Please note that this is preliminary documentation and is subject to change.
Resource Scheduler: Setting up your Advisor Control Settings.
Within the Scheduler Program, each of your Advisor's Control settings are inherited from the default settings you've set up in the Program Options. The Advisor Schedule Control tool in the Scheduler Program allows you to set up advanced parameters governing when your Advisors are active, and their working patterns.
To access the Advisor Schedule Control Details screen (pictured above), click on the 'Advisors' button on the main program Toolbar, or select the 'Advisor Schedule Control' entry from the system 'Tools' menu:
The Advisor Schedule Control screen will display current Scheduling details for your Advisors - note that the formatting, grouping and sorting of the items is dependent on your own saved preferences.
Available Tasks: These selections (available from the sidebar/system menu and window toolbar of this screen) provide the following functions:
| • | Advisor Schedule Properties allows you to view and edit the extended properties governing Scheduling and Availability options for your Advisor. |
| • | Refresh Current View updates the display with the latest information available in the system. |
| • | Print Current Schedule Details sends the information displayed in the data grid to the selected printer. See Printing the Data Grids for more information on this option. |
| • | Preview your Print-out allows you to see what your print-out is going to look like, before you send it to the printer. See Printing the Data Grids for more information on this option. |
| • | Choose and Setup your Printer allows you to select from a list of available printers, and set any advanced printing options and requirements. See Printing the Data Grids for more information on this option. |
| • | Export Current Schedule Details allows you to export the contents of the data grid to a variety of file types. See Exporting Information for more details. |
| • | Format the Current View allows you to change the appearance of your Report, by changing fonts, grid lines, choosing, sorting and ordering your fields, and adding grouping and subtotals. |
| • | Refresh updates the display with the latest information available in the system. |
Advisor's Individual Schedule Control Settings
The Individual settings for your Advisors are as follows:
| • | Start Time: This entry defines when the Advisor starts work, and is the earliest time that you can allocate scheduled work to them. |
| • | End Time: This entry defines when the Advisor ends work, and is the latest time that you can allocate scheduled work to them. |
| • | Hours per Day: This non-editable field displays the basic hours per day worked by your Advisor (i.e. from the Start Time to the End Time). |
| • | Minus Daily Breaks (Minutes): This entry defines the number of minutes per day that this Advisor takes as 'Break' time (for example, lunch, coffee and comfort breaks). This figure is used when allocating advisor time to a Campaign, to calculate the effective working time allocated to that Campaign. For example, if our Advisor works 8 hours per day, and has 1 hour break time - if you then schedule them for 4 hours against a Campaign, the effective working time that would be 'billed' against that campaign is only 3 and a half hours, taking pro-rata 'Break Time' into consideration. If you don't want the Scheduler program to make pro rata 'break-time' calculations for your schedule allocations, set this figure to zero. |
| • | Maximum Available Working Day: This non-editable entry shows the daily availability of your Advisor, and is 'Hours per Day' minus 'Daily Breaks'. |
| • | Default Time Allocation Percentage: This entry allows you to set the percentage of the Advisor's time that is allocated when you schedule some work for them. If you set the value at less than 100 percent, this allows you to schedule multiple simultaneous pieces of work (adding up to a total combined percentage value of 100%) for your Advisor. This is useful for custom Advisor time settings, where you might, for example, have a team leader who is also making calls ... in this case you could set their Time allocation Percentage to 50% - as they're only spending half of their time making calls, yet you want to schedule them to Campaign work in default time blocks. This allows you to let the Scheduler program take care of the actual time calculations, when allocating this type of resource to Campaign work. |
| • | Auto-Scheduler Priority Preference: This sets the allocation priority for the Advisor when using the 'Auto-Scheduler' function, when you've set your preference to allocate available Advisor time by priority. Priority can be a numeric value, from 0 to 9, with Advisors with the lowest value being selected first. |
| • | Activity Hourly Charge: By setting this figure, you'll override the default Advisor Hourly charge when calculating the Revenue Summary Overview for your Campaigns. This figure will be used, depending on the charging model you've selected for your Campaign. |
| • | Display Colour Override: Here you can select a background colour to display scheduled items for this Advisor, when using the Scheduler program in 'Campaign Mode'. |
| • | Working Week: These represent your Advisor's default working week. Check or un-check a day to select of de-select it from your Advisors' standard working week. |