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Creating Time Windows for Schedules

You use time windows to define the interval of time for starting an activity. Time windows are associated with a service region in the Service Region List view of the Administration - Scheduling screen. For more information, see Defining Service Regions.

The Details view in the Time Window List view of the Administration - Scheduling screen includes specific mappings that make up each time window record. To accommodate activities that vary in duration, you map each range of durations to a time window. For example, a work time of 1 to 60 minutes might require a time window of 120 minutes to provide the Optimizer with the flexibility to change the schedule for optimization.

The ABS uses time windows and the work time or duration for an activity to find the available time slots for the activity. The customer service representative then selects one of these time slots to book an appointment for the activity. To see how the ABS finds the available time slots, consider the following example. In the Time Window List view, you set the Default Time Window field to 240 minutes (or 4 hours), the Duration From field to 0 minutes, the Duration To field to 30 minutes, and the Time Window field to 60 minutes.

If the work time for an activity is 30 minutes, then the ABS divides employee schedules into 60 minute time slots because the time window for 30 minute activities is 60 minutes. The ABS considers start shift times and the type of work hours in employee schedules when dividing these schedules into time slots. If the customer service representative selects an ABS-provided time slot of 8:00 A.M. to 9:00 A.M., then the planned start time for the activity can be between 8:00 A.M. and 9:00 A.M., and the planned end time for the activity is 30 minutes later.

If the duration of another activity is 500 minutes (8 hours and 20 minutes), if breaks are allowed during the activity, and if the work hours are from 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., then the ABS does not provide 500 minute time slots (for example, 9:00 A.M. on Monday to 9:20 A.M. on Tuesday) because there is no time window for 500 minutes. Instead, the ABS provides 240 minute (or 4 hour) time slots (for example, 9:00 A.M to 1:00 P.M.) because the default time window is 240 minutes.

This task is a step in Process of Administering Schedules Using Siebel Scheduler.

To create a time window for schedules

1. Navigate to the Administration - Scheduling screen, then the Time Window List view.
2. Create a new time window record, and complete the fields as appropriate.

   Some fields are described in the following table.

   Field	Comments
   Name	Type the name of the set of time window mappings.
   Default Time Window	Type the time window (in minutes) that is applied to an activity when the Details view for the time window does not include a mapping for the specific duration of the activity.

3. Scroll down to the Details view, and create a new record for each activity duration range.
4. To view the service regions that are associated with the time window, click the Service Regions view tab.