Overview of scheduling capabilities
Organizations that manage mobile workforces or deliver services to customers can encounter a wide range of scheduling scenarios and challenges. It's imperative that the person who assigns resources to jobs has all the information they need to avoid bad experiences, unhappy customers, and ultimately loss of revenue.
There are many things that need to be considered when preparing to schedule resources to deliver items. Organizations need to consider things such as:
When is an item ready to be scheduled?
Who is qualified to work on this item?
When does it need to be done?
Is there anything at a customer level that would influence my decision on which resource to schedule?
How do we deal with cancellations or requests to reschedule?
What if someone isn't available?
What can schedule changes affect, and how?
These items are only some of the considerations to review prior to dispatching items. Additionally, an organization might want to consider tools and methods that might be used to schedule items.
Typically, there are three approaches that can be applied to schedule items:
Manually: A dispatcher or scheduler manually identifies people and either schedules or reschedules items accordingly.
Semi-Automated: Potential qualified resources are suggested based on specific criteria defined on the item to be scheduled.
Fully Automated: Uses algorithms, combined with goals, and constraints to automatically schedule and reschedule items.
Dynamics 365 provides three tools that can be used to assist with each approach:
Manual scheduling with the schedule board: The schedule board helps provide dispatchers and schedulers with the information they need.
- From the schedule board, they can easily see all the currently unscheduled items and the availability of all resources (people, facilities, equipment) and schedule those items directly from the board.
Semi-Automated scheduling with the Schedule Assistant:
- The schedule assistant can be directly from a work order or from the schedule board. It offers suggestions of potential resources and time slots to schedule an item for. It's based on requirements captured on the record such as skills needed, time windows and more.
Fully Automated scheduling with Resource Scheduling Optimization:
- Resource scheduling optimization lets organizations automatically schedule and reschedule items based on predefined goals. It can include maximizing technician working time, minimizing travel, and scheduling high priority items first.
Resource scheduling optimization requires extra licensing to use. Most organizations also want to ensure that manual and semi-automated scheduling procedures are in place. The organization wants to understand what those procedures look like including potential exceptions to those procedures before they go the fully automated route.
As mentioned earlier, the primary tool that helps organizations manage schedules is the schedule board. From the schedule board, manual and semi-automated tools can be used to start identifying and scheduling the right resources for the right projects. Additionally, schedulers use the schedule board to move and reschedule items throughout the day. For example, if a mobile worker calls in sick, a scheduler can easily use the schedule board to find a replacement resource. Throughout the remainder of this module, we examine the many ways it can be used to schedule items and service customers better.