Service Provider Appointment Cutoff Times

This feature enhances the Service Provider Before and After Appointment Cutoff Times to include setting the cutoff times in days, hours and minutes. Previously, the Service Provider Before and After Appointment Cutoff Times were defined in days only.

In the example below, the Location Resource tab shows the expanded options available for setting the appointment time cutoffs with the “Service Provider Appointment Time Before Cutoff” and “Service Provider Appointment Time After Cutoff” fields. In this example, the Service Provider Cutoff is configured on the Location Resource as shown below.

Location Resource Setup

When the service provider assigned to the shipment schedules the pickup appointment for the DC1 location configured above - and with the properties required to enable the Service Provider Cutoff set to true, the feasible options available honor the appointment time cutoff values configured. In this case, given that the Service Provider Appointment Cutoff Hours of 4 PM, the earliest option - constrained by the Service Provider Appointment Time Before Cutoff of 2 hours is 14:00:00 as shown below. 

Service Provider Appointment Options Honoring Appointment Time Cutoff

In the example below, the first feasible option for setting the appointment is now 15:00:00 - the only difference between the options provided for this Schedule Appointment run versus the one above is the passing of time - in this case the current time was later than 12 pm, making the first feasible appointment option for the service provider 15:00:00 versus the 14:00:00 option that was available when the action “Schedule Appointment” was run before 12 pm.

Rolling Service Provider Options With Passing of Time

Note that the Service Provider Appointment Cutoff functionality only limits the appointment options provided to the service provider, the planner is still able to see all available appointment options without consideration to the Service Provider Appointment Cutoff requirements.

Planner Appointment Options

The changes for this feature include extending the Service Provider Appointment Time Before and After Cutoff options to consider days, Hours hours and minutes, previously only Days days were considered.

Location Resource Tab - Expanded Service Provider Appointment Cutoff

In addition to the changes made to the Location Resource Tab, the appointment time cutoffs for the appointment rule set were also enhanced to support Service Provider Appointment Time Before Cutoff defined as days, hours and minutes as shown below.

Appointment Rule Set - Expanded Service Provider Appointment Cutoff

In addition to the Location Resource and Appointment Rule Set options for setting the Service Provider Appointment Time Cutoffs, there are two Properties properties, where you can set the Service Provider Appointment Cutoff Times in seconds. The available properties are: 

• glog.appointment.servprovRule.beforeCutOffTime
• glog.appointment.servprovRule.afterCutOffTime

The enhanced Service Provider Appointment Time Cutoffs functionality requires the property glog.appointment.servprovRule.considerCurrentTime be set to true, the property - for backward compatibility is set to false by default. 

Provides the option to limit the appointment options displayed for your service providers considering the current time and an acceptable before and after appointment cutoff time defined in days, hours, or minutes.

Steps to Enable

The feature works only when the glog.appointment.servprovRule.considerCurrentTime property is set to true.

Tips And Considerations

If you have configured your Service Provider Appointment Cutoff Times for the days configuration, those values will be migrated as part of the upgrade and your current configuration should work as it did before the option to configure for hours and minutes and considering the current time in the appointment options provided to your service providers..

Service Provider Appointment Time Cutoffs values are evaluated in the following order:

1. The values set at the appointment rule level are considered first.
2. The values set on the location resource level are used if no appointment rules are set.
3. If no values are set for the appointment rule or the location resource level, then the properties “glog.appointment.servprovRule.numberOfDaysBeforeCutOffHour” and “glog.appointment.servprovRule.numberOfDaysAfterCutOffHour” are considered.