Cross-Branch Scheduling Improvements

This release contains improvements in Cross-Branch Scheduling and Borrowing for businesses that use Enterprise Model.

Now borrowing between branches is fully transparent in the Scheduler - you can even see when your technicians have been borrowed by Branches that you have no access to.

When borrowing a technician from another branch, planners must self-acknowledge that they are borrowing. What’s more, all occurrences of technician borrowing are recorded in the Job Page, showing who was borrowed, when it happened, and by whom.

This gives supervisors better visibility into borrowing patterns, helping to make the workforce more efficient.

Changes included in this release:

In the screenshot below, the logged-in user has no Branch Access to EU Los Victorinos. Prior to this release, no-access jobs like this would not be shown.

With this update however, now the user can see J391 in the Scheduler, informing them them that their technician has been borrowed by a planner/dispatcher from that branch.

Clicking on the job block brings up the job card which has dark gray styling to emphasize that this is a no-access job. The fields which are displayed are also limited to the bare minimum the restricted-access user needs to understand when, where, and for how long their technician has been borrowed.

A Borrowed Tech means the technician’s branch is different from the job’s branch. For example, when a planner assigns a Branch A job to a Branch B technician, the technician is deemed to be ‘borrowed’.

To see where a technician has been borrowed for jobs in the Scheduler, toggle the ‘Display Borrowing’ switch to apply borrowed styling to jobs and time slots.

The ‘Display Borrowing’ toggle highlights all instances of borrowing - whether your branch has borrowed technicians from another branch, or another branch has borrowed your technicians.

Borrowing is highlighted irrespective of the branch access of the user who did the borrowing or the user viewing the Scheduler at that moment. This is to simplify the rules and give consistent view for all Scheduler users.

Now, when you drag a job block to a technician whose branch is different from the job branch, the drag-and-drop tooltip will contain a message warning you that you are performing a borrowing action.

In addition to the warning in the tooltip (above), a dialog will appear asking you to confirm the borrowing action. This is a checkpoint is to ensure that borrowing doesn’t happen accidentally.

Clicking ‘Borrow’ places the job block on the technician’s schedule. Clicking ‘Cancel’ returns the job block to its origin.

In response to requests for reporting on borrowing, a ‘Borrowing History' section has been added to the Job and Quote Page. Click the 'Borrowing History’ action in the lower left of the Crew Table.

Clicking this link will open a dialog listing all occurrences of borrowing that took place on the job, who was borrowed, who performed the borrowing action and what date the borrowing action was performed.