Siebel Field Service Guide > Setting Up and Using the Dispatch Board >

About Rescheduling Appointments in the Dispatch Board

You can reassign or reschedule any activity in the Gantt chart using drag-and-drop, but note that these activities are not automatically loaded into the Appointment Booking System (ABS).

You can override the drag-and-drop business service to attempt a Load Activity and provide real-time feedback but manual and automated scheduling do not combine well. When loading activities into an existing schedule, Siebel Scheduler does not attempt to drop activities currently in the same time slot because the coding logic for these types of decisions can be done only on a case-by-case basis. Large numbers of users attempting to manually schedule activities simultaneously (by setting the Lock Assignment or Lock Schedule flags) are going to create conflicts, as well as a brittle schedule that cannot be easily changed if people are moved around. See Locking Schedules and Assignments (End User) for more information about these flags.

TIP:   In most cases, for appointments in the future, it is recommended that users rebook appointments using the Book Appointment button. For appointments occurring today, it is recommended that appointments be changed manually to allow dispatchers to use their discretion. This can be done by changing the ABS - Days to Start parameter to 1. See Defining Cost Functions for the Optimizer for more information.