Appointment Maintenance

This page allows you to manage appointments for a premise's field activities. The following functions can be performed on this page:

You can make an appointment for one or more field activities
You can view existing appointments
You can view historical appointments
You can cancel an appointment

Note:

The field activity may change. When an appointment period is linked to a field activity, the field activity's scheduled date is changed to reflect the appointment date and the field activity's dispatch group is changed to reflect the appointment period's dispatch group.

Open this page using Menu > Field Order > Appointment.

Description of Page

Premise is a concatenation of summary information about the premise. Premise ID is the unique identifier of the premise.

The Existing Appointments grid contains an entry for every field activity (regardless of status) that is linked to an appointment period at this Premise.

You can cancel an appointment for a field activity by clicking Cancel. The Cancel button is only enabled if the cancellation of the field activity would cause it to appear in the Field Activities Without Appointments grid (i.e., you can only cancel appointments for pending field activities).

Note:

External System Integration. If the FA integration module is not turned off and the dispatch group for this field activity references an FA Integration external system feature configuration, clicking Cancel triggers a real-time message to be sent to the external system to cancel the appointment.

The Field Activities Without Appointments grid contains an entry for every field activity that meets the following qualifications:

The field activity's status is Pending.
The field activity's activity type indicates that it is eligible for dispatch and that appointment booking is required for dispatch or optional.
The field activity isn't linked to a field order whose status is Work Done, Not Recorded.
The field activity isn't linked to an appointment period.

The Search for an Appointment section is used to view possible appointments for the selected field activities (and make an appointment by selecting of the available appointments).

Note:

External System Integration. The remaining information for this page is applicable to organizations that are not using the FA integration module, i.e. it is turned off. If your organization uses this module, refer to Appointments And External System Integration for information about how this section may behave.

Click Show Appointments to populate the Available Appointments grid with appointment periods. You have the following options before you click this button:

Specify a Dispatch Group. If you do this, available appointments for the specified dispatch group will be shown in the following grid.
Leave Dispatch Group blank. If you do this, the system will look for available appointments for the "lowest common denominator" dispatch group shared by the selected field activities. Refer to Using Alternate Dispatch Groups To Find The Lowest Common Denominator for more information.
Specify On/Around Date. If you do this, available appointments on / before this date will be shown in the following grid.
Leave On/Around Date blank. If you do this, the system looks for available appointments on / before the earliest date from the selected field activities.

The Available Appointments grid is populated after you click Show Appointments. Note, an algorithm that's plugged-in on the dispatch group constructs the list of available appointments. Refer to Determining Available Appointments for more information.

Note:

Assumptions at open. The system selects all Field Activities Without Appointments and clicks Show Appointments when this page opens (assuming you want to schedule an appointment for these field activities). This can result in an error (e.g., if there is no common dispatch group amongst the selected field activities). When an error occurs, it is displayed adjacent to Search for an Appointment.

The Available Appointments grid contains an entry for every possible appointment period. In addition, adjacent to the grid is the From and To date range from which these appointment periods were extracted. You have the following options at this point:

Click OK to create an appointment for the selected field activities. This simply links the selected field activities to the respective appointment period.
Click the < or > buttons that surround the From and To dates. Clicking these buttons causes the system to look for appointment periods in the previous / next date range.

Note:

The field order may change. When an appointment period is linked to a field activity that has been dispatched (i.e., linked to a field order), the field order's schedule date/time is updated with the earliest appointment date/time of all non-canceled non-completed field activities that are linked to the field order.