About Schedule Horizons and Time Zones

The ABS and Optimizer use the following time periods for scheduling activities:

Glued period. A time period, starting from today, when you cannot schedule activities. This period prevents changes to schedules and assignments that are already sent to field service engineers. A Glued period is not required. You can set the value to 0.
Contract Scheduling period. The period of time in days for scheduling immediately pending activities for a specific service region. Typically, this period covers days 2 to 7 (from the end of the Glued period to a week from today).
Optimizer horizon. A period of time that includes the Contract Scheduling period. The Optimizer operates in this time period.
ABS horizon. The period of time in days for scheduling future activities extending from the end of the Optimizer horizon to some time in the future. The ABS horizon is the length of time that is available to book appointments for a service region. Typically, this horizon is from day 8 to day 56 (a week from today to 8 weeks from today).

Both the ABS and the Optimizer horizons are represented by a single time line because both horizons are measured from a current time (the time for loading data). For more information, see About Loading and Reloading Data for Service Regions.

The following figure shows an example of how you typically define these schedule horizons.

Scheduling Horizons. This image is described in surrounding text.

The Glued period is day 1. The Contract Scheduling period is days 2 to 7. The Optimizer horizon spans the Contract Scheduling period and is also days 2 to 7. The ABS horizon is days 8 to 21, and appointment booking occurs for that period of time.

The schedule horizon is relative to the current day (today). Therefore, as time passes, activities move (from day 1 to 30) along this time line. For example, a service activity might fit the following situation:

An appointment to perform an activity is scheduled into a time slot some time 8 to 15 days from now. The ABS assigns the activity to an employee during the ABS horizon.
As time passes, the scheduled activity moves closer to today. On day 8, the activity moves from the ABS horizon to the Optimizer horizon. In the Optimizer horizon, the Optimizer evaluates the schedule, and determines the best time for the service activity and person to complete the service activity. During this processing, the Optimizer tries to minimize the costs of a schedule.
The activity remains in the Optimizer horizon for 6 days. The Optimizer might adjust the schedule at regular intervals but at least once each day. This schedule adjustment might be necessary because of changes in personnel, emergency service calls, or service activities that contractual commitments regulate (for example, a warranty repair that is required within 12 hours).
On day 1, the Glued period begins and the schedule for the activities in a service region is locked.