This article will go through the following topics of Scheduler:

  • Appointment Scheduler


  • Assigning Technicians in Scheduler 


  • Assigning Technician and Job Clocking direct from the Customer Order  > Service Job


  • Editing an Appointment


  • Deleting an Appointment


  • Log Technician Leave Time


Prerequisite


  1. The Dealership's Default Working Hours have been set up in the Account Settings > Settings & Controls - Shop Settings


Please review our article - Setting up Default Working Hours for the Dealership


  1. Each relevant Technicians has been set up for Payroll Clocking and Job Clocking and their default workdays have been set in Account Settings > Users - Time Clocking Staff
Please review our article - Payroll Clocking and Job Clocking Setup

 3.  The User must have the correct User Permission to be able to modify the Scheduler
Users can have read-only access OR Create/modify BUT a User must read-only and Create/modify user permission to look and/or modify the Scheduler



Appointment Scheduler


  1. From the Blackpurl Header > click on User-added image

  

User-added image

  1. Let's break the Scheduler screen down for you: 



1.  Views available
  • Day View 
  • Week View
  • Month View

2.  Dashboard - you can view the Workshop Dashboard from this icon
For further information, please review our article - Reporting - Workshop Dashboard


3.  Appointments can be created by clicking on New Appointment


4.   This is the date range for your appointments. Using the toggle you can scroll to the other date ranges


          5. This will indicate how many hours have already been booked and how many hours are still available 


The system calculates the total time by how many techs you have and how many hours they work that day

For example, if you have two techs that work 8 hours each, there are 16 hours available to be booked for that day.

     


  1. In our example, we are going to book in / make an appointment for 1.5 hours to do a 10,000km service on Kristelle Dubois' BMW on the 7th January 2022.

The customer would like a morning appointment and the unit needs to be ready for collection at around 1 pm.  A full safety check will also need to be completed.

There are two ways of creating an appointment:
  • At the top of the screen - click
The appointment screen will pop up for you to complete.

 If you create a new appointment this way, you will also need to indicate the time/date.

OR
  • Navigating to the date and either morning or afternoon you want and then clicking on the User-added image


The appointment screen will pop up for you to complete

If you create a new appointment this way, the date and morning/afternoon time will auto-populate.

For our example, this is how the appointment screen would look:


1.  The date and time frame (morning or afternoon) for the appointment

2.  If there is already an existing Service Job, you can link this appointment to it by searching for the relevant Service Job and selecting it

3.  In the Untitled appointment section - it will allow you to give the appointment a name

4.  You can search for the Customer Name (or create a new customer) - Once you have selected the customer, the system will ask you to select what Unit the appointment is for

5. Type in the concern including any notes from the customer ie what the customer would like you to check etc

6.  Who is paying?  Customer Pay / Third Party / Internal

7.  Estimate hours - how many hours you think it is going to take
This estimated hour is needed for the scheduler

8.  If the appointment is going over multiple days, move the toggle to indicate Make multi-day

9. When the unit is due to arrive - date/time; When the unit is due for departure - date/time; if the unit has actually arrived

10.  You can assign a Technician at this time (if required)
**For Multi-day appointments you will be required to assign a Technician
**You can also schedule multiple Technicians onto the same appointment and you can also assign a                                    single technician multiple times on a single appointment


  Once you are happy with the appointment > click User-added image


  1. The Scheduler for the 7th January 2022 in the morning has now changed and our estimated time of a 1.5-hour appointment has now been taken into consideration.



ASSIGNING TECHNICIANS IN SCHEDULER


  1. When you were creating the appointments, the dealership had the option of assigning a technician


If you did not assign a technician at that time, the dealership will now need to assign technicians to appointments

For our example, we are now going to assign a customer service job that has been booked in for the 6th January 2022 to the relevant technician

Click on Day View tab (see 1.  below) and change the date to the 6th January 2022 (see 2. below) so we can see which technicians are available for work and then click on to open the unassigned section



  1. Once you have opened the unassigned section, it will list all service jobs that have not been assigned to a technician



To assign a Service Job appointment:
  • Click and hold on the appointment in the unassigned section

  • then Drag and drop the appointment over to the time slot you want, under the technician you want


The end result will move the appointment to the relevant time slot for the relevant technician - removing it from the unassigned appointment section

If you make an error, just click/hold on the Appointment again and then drag/drop again onto the new technician or time slot

Do this for all the unassigned appointments to organize your technician's day


  1. If a Customer Order > Service Job has not been linked to this appointment, once you have assigned an appointment to a time slot and technician, the system will automatically create a Customer Order > Service Job for you.

To access the Customer Order, just click on the CO number

  



We have also introduced icons to indicate the status of the CO > Service Job

They are abbreviated ie prog = In progress, so at a glance, your technicians can see what status the CO > Service Job is in.




ASSIGNING TECHNICIAN AND JOB CLOCKING DIRECT FROM THE CUSTOMER ORDER > SERVICE JOB

  • There is also the ability to Assign Technician and for Technicians to Job Clock on / off directly from the Customer Order > Service Job > Technician Time section



EDITING AN APPOINTMENT 


To edit an appointment it is as easy as clicking on the appointment either in the Scheduler itself or from the Customer Order




In both instances the Appointment window will pop up for you to change the details on:



In the Scheduler - if it is just a quick change or moves ie moving from one tech to another, you can use the drag and drop 


DELETING AN APPOINTMENT 


If you have technicians assigned to the appointment, these will need to be removed by going into the appointment and clicking on  beside each technician that has been assigned



Then you will need to close out the relevant Service Job that the Appointment is attached to.


You can do this by deleting all line items off the relevant Service Job and then actually Remove Service Job




LOG TECHNICIAN AWAY TIME

We need the Scheduler to reflect away time so the dealership is not booking in appointments or assignment jobs to technicians when they are not even going to be there

For our example our technician Frank Jones will be away from the 30th November 2020 to 5th December 2020 on annual leave.

The best way to do this is to Log Leave time


  1. From the Single Day View tab, click on Frank Jones' name



This will open up a new screen that has information about Frank Jones - his Role / what are his working days / a list of any Leave and exceptions.

  1. To record his annual leave, click on User-added image and complete
We have indicated that Frank Jones is on Annual Leave between 30th November 2020 and the 5th December 2020. 


Once you are happy with the entry, click on User-added image to add it to the list, and then click on User-added image


  1. Now if you go to that date range within the Scheduler, it will indicate that Frank Jones is away and no appointments will be able to be assigned to him.