Creating Activity Appointments and Job Appointments

Activity appointments are appointments for non-service call related activities such as vacation, meetings, or training.

The Appointment Wizard allows you to quickly create non-service call related appointments for one or all technicians. For example, a technician may be on vacation for several days or perhaps there's a company-wide event that all technicians will attend. The Appointment Wizard can easily schedule these activity appointments so dispatchers know technicians' availability.

You can also create appointments for Job Cost jobs if you are using the Job Scheduling in Service Management feature. For more information, contact WennSoft Sales.

1. Choose Transactions > Service Management > Technician Activity Entry Wizard.
2. Enter information in the following fields:
   • All, Technician, Technician Team, Service Area
     Choose a radio button. Your selection determines the fields that are enabled. If you are creating an appointment for a technician, complete the Technician ID field. If you are creating an appointment for a technician team, complete the Team field. If you are creating an appointment for all technicians in a service area, complete the Service Area field. If you are creating an appointment for all technicians, none of these fields is enabled.
   • Appointment Type
     Choose an appointment type. Your selection determines the fields that are enabled. If you are creating an activity appointment, complete the Activity ID field. If you are creating a job appointment, complete the Job Number field and enter a Cost Code with a cost element type of Labor.
   • Start Date, End Date, Starting Time
     Specify when the appointment will take place.
   • Estimated Hours
     Estimate the length of the appointment. The estimated hours must be 24 or less.
   • Days Between Appointments
     Enter a number of days between appointments.
   • Skip
     You can skip Saturdays and/or Sundays by marking these checkboxes.
3. Choose Create to create the appointment(s). A message indicates that the activity appointments have been created successfully. If you are scheduling for only one technician and there are scheduling conflicts, you receive a message indicating how many appointments were created, but not scheduled, due to conflicts. If you are scheduling for more than one technician, you won't receive a message, though unscheduled appointments may exist.
4. Choose OK. Activity appointment numbers created with the Appointment Wizard increment based on the last highest appointment number used for each technician.

Best technician button

If you want the system to select the next available, qualified technician for a service appointment, choose the best technician button attached to the Technician ID field. This function allows you to schedule someone as soon as possible.

For each appointment on the service call, the system finds a technician assigned to the service area for the call, with the required skill level for the service call task. The system finds the first technician available who can complete the task within the regular work schedule. The technician's name is listed in the Technician ID field and a start time is displayed in the Starting Time field. If a technician name is listed in the Technician ID field when you select the best technician button, a message is displayed asking if you want to replace the existing technician.

If the schedules for all qualified technicians assigned to the service area are filled for the specified date, the next date is used. The system makes 100 attempts to find an available, qualified technician. The best technician button is part of the Advanced Scheduling features.

Next available button

If you want the system to figure out a specific technician's next available time slot for performing the appointment, choose the next available button attached to the Date field. The button is disabled if there is more than one appointment on the call or if the service call date and appointment dates don't match. You must have a technician with an assigned shift entered in the Technician ID field, as well as a date and estimated hours. You receive an error message if any of these fields are blank, or if a shift is not assigned to the technician. The system searches the technician's schedule to determine the next available slot that the appointment can be performed and updates the Date and Starting Time fields. The search starts from the system time if the defaulted current date is used. If you enter a different date the system starts the search from midnight of that date. The search does not consider extended hours. The next available button is part of the Advanced Scheduling features.

Estimated hours and starting time

If you're using the Advanced Scheduling features, the following is true:

• When the estimated hours and starting time are both entered, the system validates that the technician has the necessary time available to fit the service call appointment into their schedule if shifts and activities are set up. If the estimated hours and starting time cause an overlap in the technician's schedule, you receive a message stating that the appointment could not be scheduled for this date and time.
• You also receive a message if the estimated hours and starting time cause the technician to go over the shift plus the extended hours. A password can be set up to allow the service call appointment to still be entered.
• If either the Estimated Hours or Starting Time field is left blank, the system will not validate the technician's availability and the service call will not display in the Technician Board – Daily View window, although it appears in the Technician Board – Appointments window.

If you're not using the Advanced Scheduling features, the following is true:

• When the estimated hours and starting time are both entered, the system checks the technician's availability to prevent an overlap. If the estimated hours and starting time cause an overlap, you receive a message stating that the appointment could not be scheduled for this date and time.

Call status and appointment status

The call status is driven by the appointment status. If there is only one appointment assigned to the service call, the call status remains as Open if the appointment has a status other than Complete. When the appointment status is changed to Complete, the call status automatically changes to Complete. Once a call has a Closed status, the appointment no longer drives the call status.

• If there are multiple appointments assigned to the service call, the call status remains as Open until all appointment statuses have been changed to Complete.
• If you change the call status to Closed or Complete, you receive a message if there are open appointments associated with the service call. Open appointments are those with a status other than Complete. You can choose to mark all the open appointments Complete, to view the appointments, or to cancel.
• If you choose Mark All, the status of all open appointments changes to Complete. If you choose to view the appointments, the Appointments window opens. Here, you can edit the appointments as desired.

• If you marked Require Appointment Closure in the Service Options window, you must change all appointment statuses to Complete. You can then change the service call's status to Closed or Complete. If you did not mark Require Appointment Closure, you can change the service call's status to Closed or Complete while having open appointments. Appointments never have a Closed status. 

  If you marked  Require Appointment Closure , once the call has a Closed status, you must reopen the call to change the appointment status.

• If you manually close a service call that has already been invoiced and you have Allow Posting Invoices With Actual and Committed Costs and Create COGS Distribution for Invoices options marked in Invoice Options, a GL transaction is automatically created. Posting this transaction will relieve the appropriate WIP/COGS accounts upon closing a service call
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