Schedule Board

Schedule Board, also called Scheduler, is one of the main components of Resco Routes and Resco Inspections. It provides a drag-and-drop interface for managing the people working in the field. You can schedule tasks for each resource, oversee the free resources, display the history of the performed tasks, filter resources by skill or territory, and much more.

Schedule Board is best used on larger screens. You can launch it in your browser as a web app from Microsoft Power Platform or Resco Cloud. Or, it can be embedded into Resco mobile apps for users with the role schedule manager (again, we recommend using a mobile device with larger screen, such as a tablet, or use the Windows version of the app on your computer). This second option is also available for Salesforce.

Key features

• Web-based tool with a drag-and-drop interface to plan and distribute appointments and tasks to staff in the field
• Notifications about exceptional events – delays, canceled visits, etc.
• Tracking real-time progress – if anyone will be finishing sooner than originally expected, the manager can re-assign jobs to balance workloads throughout the day
• Flexibility – select any custom table as your source, resource, and activity. In the Microsoft Power Platform ecosystem, it does not require Dynamics 365 business applications (but can be used with them).

Starting the schedule board

The browser version of the schedule board can be launched from the backend servers:

• From Power Platform: Log in and start the Resco Suite app, then select Schedule Board.
• From Dynamics: Log in to Dynamics and go to Settings > MobileCRM > Inspections, then select Schedule Board.
• From Resco Cloud landing page: Log in to rescocrm.com and select Schedule Board.
• From the Resco Inspections: Log in to inspections.resco.net and select Schedule Board.

Alternatively, the schedule board can be launched from the app. First, use Woodford to edit an app project and add the schedule board to your home screen.

Problems accessing schedule board

When you launch the schedule board from the server, you might encounter one of these errors:

• Mobile project has no Scheduler configured. Contact System Admin.
• Input configuration is not valid. - Entity 'fs_resource' does not exist.

The schedule board is only available to the user who is granted a specific project, created from the Schedule Manager project template. Create a project from this template, assign it to the user’s security role and make sure the project has the highest priority among projects available for the user’s security roles, and then the user can open the schedule board.

If this does not help, make sure that the schedule board in Woodford has the name Default.

Schedule Board main screen

Schedule Board is divided into three main sections:

• The resource pane on the left lists the resources. Usually, these are the people responsible for a particular activity.
• The timetable (central pane) is where you schedule activities, such as meetings, inspections, repairs, work order schedules, phone calls, etc.
• The source pane on the right lists the sources, for example, your work orders or accounts.

Timetable

The central pane shows the scheduled activities. In field service scenarios, these are the work order schedules.

Set up your timetable

You can change the displayed date range on the timetable using controls in the top right corner. The selected range is then displayed in the center of the top row.

Map / table view

Toggle between map view and table view. See below for details.

Today / This week

Use this button to move to the current date. You can use the arrows left and right to move the previous or next day or week.

Arrow down

Use to expand date picker. Select the day / month / year you want to display.

Date range

Select how many days or weeks do you want to see:

• Day – The screen shows 24 hours for selected day
• 2 Days – The screen shows two days in the season
• 3 Days – the screen shows three days in the season
• Week – the screen shows whole week. In the properties pane, it’s possible to show or hide weekend.
• 2 Weeks – the screen shows two weeks. In the properties pane, it’s possible to show or hide weekends.
• 4 Weeks – the screen shows four weeks. In the properties pane, it’s possible to show or hide weekends
• 6 Weeks – the screen shows six weeks. In the properties pane, it’s possible to show or hide weekends

Properties

Click the cogwheel to show or hide the properties pane.

Map view

You can display tasks and resources on a map. You can only display one day at a time. Use the button in the top row to toggle between the map view and the table view.

Use the following functions to control what sources and resources are displayed on the map:

• Click Show/Hide in the top row and select if you want to see sources and/or resources.
• On the list of resources you can tap a resource to toggle its visibility.

Additional map controls

• Hover over a map pin to display additional information in a popup.
• Double-click the map pin of a source to display its form.
• Double-click the map pin of a scheduled task to display its properties.

