system schedules only for the dates that are displayed on the calendar. For this reason, when scheduling tasks over several days, you will need to set the calendar display to 7 or 31 days. See Calendar display.

Note: When splitting tasks between days, the Planning Board also considers the SLA's service window. For example, if a service window is for 6 hours and you are scheduling a 10-hour job, the system will split the task between two days, creating 6-hour and 4-hour blocks.

The Planning Board calendar indicates weekends and holidays in special colors. As a supervisor, when you open the Planning Board, the calendar shows the holidays that are defined for your site. If you select a different site in the console filter, the system redisplays the calendar with the appropriate holidays for the selected site.

ARCHIBUS provides the Holiday Dates (afm_holiday_dates) table so that business process owners can define their organization's holidays. Since a business might have offices in different countries and regions, which each have their own unique set of holidays, the table includes country and region information. The system uses this information, combined with whether a work request's governing SLA permits work on holidays, to schedule work according to the work location for individual work requests.

Although the system determines holidays based on the properties of the individual work request, the Planning Board calendar does not always display the available dates for selected work request.

For example, the Planning Board may present a list of many varied work requests, some of these allowing work on holidays, others requiring a holiday schedule, and others whose region or country dictate a different set of holidays than other work requests in the list. When you select an individual work request from this list, the calendar does not redisplay available dates for this specific work request. However, when you drop a task from a selected work request onto the Planning Board, the system considers the holidays defined for that individual work request to determine if the date is valid

The planning board consults the craftsperson details and the governing SLA of the service request that generated this work request to verify that the schedule meets these conditions.

Craftsperson's Working Hours

The planning board consults the craftsperson working hours to check the number of hours that a craftsperson is available a day and generates blocks accordingly. For example, if a craftsperson is available 8 hours a day and the work request includes an estimate of 12 hours for the specified trade to complete this job, the system will generate two blocks for this job: one for 8 hours and one for 4 hours. You can then drag the 4-hour block onto the appropriate day.

Note: You can override warnings for a craftsperson's standard available hours.

Service Window

The system checks the SLA's service window. If you schedule the work for a time beyond the service window, the system will alert you if the schedule does not meet the service request's defined service window, and will then cancel the placement of this trade estimate on the calendar. You must schedule the task within the defined service window.

Escalation for Completion

If you schedule a task within the defined service window, but on a date that is past the escalation date/time defined in the SLA, the system will alert you.  However, you can override the warning and the task can remain scheduled on the date you selected. If you want to adhere to the escalation procedures, you can drag it to another date/time.

You can make these changes to the schedule:

• Rescheduling - You can reschedule an already scheduled task by dragging and dropping the task from its current day and craftsperson to a new day and/or craftsperson.
• Removing a Task from the Calendar -- Right-click on the task and select Remove from the menu. The system removes the block from the calendar.
• Changing Task Details -- Double-click on the task on its assigned day (or right-click on the task and choose Edit from the menu). The system displays a form for editing any of the parameters such as comments, notes, craftsperson, estimated hours, or date. If you edit the date or craftsperson, the system will update the planning board by moving the block to the appropriate craftsperson/date column.

When you are estimating and scheduling your work requests using the Process Navigator-based screens (that is, you are not working from the Building Operations Console), if you have not yet finalized the schedule, you are able to run the Planning Board task to graphically see the schedule. As the supervisor for the work, you can adjust the schedule from the Planning Board task. The Building Operations Console does not require the step of finalizing the schedule.

When working from either the Process Navigator-based screens or from the console, a supervisor can always modify the schedule, even after the work is issued.

Finalizing the Schedule when working from the Process Navigator-based screens.

If you are working from the Process Navigator-based screens, once you are satisfied with the schedule for a task, you can finalize it by running the Estimate and Schedule task. The changes you made with the Planning Board will display in the Craftsperson Assignments panel. You can finalize this schedule by choosing the Complete Scheduling button.

This step is not necessary when working from the Building Operations Console.