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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:
- Click the Service Region select button. Select the service region from the Pick Service Region dialog box. The engineers that belong to the selected service region appear in the Gantt chart, replacing the previous list of engineers.
- In the Date fields, enter the date to display in the Gantt chart and click Go. The data for the selected date appears in the chart. Also see Changing the Behavior of the Activity Gantt Chart.
Notes on Using the Activities Gantt Chart
- An unlimited number of activities can overlap (be assigned to the same hours for a field service engineer), but only three appear in the chart. Adding more than one activity to a time slot reduces the height of the bar representing that activity and removes the description of the activity. To see the description of an activity bar and the properties of this activity, hold the cursor over the bar for a few seconds. A pop-up box appears.
- Activities may be assigned to available or unavailable hours in a field service engineer's schedule.
- Any activity in the Activity Gantt Chart can be re-assigned or rescheduled.
- Click an activity type to see more information about the activity. The Activities screen, Schedule view appears.
- Clicking on the name of an employee shows the User Administration screen, Employees view, with information about the selected employee.
- Dragging an activity from the Activity Gantt Chart back to the Unscheduled Activities list sets the activity status to Unscheduled and removes the value from the Employees field for this activity.
- The assignment of an activity and its duration may be changed from the Unscheduled Activities list or from the Activities view.
- The Dispatch Board can display instances of a repeated activity, with the following restrictions:
- Drag and drop the repeated activity from the Unscheduled Activities list to the Activities Gantt chart. This becomes the first scheduled instance of the activity.
- The repeated instances of this activity fill in automatically.
- The user cannot drag any instance of a repeated activity to another location on the Dispatch Board or back to the Unscheduled Activities list.
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:
- All Dispatches. Shows all assigned and scheduled activities. This is the default.
- All Dispatches for Today.
- All Dispatches for This Week.
- All Overdue Dispatches.
- All Priority-1 Dispatches.
- All Priority-2 Dispatches.
- My Dispatches for Today.
- My Dispatches This Week.
- My Overdue Dispatches.
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.
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Siebel Field Service Guide Published: 21 April 2003 |