Schedule tasks

To schedule a task, select a task from the source pane and drag it to the timetable. Some rows might be grayed out; those resources don't have the required skills to perform the task or do not operate in the required territory.

Working with scheduled tasks

Hover over a task on the timetable to display task details.

As long as the task is still in the "planned" (*) status, you can click Edit and update the task details. For tasks with a later status, you can always click Open Form to display the full entity form of the task.

(*) Actually, the exact behavior depends on the configured Action for different states on the Activity Types tab in Woodford. Usually, editing is available for the action "Scheduled - time slot is reserved", but also "Scheduled – and locked for future changes".

You can also double-click a scheduled task to go straight to the entity form. The same applies to time offs and holidays.

Violations

When the schedule board detects that a task violates a rule, it displays a warning icon in the bottom left corner of a task. Check the popup (hover over a task) to see more details. The following rules are checked:

• Resource Availability: A task must have a gap of at least [travel to] minutes from the previous location and [travel from] minutes to the next location.
• Working Hours: Task is scheduled outside of the resource’s working hours.
• Preferred Window Start: Task should start after Preferred Window start.
• Preferred Window End: Task should end before Preferred Window end.
• Resource Time-Off Overlap – Task overlaps with scheduled time-off.
• Coinciding Schedules – Task overlaps with the following tasks: (task list).

Limit frequent visits

If you enable limits on frequent visits on the Source tab of Woodford configuration, the schedule board will enforce additional restrictions on how often can you schedule activities for a particular source.

• Only the activities currently displayed on your schedule board are considered when controlling the frequency. Consider switching to the "6 Weeks" view, particularly if you're using a frequency of multiple weeks.
  

• The gray oval number in the source pane shows the number of activities of the respective source currently displayed on the timetable.
  

Preferred time window

If you enable the preferred time window on the Source tab of Woodford configuration, the schedule board will enforce additional restrictions on when you can schedule a source.

The preferred window is defined for each source separately. You can also decide only to configure the end date or the start date; this would mean that the source (work order) can be scheduled at any point after the start date or before the end date.

The preferred window is displayed on the timetable when you start dragging a source with a preferred time window configured. Depending on the configuration in Woodford, scheduling outside of this window either displays a warning or it's impossible.

Resource pane

The resource pane is displayed on the left side of the schedule board. It lists the resources. Usually, these are the people responsible for a particular activity, taken for example from the user entity or a dedicated resource entity.

You can see how busy a particular resource is by looking at the time and percentage in the bottom right corner. 100% indicates that the resource is fully booked for the time currently displayed on the timetable.

The search bar above the list allows you to filter resources. Alternatively, you can filter resources by skill or territory on the settings pane.

You can double-click a resource to display details about it.

Assisted scheduling (resource filtering)

When you select a source on the Source pane, only resources suitable for the job remain available, the rest is hidden. You can filter by skill, territory, and/or maximum distance.

This feature is available when at least one filtering option is enabled in Woodford (Resource tab). In the Schedule Board, use the filter button to manage effective filters. Only criteria enabled in Woodford are displayed.

• The option "Skills" filters out resources that do not have at least one skill required by the selected source.
• The option "Territories" filters out resources that do not operate in the territory required by the selected source.
• The option "Max. distance from Source" filters out resources that are further away from the source than the distance specified.

If a resource does not have its own GPS coordinates, GPS coordinates from the "Company Settings" entity are used. If the "Company Settings" entity does not have GPS coordinates or a "Location Address" set, such resource is filtered out too. Distance between resources and the selected source is acquired from the response from google.maps.DistanceMatrixService (Google Maps JavaScript API Distance Matrix Service). Distance is requested for the current time, or for midday of the first day in the currently shown calendar time range (if the calendar time range in the Schedule Board is in the future). Individual distances are cached and distance from cache is used if it is necessary again until Schedule Board is opened or until the distance value is replaced because it was not used for a long time.

Live location

Optionally, you can enable live location for the distance filter:

• Location tracking must be enabled and properly set up.
• Use live location data must be enabled and properly set up on the Resource tab in Schedule Board configuration in Woodford.

