Schedule Management

Schedule Management allows you to make changes to a group of schedules, saving you the effort involved in making the same change to multiple schedules, over and over again. When you make a change using schedule management, you modify not only the definition of the selected schedules, but also the work orders that have been generated from those schedules.

To open the Schedule Management page:

1. Access the Schedule module by clicking the Schedule link at the top of the page.

2. Select the Find Schedule tab.

3. Scroll down to the OTHER OPTIONS pane and click the Schedule Management link.

Making a change using schedule management is a three-step process: Specify Schedule Search Criteria, Examine and Refine the Results, and then Update the Schedules.

Specify Schedule Search Criteria

Specifying schedule criteria defines the group of schedules that your changes will be applied to. For example, you might want to reassign all schedules at a certain property or you might want to change the priority on all maintenance tasks. You can specify any of the following values to define the group:

• Property – Select a value if you want the group to contain only those schedules that are defined for a particular property.

• Region – Select a value if you want the group to contain only those schedules that are defined for a particular region. If you select a property, the Region field is replaced with the Space/Floor field.

  Note:

  If you want to inactivate schedules, you must specify either a property or a region in your search criteria. The Inactivate button does not appear if neither a property nor a region are specified.

• Location – If a property is selected, the Region field is replaced by location fields. Location is highly configurable. Your system may display one or more of the following criteria.

  • Space/Floor – Select a value to find schedules that take place on a particular space or floor. Some systems group spaces and floors together and some use separate space and floor values.

  • Zone – Select a value to find schedules that take place in a particular zone within the property.

  • Tower/Wing – Select a value to find schedules that take place in a particular tower or wing within the property.

  • Floor – Select a value to find schedules that take place on a particular floor within the property.

  • Space – Select a value to find schedules that take place in a particular space within the property. You cannot select a space until after you select a floor.

  • Sub-Space – Select a value to find schedules that take place in a particular subSpace within the property. You cannot select a subSpace until after you select a space.

• Priority – Select a value to include only those schedules that were assigned a specific priority.

• Asset Class – Select a value to include only those schedules that pertain to a particular class of assets. You do not have to select an asset class to specify a particular asset.

• Asset – Select a value to include only those schedules that pertain to a particular asset.

• Type – Select a value to include only those schedules that are for a particular type of work.

• SubType – Select a value to include only those schedules that are for a particular subType of work. You must select a Type before you can select a subType.

  Note:

  If you want to update either the Type or SubType for a group of schedules, you must specify a Type in your search criteria. The Type and subType fields do not appear if a Type is not specified.

• Schedule Status – Select a value to specify the type of schedules to include:

  • Active -All – Includes all active schedules, both those that have been generated and those that have not yet been generated.

  • Active - Generated – Includes only active schedules that have been generated.

  • Active - Not Generated – Includes only active schedules that have not yet been generated.

  • Inactive – Includes only inactive schedules.

  • All Inactive and Active – Includes all schedules—inactive, active-generated, and active-not generated.

• Schedule ID Range – If you know the IDs of the schedules you want to change, you can specify a range of IDs to include in the group, for example 200 to 220.

• Recurrence Pattern – Select a value to include only daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or seasonal schedules.

Examine and Refine the Results

Once you have specified your schedule search criteria, click the FIND button to locate the group of schedules that meet your criteria. The schedules that were found are displayed beneath your criteria.

The number of schedules found appears above the list of schedules in the group. The schedules are sorted alphabetically by schedule name, but you can click any column heading to re-sort the list. You can also click a schedule name link to open a particular schedule and view the schedule details.

Examine this list carefully to ensure that you want to modify every schedule that is on this list. Doing so will modify not only the schedule parameters, but also the work orders that were generated from these schedules. If you see one or more schedules in the list that you do not want to modify, adjust your search criteria and click FIND to remove those schedules from the list.

Since schedule management performs mass updates, the system prevents you from making certain types of modifications to too many schedules at once. The following limits apply:

• If your results contain 50 or more schedules, you cannot:

  • Inactivate Schedules

• If your results contain 300 or more schedules, you cannot:

  • Apply Updated SLAs

  • Update Estimated Labor Hours

Update the Schedules

There are several types of updates you can make to the group of schedules you have selected. You can update the schedule settings; apply SLA updates; generate, re-generate, or inactivate the schedules; or update the estimated labor hours. You can only make updates in one pane at a time. If, for example, you want to update the priority and update the SLA settings, you must perform two separate updates.

To make updates, scroll down below the list of schedules to the OTHER OPTIONS pane, and make any of the following changes.

Update Schedule Settings

This area allows you to make changes to the schedule settings. Other settings, such as the recurrence pattern or the auto-schedule parameters, cannot be modified in bulk using schedule management (those settings can only be changed on individual schedules).

To update schedule settings:

1. Specify a new value for any of the following parameters:

   • Type/SubType – These values only appear if you specified a Type in the search criteria. Select a new value to redefine the type and subType of work being performed. If you select a new type, new a subType must be specified as well.

   • Notification – These parameters allow you to specify whether to notify the assigned user about the changes made to the work orders. In the Notify Assigned To field, select Yes to send email notifications. In the Method field, select the type of email account to send the notification to. Finally, in the Notification Rule field, specify either the number of hours or days before the start of the work order to notify the assigned user about the change. If no value is specified, notification is sent on the work order start date/time.

   • Statement of Work – Enter a value to change the statement of work on all work orders associated with these schedules.

   • Who is requesting this schedule – Enter values to change which person is requesting the work to be done.

     Note:

     Several of these fields are marked as required. To change any one of these fields, you must enter a value in all of the required fields or your changes are ignored. If you do not specify a value for any of the non-required fields, previously entered values are deleted.

