|
<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Scheduler |
  
|
|
<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Scheduler |
|
We will be deprecating our old schedulers eventually, or only working on the newest scheduling calender, so we'll not be discussing the old schedulers in this help.
Here is a picture of the scheduler with some sample schedules by the week:
Weekly Scheduler screen.
The best thing to do if just starting out is just go ahead and play with it. You can add schedules by clicking on a certain day and time and clicking the Add button, or just double click.
Once a schedule has been created, you can just double click on it to view and edit. You can also just hover your mouse over it and a tip will display showing the time, subject line, and the first part of the note.
You can schedule anything. If you don't choose a tech, RO, customer, or labor item, it is considered a generic schedule. Use this if you're not scheduling work, but meetings, or anything else of that nature.
You can grab a schedule with your mouse and move it to a different date and time. You may have to use the month view if you can't see the day you're coming from and the day you're going to. You can always just update it.
Each kind of schedule is color coded. We have default color codes, but you can change them in the New Calendar Settings. As you choose different things to schedule, the color will change. This is in the Update form.
To view schedules for different types of appointments or schedules, just click on the button for that type of appointment type.
Click on All to see everything again. Tech will show all appointments that have a technician in them. Cust for all appointments with customers. Etc.
If you right click on Tech, you will see appointments that have a tech, but nothing else, same with the rest of the buttons. Try them out.
If you hover above each button, you will see a tool tip that explains what the button is for.
Status Filters
Because you can a schedule can be linked to an RO, It will be nice to view the Status of the RO from the schedule. In the RO there are 2 kinds of statuses. One is what we call the WIP status which is in each RO. Click Here for more information.
When you update the WIP status or status lights of an RO, the program will search for an existing schedule(s) that have a matching RO#, and update the WIP status. WIP status is a bit of a misnomer because you can use the status lights on and estimate as well.
On the Calendar screen you will see the Status lights at the bottom.
If you hover over them they will tell you the meaning of each light. By clicking on a light, it filters all schedules to only show schedules with that status light, and therefore those work orders/Invoices with that status light. If you go to Digital Wrench and change the WIP status at the top and save the RO, you can come back here and click on the 'ALL' button to refresh the screen and you'll see the status light has changed to match the RO.
RO Status
As you probably already know, an RO, an estimate, an invoice, and a diagnostic are the different statuses of an RO. The program works with each one differently. When you transfer an estimate to a Work in Progress, or from a Work in Progress to completed, the RO status changes. Digital Wrench will look to see if there is a matching schedule(s) for the RO, and update the RO status.
From left to right, Clear Filter, Estimate, WIP, Invoice. Just click on one and only that type of RO will be displayed.
Other Filters
These let you filter for certain customers, RO's, or Techs. You probably shouldn't use both the customer and the RO# filter at the same time. The icon next to the Cust ID: entry lets you lookup the customer using the normal customer lookup in Digital Wrench.
We can't do that with the RO (long story), so there is a paste button, or you can just type in the RO#, then click on the All button (if you type in the RO#, it will not be available for dragging to the calendar). There is a copy button in the RO edit screen at the bottom. If you click on that, it will show you the schedule for that RO if there is one, and copy the RO# to the paste buffer. You can also right click on an RO from the RO Browse screen to get the RO# into the paste buffer. Then you can paste it here by clicking on the paste button to the right of the panel. Once you've pasted an RO# in here, it is available for drag and drop from the Drag and Drop Panel.
You can also drag an RO# from the RO Queue directly to the calendar.
Because it's sometimes impractical to drag an RO and drop it directly on the calendar itself, there is a panel to drop the RO on, then you can drag it from the panel to the calendar itself. You can drop on RO on the panel if you have 2 screens and the screen in Digital Wrench that shows the WIPS and Estimates. You will need to click once on the RO, then click and drag to the panel.
Once an RO is dropped on the panel, it will change to the color for RO's, and show you the RO#.
Now, you can drag the RO from the panel to the calendar.
This is an easy way to grab an RO and drag it to the calendar for scheduling. It saves a lot of time. Of course you'll need to know the RO# or the customer#.
If you click on Refresh RO Queue, it will fill up the queue with active WIP'S (work in progress RO's). Then you can simply drag and drop an RO onto the calendar. Selecting WIP, Estimate, or Both, then clicking on the Refresh RO Queue button will produce those active RO's respectively.
If you check Not Scheduled, only non-scheduled RO's will be retrieved.
Work Hours
Click on the Hourglass icon to set the screen to only show working hours. You will not need to do this if you have Restrict to Working hours set in the Calendar Settings.
Time Scale
You can change the time scale to suit your needs. The timescale is preset in the Calendar settings. Try it.. you can't hurt anything.
Theme
Because it's hard to set the theme and see what you're getting from the Calendar settings, we decided to put it here. Whatever theme you select will be the default theme the next time you open the Calendar screen. Currently, on the Office 2010 themes allow for the status icons to display.
There are 2 icons. One to preview, and one to print. The preview icon can cause a gpf or a crash. Usually it only crashes if you exit the calendar and go back into it. If it does crash, exit the schedule program completely and go back into it, it may work. This bug is something the main company that made the program is working on. However, the print icon doesn't seem to have a problem at all.
Calendar Date Picker
This is the date picker. As you can see for June, there are bold print dates. These are dates that have some schedules. The date with a red box around it is today's date.
If you click on the beginning of a week, the calendar will show you all schedules for that week, or the day, depending on what you have selected at the top.
You can do things like click on a date, hold the shift key and select a different date, and all of those schedules will display. Or, you can hold the control key down and select different days. For instance, if you wanted to see the next several Tuesdays, Just click on the first Tuesday, hold the control key and click on the other Tuesdays. Try it.
Click on Today to get back to normal.
If in the schedule form you click on Reminder required, the program will pop up the reminder after the time for the reminder. This must be turned on in the settings for this to work. When the reminder window displays, you can dismiss it (for this session), snooze, or click on it and open the schedule.
There is a reminder button on the screen that you can click to stop the reminders temporarily. It could be annoying. 
so this is there to turn it off.
These settings are fairly obvious. You can view the day, week or month. If you are in a week or month setting and click on a day, then click on the day setting to see just that day. Same with the Month setting, click on a particular week on the left side and it will automatically take you to that week.
Today's date is highlighted in Orange at the top of the screen. The current time is highlighted on the left side of the screen (if you're on today).
If you have any All Day schedules, they will show at the top of the screen under the day.
Again, play with these settings and try it all out. You cannot hurt anything.