Then, the Live toggle appears in the top row of the Schedule Board. If the resource has recent location data available (not older than 1 hour), live location is used to calculate the distance to the selected source. If the live location is unavailable, fallback locations are used (in the following order):

• Location of the resource's current assignment
• Location of the resource's previous or next assignment if within 1 hour of the current time
• Home address of the resource
• Company address

Source pane

The source pane is displayed on the right side of the schedule board. It lists the sources. In field service scenarios, these are often your work orders, but these can also be accounts or another entity.

If you're using the feature to limit frequent visits to one account or location, the bottom right corner shows the number of activities of the respective source currently displayed on the timetable.

The search bar above the list allows you to filter sources. Alternatively, you can filter sources by skill or territory on the settings pane.

You can double-click a source to display details about it. In field service scenarios, this action displays the work order.

Review your key performance indicators

Key performance indicators are displayed in the bottom right corner. They offer summary information about the currently displayed tasks. When you change the date range, the values are recalculated.

• Total scheduled time
• Average travel time
• Completed tasks versus all tasks
• Rule violations – number of tasks that violate at least one scheduled rule
• Risks – number of unscheduled tasks in jeopardy (because the due date for scheduling is close)

Customize your schedule board

Click the cogwheel button in the top right corner to show or hide schedule board settings. Modify the options as needed, your changes are saved automatically.

The settings are organized into multiple tabs. Depending on your configuration, some settings can be unavailable.

Define custom views

Select which entity view defined in Woodford is used in the schedule board for the Scheduled Task View (the timetable).

Timetable settings

Working hours

Restrict the time interval that should be displayed on the schedule board and available for tasks. See also Working hours for information on how to configure working hours per resource or on organization level.

Show completed or canceled tasks

Clear to hide completed and canceled tasks.

Show weekends

Clear if you don't need show weekends.

Show status legend

Display information about colors and corresponding task status at the bottom of the screen.

Rounded minutes

Select how accurately can you specify time when editing task properties.

Manual drag interval

Select rounding when you're manually dragging tasks.

Filter skills and territories

If you enabled skills and territories in Woodford (on the Source and Resource tabs of the schedule board properties), you can now filter your available resources by skill or territory.

Lists on both tabs support multi-selection; you can select one or more options. If you don't want to filter by skills or territories, select All.

Drag & drop scheduling

Calculate travel when dropped

If enabled, the schedule board computes travel duration to surrounding tasks and displays a warning if there's not enough time. This function requires that the fields Incoming Travel Duration and Outgoing Travel Duration are mapped on the Activity tab. Travel time is also visualized on the timetable.

Configure in Woodford

Administrators can use the Woodford tool for additional customization of the schedule board. You can set this up for each app project; select PIM > Schedule Board from the Project menu.

You can create multiple schedule boards. Only one schedule board can be started from the backend (called "Default"), but you can add the other schedule boards to the home screen of your app and launch them from there.

The whole customization is divided into multiple tabs:

• Activity
• Activity Types
• Activity Views
• Inspection
• Resource
• Source
• Source Views
• Location
• Time-offs and Holidays
• Properties

Activity

Configure the primary entities involved in scheduling:

• Select which entity should serve as your Activity Entity. Depending on your business, this will often be the Appointment entity or the WorkOrder Schedule entity, but you can use other entities, as long as they include date/time fields for the start time and end time.

• As the Status Field, choose the field that defines the status of the activity. On the next tab, you see the list of available states and you can set up how each status should be displayed.

Configure time fields

• Scheduled Start Field and Scheduled End Field are mandatory fields for the activity date and time.
• Incoming Travel Duration and Outgoing Travel Duration are optional fields used if you want to plan travel time. These are also displayed on the timetable.
• Actual Start Field and Actual End Field are optional fields for tracking exact arrival and departure times.

Configure links to resource and source entities

• As the Target of Resource Lookup Field, select the entity of your resources. This can be for example the User entity or a dedicated Resource entity.

• As the Target of Source Lookup Field, select the entity of your sources; for example, Account or WorkOrder.

Activity Types

Configure how tasks are displayed on the timetable.

