What are Scheduling Policies?
A scheduling policy is a configuration that allows you control how scheduling is done in FieldAware. Scheduling Policies are comprised of Rules and Goals which you can combine to give the best results for your business. Scheduling Policies influence both the Smart Scheduler and manual drag-and-drop operations.
You can create multiple scheduling policies to suit different scenarios - for example a Standard Policy might respect the core rules of your business and prioritize the minimization of travel costs, whereas an Emergency Policy might prioritize response times, even if that means sending less-skilled technicians to the customer. You can put switch between policies at any time in response to changing conditions.
Scheduling Rules
Scheduling Rules are categorical; they are either on or off. The available rules are:
Service Areas
Skills
Location Permits
Excluded Techs
Scheduling Rules are enforced by both Smart Scheduler and manual drag-and-drop operations.
Scheduling Goals
Scheduling goals are ‘fuzzy’ rather than absolute. The Smart Scheduler’s optimization engine is designed to get as close to a goal while respecting all other factors. Currently, Workload Balancing is the goal which can be modified within a policy.
Scheduling Rules are enforced by Smart Scheduler only; manual drag-and-drop operations cannot take goals into account.
How Policies influence scheduling operations
As noted above, Scheduling Policies affect both the Smart Scheduler and manual drag-and-drop operations. This means that schedules created by either method will be compliant with the rules of your business.
However, when using Smart Scheduler, Scheduling Goals are also considered. In other words, the Smart Scheduler will optimize technicians' routes while remaining compliant with the policy’s rules.
When carrying out manual scheduling, either by drag-and-drop in the Scheduler view or by assigning technicians directly in the Job Page, only the policy’s rules are considered.
Setting the Active Policy
When a policy is active, that policy affects Smart Scheduler and manual scheduling. In the example below, the active policy is Standard Policy.
When viewing or editing a job via the Job Page, you can see which policy is active by opening the policy section. When you set a Job Type and a location, the policy area shows the skills, service area, location permits and excluded technicians that pertain to the job.
To understand how rules are enforced during manual scheduling, read Drag-and-Drop Scheduling from the Unassigned Jobs List and Manual Scheduling using the Job Page
What happens when the active policy is changed?
When a particular policy, let’s say Standard Policy, is active, that policy’s rules are applied when assigning technicians to a job, J123.
If a manager then makes another policy active, say Emergency Policy, this comes into effect for to all jobs being assigned from that point onwards. J123 remains under Standard Policy policy unless it is reverted to Unassigned.