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About Information in Employee Schedules

Consider the following factors when defining employee schedules:

• Shifts
• Skills
• Role Priorities
• Breaks
• Travel

You can set up constraints to limit employee working hours, the types of activities that employees can perform, and so on. For more information, see Creating Constraint Sets for Schedules.

Shifts

An employee can have only 1 shift for each day. This shift can include rate types of regular time (RT), overtime (OT), and extended overtime (EOT). A shift must use rate types in the following order:

1. EOT
2. OT
3. RT
4. OT
5. EOT

A shift includes the work time of multiple employees. The first EOT and OT rate types apply to the employees in the prior shift who work overtime that extends into the current shift, and the last OT and EOT rate types apply to the employees in the current shift who work overtime.

You can omit any of these rate types from the definition of a shift, but the remaining types must be in this order. For example, if you omit EOT rate type, then the order for the remaining type is OT, RT, and then OT.

You configure the rates for overtime and extended overtime in the Standard OT % field and the Extended OT % field in the Cost List Line Items view in the Cost List view of the Administration - Pricing screen as a percentage increase over regular time. These fields are part of the cost list for a service region. The Optimizer uses this cost list to calculate overtime costs. You define cost lists in the Cost List view of the Administration - Pricing screen. For more information, see Siebel Pricing Administration Guide.

You set regular time in the Service Details view in the Employees view of the Administration - User screen.

Skills

Siebel Scheduler can perform skill-based routing to assign only employees with a skill set to an activity. For more information about how to set up skills and evaluation rules, see Siebel Assignment Manager Administration Guide.

The engines use Assignment Manager to evaluate skills and return a list of appropriate employees as follows:

1. Each activity is submitted to Assignment Manager.
2. Using assignment rules, Assignment Manager returns the appropriate employee records.
3. The Optimizer uses only these employee records to schedule the activity.

Role Priorities

To assign field service engineers to activities, administrators can add a role priority to each field service engineer who is a member of the asset service team. Assignment Manager reviews the role priority of the associated engineers when scheduling field service engineers. For example, Assignment Manager tries to assign the primary engineer. If the primary engineer is not available, then Assignment Manager tries to assign the secondary engineer, and so on. A field service engineer can have a role priority of primary, secondary, or tertiary.

NOTE:  You can associate employees with an account to form an account service team. You can also assign role priorities to these team members. For more information, see Configuring Account Service Teams.

Breaks

Schedules can include any number of breaks. Breaks include the following types:

• Employee. You define employee breaks in the employee schedule or as exceptions to this schedule.
• Activity. You define activity breaks in the Time Tracker view of the Activities screen as time periods with a Type field of Break. For more information, see Recording Labor for Activities (End User).

The following rules apply to the way the Optimizer uses breaks:

• Breaks can have a start time equal to the Start Time field plus 1 second. A break from 12:00 noon to 1:00 P.M. is the same as a break from 12:00:01 to 1:00:01.
• Break times during overtime or extended overtime are paid.

  NOTE:  Because breaks during overtime are paid time, it is recommended that you do not define breaks during overtime. Calculating these breaks can slow the Optimizer calculations.

• You can allow breaks during activities or exclude breaks from specific activities.

  You set breaks for a selected activity by selecting the Allow Breaks check box in the Schedule view in the Activity List view of the Activities screen.

NOTE:  The ABS is not designed to handle activities longer than a day. However, it supports activities that contain breaks.

When you select the Breakable check box in the Service Details view in the Activity Templates view of the Administration - Data screen, an activity can stop and resume. For example, a schedule is 9:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. and 2:00 P.M. to 6:00 P.M., and appointments are 6 hours long to accommodate the length of the activities. In this example, appointments are not scheduled if you do not select the Breakable check box because no contiguous 6-hour time slots are available.

Selection of the Breakable check box is optional because there are some circumstances when the activity can break (for example, when you turn the water or the power off during a weekend). Because activities can break, the activity duration is not the same as the activity work time.

NOTE:  When the ABS returns time slots for an activity for which the Breakable check box is selected, the ABS first displays slots without breaks that are between the dates in the Earliest Start field and Latest Start field. If there are enough slots without breaks to equal the value for the ABS - Default Number of Slots parameter, then the ABS displays only those slots. If there are not enough slots without breaks to equal the value for this parameter, then the ABS displays slots with or without breaks. For more information about the ABS - Default Number of Slots parameter, see Parameters for Schedules.

Travel

The Optimizer uses employee travel conditions and travel time to obtain the lowest-cost solution for a schedule. You set these values in the Service Details view in the Employees view of the Administration - User screen. The Start Shift From field and End Shift At field define the starting and ending conditions for travel to and from service calls. These fields can include the following values:

• Home (Travel incl.). The employee travels from home directly to the first activity. The Optimizer includes the cost of this travel to calculate schedules.
• Home (Travel Not incl.). The employee travels from home directly to the first activity. The Optimizer does not include the cost of this travel to calculate schedules.
• Depot. The employee starts each day by going to a service depot or office. The Optimizer tracks travel costs starting from the depot.