• Border Width: Set up how wide (in pixels) should be the border of tasks on the timetable.
• Box Radius: Set up rounded corners for tasks.
• The table allows you to customize actions (task behavior) and respective colors for individual activity entity states given by status field.

Activity Views

Select one or more public views of the entity selected as Activity Entity on the Activity tab that should be available in the schedule board. You can also make one of the views the default (Initial View).

Inspection

If you enable inspections support on this tab, the task popup window (hover over a task on the timetable) will include a template field, where the dispatcher can associate a questionnaire template with the activity.

This function is available only if:

• using Resco Cloud backend
• inspections are enabled in Woodford
• the Appointment entity is used as the activity in the Schedule Board configuration (Activity tab).
• the entities resco_questionnaire and resco_appointmentquestionnaire (logical names) are enabled in the project.

Resource

In the Data mapping section, define how your resource entity is linked to the Skill and Territory entities. The lookup field can be either directly on the resource entity or via an intersect entity.

In the Location section, select where the resource location is defined. It can be either part of the resource entity or taken from a linked parent entity. This is necessary for filtering resources by maximum distance from the source.

In the Filtering & sorting section, define the criteria for filtering suitable resources and sorting them when a source is selected. You can only show records with matching skill, territory, and/or within the maximum distance.

• If you enable Use live location data (for the max. distance filtering), you also have to select the lookup from the resource to the user entity (live location data from location tracking are saved for users). If you are using the user entity as your resource entity, the lookup is not necessary.

In the Entity views section, select one or more public views of the resource entity that should be available on the schedule board. You can also make one of the views the default (Initial View).

Source

The Source tab has three groups of settings:

• Use Inputs & defaults to select entity fields for estimated activity duration, completion progress percentage, territory, and skill.
• Use Preferred date-time window if you want to set up a date-time window for scheduling. The preferred time is displayed on the timetable. You can also prevent users from scheduling outside of the preferred time.
• Use frequent visits to restrict how often can activities be scheduled for a particular source. See how this affects the schedule board.
  • Visit frequency: Set how many visits are allowed in a period of time, for example, 3 per month.
  • Min. days between visits: Set how many days must pass before you can schedule another activity for the source.

Source Views

Select one or more public views of the entity selected as Source Lookup Field's Target on the Activity tab that should be available in the schedule board. You can also make one of the views the default (Initial View).

Location

Use Location Fields to select address fields for your source entity. These can be either on the entity itself or on a related entity (e.g. account or contact).

Time-offs and holidays

Time Offs & Holidays allows you to track when your resources are unavailable for work.

• Time offs allow you to track personal time offs, such as sick leave or vacation.
• Holidays apply to all resources.

Set which entities and fields contain the information about resource unavailability, and which colors should be used in the schedule board to display this information.

Properties

If you want your schedule board to reload data periodically from the server, you can enable Auto Refresh and enter the refresh interval in seconds.

Automatic reload functions if you are using the schedule board in a web browser, but also in the mobile app, as long as they are in online mode.

Business logic

In addition to the tabs with settings, you can configure business logic in the toolbar. Schedule Board supports two types of rules:

• The On Create rule triggers when a new activity (task) entity is created based on the source entity (when the source entity item is dragged from the list of source entities onto the timetable).
• The On Change rule triggers when a task is rescheduled. The event is triggered when you drag a task to a different time/resource, when you modify the time or resource on the task properties. Note: When you drag a task to a different resource and time, the rule is actually executed three times (every time with a different value in the ChangedItem variable): once for start date, end date, and resource.

See Rules editor for further information about rules.

Default users

When a new organization is created, two sample users are created automatically.

Schedule Manager

• The default email address is schedule.manager@<domain> (e.g. schedule.manager@resco.net if administrator that created organization used e.g. admin@resco.net email address)
• The password is the same as the administrator account used during the creation of the organization.
• When you log in with these credentials (or as the administrator), you will be able to use default project designed for Schedule Manager role.

Roland Dahl

• The default email address is technician@<domain>
• The password is the same as the administrator account used during the creation of the organization.
• When you log in with these credentials, you will be able to use the default project designed for the Service Technician role.

See also

• Schedule Board examples