   • Origination Code – Select a value to change where the work orders associated with these schedules originated from.

   • Priority – Select a value to change the priority of all work orders associated with these schedules.

   • Work Orders to Change – Select a value to indicate which work orders to change.

     • Open Work Orders Only – Changes you make will be applied to all open work orders and will not modify those that have been closed or those that have been worked on and modified.
     • All Work Orders – Changes you make will be applied to all work orders, even those that have been completed and closed as well as those that are currently being worked on.
     • Future Work Orders Only – Changes you make will be applied only to open work orders that have a Create Date that is greater than the current date. Selecting this option allows you to modify work orders that will occur in the future without modifying any open work orders that are currently being worked on by technicians.

   • Assign To – Select a value to change the person who the work orders associated with these schedules are assigned to.

     Note:

     To view an informational video that shows you, step-by-step, how to reassign schedules, Click Here and enter the password Facility742.

2. Click APPLY CHANGES.

   The changes are applied to the schedule definition and to the selected work orders. A list of the schedules affected is displayed.

3. Click FIND to redisplay the list of schedules.

4. To examine how the changes affected a particular schedule, click the schedule name link, and on the Schedule Details page, click View Schedule.

   In this example, the Assigned To value for the first work order is different from the others. This was because the Open Work Orders value was selected in the Work Orders to Change fieldwhen the updates were made. This caused the changes to be applied to all of the work orders going forward, but not to work orders that were already completed and closed.

SLA Updates

This area allows you to update the Service Level Agreement (SLA) Complete By dates on the work orders associated with the schedules. There are two instances where this would be appropriate:

• When a change is made to a setting that affects the SLA – Certain changes to a schedule setting may have implications for the SLA (for example, the priorities "End of Month" and "Two Weeks" might trigger different completion dates). Changing the priority in the Update Schedule Settings area updates the schedule setting going forward, but will not automatically update the SLA completion dates on the generated work orders. If you want the work orders updated, you should Update SLAs.

• When an administrative change is made to an SLA rule – Administrative changes made to SLA rules (for example, if the priority "High" changes from 1 day to 6 hours) do not automatically propagate to generated work orders. Therefore, if you know a change has been made that will affect the SLAs and you want that change picked up on all work orders generated from your schedules, you should Update SLAs.

To update SLAs:

1. In the Update SLA field, select Yes.

2. Click APPLY SLA UPDATES.

3. To examine how updating SLAs affected a particular schedule, click the schedule name link, and on the Schedule Details page, click View Schedule.

   You should see updated Complete By dates for the affected work orders.

Schedule Generate

This area allows you to generate, re-generate, or inactivate, schedules. The tasks you can perform depend on the status of the schedules in the group you selected.

Generate Schedules

Generating schedules creates a series of work orders based on the schedule settings. Using the schedule management tool to generate a group of schedules is common if schedules were manually loaded from another system (as part of implementation) or if a user wants to define a set of schedules, review his or her settings, and then generate them later as a group. This option is only available for schedules that have never been generated.

To generate schedules:

1. Define your schedule search criteria, specifying Active – Not Generated as the value in the Status field.

2. Click FIND.

3. Scroll past the list of schedules to the OTHER OPTIONS > Schedule Generate pane.

4. Click GENERATE.

Re-generate Schedules

Re-generating schedules deletes any existing work orders associated with the schedules (except for those that have been closed or are currently being worked on) and generates new work orders from the current date going forward. If you have inactivated schedules, re-generating them changes their status to Active and creates new work orders. Both Active and Inactive schedules can be re-generated.

To re-generate schedules:

1. Define your schedule search criteria, specifying Active – All, Active – Generated, Inactive, or All Active and Inactive as the value in the Status field.

2. Click FIND.

3. Scroll past the list of schedules to the OTHER OPTIONS > Schedule Generate pane.

4. Click RE-GENERATE.

Inactivate Schedules

Inactivating schedules deletes all of the work orders associated with the schedules, except for those that have been closed or are currently being worked on. Schedules can be inactivated for a period of time and then re-generated later or can be inactivated indefinitely. Schedules that have been generated cannot be deleted; they can only be inactivated. Only Active – Generated schedules can be inactivated.

If you want to inactivate schedules, you must specify either a property or a region in your search criteria. The Inactivate button does not appear if neither a property nor a region are specified. Additionally, if your search results contain more than 50 schedules, the Inactivate button does not appear. You must refine your search criteria to display a smaller group of schedules.

To view an informational video that shows you, step-by-step, how to inactivate a schedule, Click Here and enter the password Facility742.

To inactivate schedules:

1. Define your schedule search criteria, specifying Active – Generated as the value in the Status field.

2. Click FIND.

3. Scroll past the list of schedules to the OTHER OPTIONS > Schedule Generate pane.

4. Click INACTIVATE.

Update Estimated Labor Hours

This area allows you to update the estimated labor hours associated with the schedules based on the estimated hours associated with the procedure attached to the schedules. Doing so overrides any estimated labor hours value that was entered when the schedule was created. Updates are made to the base schedule, overrides, and tasks for the selected group of schedules as well as to the scheduled work orders. 

To update estimated labor hours:

1. In the Update Estimated Hrs field, select Yes.

2. In the Work Orders to Change field, select which work orders to change.

   • Open Work Orders – Updates the estimated labor hours for open work orders only and does not modify those that have been closed or those that have been worked on and modified.
   • All Work Orders – Updates the estimated labor hours for all work orders, even those that have been completed and closed and those that are currently being worked on.

3. Click APPLY CHANGES.