So we have a schedule that works brilliantly for immediate dispatch or selection of an individual Field Team Member to a client at any point in time.

However, we have a scenario where the userĀ is looking or the availability of a team and not a specific FTM at some time in the future. They don’t know who will actually do the job because this job maybe 2 months in the future and the FTM might be sick or on leave by then. However, the user still needs to inform the client of availability and book them in for a project anyway.

So, we need to build a ‘Capacity’ schedule that allows you to see and book the availability of the teams as a whole base on the capacity of the company. For example they may be able to do 20 unspecified jobs per day – they might be able to do 40. They also may work in full days and half days. We need to build a schedule that shows easily a 3 month calendar with the amount of slots available each day.

Sounds complex. But I think we can simplify it by using the a version of the current ‘Job or project’ feature. We can put a setting in to allow 1 day with as many slots as they like (defined in the settings). When they come to select it in the schedule (another drop down in the appointment schedule called ‘Capacity booking’) it appears just like a big schedule and they click as many slots as they want.

When the appointment is made and it goes to the screen that shows the appointment, we need to replace the usual schedule with the ‘Capacity schedule’ as in the second image from the bottom.

So, we will have a capacity schedule and a schedule for the FTMs. At Easigrass this is the ‘Fitter schedule’. At Easigrass the week or even the night before they will then allocate the actual job to a fitter. Another appointment will be made. At this point the usual schedule should be displayed and the ‘Capacity appointment’ should be automatically closed and go grey in the capacity schedule.

There is one further stage to this job, but we don’t have time to do it yet and I will build another project for it.

capacity-schedule capacity-schedule2 capacity-schedule-selection

Written By

Adrian Portsmouth