Steps for running the Smart Scheduler
To get the best results from Smart Scheduler, ensure you have correctly set up your technicians' start & end locations, skills, service areas, location permits and any other conditions that are important to your business.
For more, see Workforce Management and Scheduling Policies.
Navigate to the correct date range. NOTE: Date range must be in the future
Ensure the correct technicians are listed - only listed technicians will be considered by the Smart Scheduler
Set the required filters on the Scheduler and Unassigned List
Open the Unassigned Jobs List
Select the jobs you want to optimize
Click the Schedule button
Wait for the Smart Scheduling operation to finish
View the results in Planning Mode, which allows you to tweak the jobs, accept or reject some or all of the plan
Save the plan
Setting up the Scheduler View
Open the Filters and Layouts panel to filter the Scheduler board and the Unassigned List as needed
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Use the Filters to make sure the Scheduler data is set up correctly.
Ensure the correct technicians are listed. Only those listed will be considered for Smart Scheduling.
Sending Jobs for Smart Scheduling
To send jobs for Smart Scheduling, you must select those jobs from the Unassigned List and click the 'Schedule' button. This sends the batch of jobs to the Smart Scheduler where they will be route-optimized and also adhere to any other conditions specified in the current Scheduling Policy.
Click the Unassigned button to open the Unassigned Jobs List
The opened Unassigned List showing jobs in the specified date range.
Select jobs for Smart Scheduling. Note you can use shift+select to select a range of jobs at once.
When the Schedule button is clicked, the Smart Scheduler begins to build a plan containing the selected jobs. A progress dialog is displayed showing how long is left in the operation.
Progress dialog while the Smart Scheduler is building the plan.
What about pre-existing jobs in the schedule?
Smart Scheduler does not reschedule or reassign any pre-existing assigned jobs.
For example, if you have manually scheduled some high priority jobs, then you can be sure that Smart Scheduler will not move these appointments, and will in fact build an optimized schedule around them.
Viewing and modifying the results
When an optimized plan has been created, the jobs are in the Tentative state as shown by the light blue color below.
The Smart Scheduler results can also be viewed in the Scheduler Map.
Note: These jobs are not shown in the Live Map view (beta).
Open the Scheduler map to view the Smart Scheduled jobs
If there were pre-existing jobs in the plan they would remain in place, and it is easy to distinguish the newly-placed jobs by clicking the button as shown below.
Click the ‘Select all newly placed jobs’ button to distinguish new jobs from ones that were previously in the Schedule.
By setting all jobs to Tentative, Smart Scheduler allocates the jobs to the technicians as shown, but the jobs are not yet dispatched to the technician devices.
This allows you to review the plan, confirm with customers or others that the proposed times are acceptable, and make other refinements as needed.
As you confirm individual jobs in the plan, you can set them to Confirmed.
Use the select shortcuts to select Tentative and Confirmed jobs in bulk and then move them through the workflow as needed.
Selecting all Confirmed jobs in order to Dispatch them.
Confirmed jobs are now Dispatched
What if the Smart Scheduler cannot assign all jobs?
Jobs that could not be scheduled are listed in the Planning Mode results panel.
Click on the ‘View’ link to open a list of those jobs. You will see an ‘Issue’ column which explains why the job could not be scheduled.
Usage Tips and Other Settings
Set the Unassigned Date Range
You can set whether the Unassigned List as a 'start date' in the Company Settings.
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The Unassigned List Date range setting
Jobs which cannot be Smart Scheduled
Jobs which cannot be Smart Scheduled have a yellow warning icon as shown below.
There are two types of jobs which cannot be Smart Scheduled:
Crew Jobs
Multi-Day Jobs
If they are selected in the Unassigned List, the Smart Scheduler will simply ignore them as part of the optimization run.
Date Range Errors
The Smart Scheduler will not run if the scheduling window (not the Unassigned List) is in the past.