Siebel Field Service Guide > Scheduling and Dispatch > Dispatch >

Dispatch Board Screen


The Dispatch Board provides a drag-and-drop interface for manual assignment and scheduling of service activities.

Unscheduled Activities List

The Unscheduled Activities list displays all activities that have a status of Unscheduled. Table 40 shows selected items in the Unscheduled Activities list.

Table 40.  Selected Items in the Unscheduled Activities List
Item
Description
Apply Skills
This button runs the Siebel Assignment Manager and updates the Gantt chart with a list of employees who belong to the service region and who have the skills specified for the activity.
The Apply Skills button carries out the intersection of the employees in a service region and those that the assignment manger returns. The AM only checks skills if it has the appropriate rule.
Assign
This button runs the Siebel Assignment Manager. A dialog box appears with a ranked list of potential field service engineers for assignment to the Employees field for this activity.
Insert Activity
This button sends a synchronous request to the ABS or Optimizer, which inserts the selected activity into a schedule with minimal disruption of the schedule and without significant increase in the cost of the schedule. For more information, see Insert Activity Button.

Activity Gantt Chart

The Activity Gantt Chart shows the scheduled and unscheduled time periods for a group of field service engineers associated with a service region. This view appears in a calendar format.

Schedules are shown in the Activity Gantt Chart with colors that represent rate types. Non-working periods are grey, working periods are white, overtime periods are orange, and extended overtime periods are brown.

Selecting Data for the Activity Gantt Chart

To select field service engineers and other items that appear on the Activity Gantt Chart, use the following options:

Notes on Using the Activities Gantt Chart
Using Dispatch Board Queries

The Dispatch Board is provided with the following predefined queries useful for limiting the amount of data that appears in the Unscheduled Activities list. Select these queries from the Favorites drop-down list. These queries apply only to unscheduled activities:

Set up additional predefined queries in Applications Administration > Predefined Queries.

Using the Dispatch Board Queries with Legacy Data

If there is a large quantity of legacy data, older activities that were not scheduled using the Dispatch Board may also appear. It is advisable to limit the queries to show only records created after the Dispatch Board is installed, to make sure that extraneous data does not appear in the Field Activity view.


 Siebel Field Service Guide 
 Published: 21 April 2003