Setting Up Technician Shifts

Shifts are used to determine when a technician is available for scheduling service work. You set up standard shifts and then assign them to technicians. A technician must have an assigned shift for the system to schedule appointments for that technician. Technician shifts are part of the Advanced Scheduling modules.

Select Microsoft Dynamics GP > Tools > Setup > Service Management > Lookup Setup > Technicians > Shifts.
Zoom on the Shift ID field.
Enter a Shift ID and Description.
Enter the workable hours by double-clicking the day of the week in the lower half of the Shift Setup window. You can enter the Starting Time and Ending Time in the Shift Daily Setup window. The system figures a technician's availability based on the shift hours entered, service appointments, activity appointments, and the technician's extended hours. The system does not recognize when a shift extends for longer than one day. If a shift crosses midnight, you must set up two shifts. For example, if a shift starts at 11:00 p.m. and ends the next day at 7:00 a.m., you would have to set up a shift for 11:00 p.m. – 11:59 p.m. and a second shift from 12:01 a.m. – 7:00 a.m.

A 12:00 a.m. time entry is the equivalent of zero. We recommend you do not have the starting time or ending time set to 12:00 a.m., as illustrated in the previous example. The system allows you to make the ending time of one shift the same as the starting time of the next shift. Also, you should make the available blocks of time as large as possible. If you split a day into two shifts, 8:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. - 5:00, the system would not be able to schedule a call longer than four hours, since that is the largest block of time available. If the technician could work through lunch, create the shift from 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
To edit a shift, double-click the shift to open the Shift Daily Setup window. See Assigning shifts to technicians for information on assigning to technicians.