Using the WO Calendar and Waitlist

Transcript

(0:11 - 2:22)

Hi, in this video we’re going to take a look at the calendar and how to waitlist work orders. So first we’ll start with just looking at the calendar itself. So you’ll find the overall admin calendar when you are on your work order list here in the admin and you’ll see it on the top as a link.

Click on that link that will open up for you the graphical calendar view and it will remember whatever your settings were the last time you were in here and bring up the calendar in that same format. So the last time I was in I was looking at the work orders and in-residents together on the same calendar in a monthly view. Let me explain a little bit how this works.

So first you have two choices. You can include work orders and in-residents on the same calendar or you can put the in-residents in a separate calendar. So if your calendar is very busy and you have 20, 25, 30 customers in-residents, you might want to separate them out.

So let’s look at the difference first. So I’m in the together view, monthly, and what you’ll see are all my green items here. These are my work orders.

I can click on any one of these to see exactly what it is. In this case, I can see that that was a work order for a weekly home visit. I can scroll down and what you’ll notice now is the in-residents items here show up in red and you can see all of these clients are in-residents through these dates here toward the end of December and I can see those over the work order.

So it makes it nice in that it’s all combined. As I mentioned, you might have too many in-residents so you can separate them by clicking on this link and what will happen is it will separate them out. You see I’ve got a weekly view now in this view.

So let me go back to monthly and I’ll change this back to my December. So now I’m back to basically the same view I had a moment ago where I have all of my December, but you’ll notice now if I scroll down, it’s all work orders. I don’t have any in-residents until I get down here into my in-residents item and it’s a totally separate calendar.

(2:22 - 3:35)

So I can control it separately. I can change the date separately. It’ll default to a monthly view, but you’ll see this just shows me who’s in-residents.

So it’s a real nice handy view of everything. Now a couple things to note on every calendar is that over here on the right, you’ve got some different items where you can set up your information. So the first is adding resources.

By default, the system will show a calendar that has you, whoever’s logged in as your view, and it would show only the work orders assigned to you. If you have additional people working for you, you can click the down arrow and add them to the list. So I can add this one.

I can add Lisa. And now all of the work orders assigned to any of us would be listed here on this screen. Well, let’s say I want to take a look at this in a weekly view.

No problem. I’ll just click on weekly and now you’ll see it’s a little more detailed. I have the weekday, you know, across the top for my week.

I have all of my work orders listed here by time. So it’s definitely a better view for me to actually plan and see what my day looks like. All of these are always live.

(3:35 - 4:22)

So if you want to reschedule something like Mr. Blanco, and you know what, you want to do that on Thursday instead of Friday, you can drag and drop that here and put it at any time you want. By dragging and dropping it, it will update the work order accordingly. So it’s very easy for you to kind of go out and balance your entire week.

That’s the week view. Another view that could be handy would be your day view. If you have a lot of work orders on a particular day, so I pick day and I’ll pick to date, and you’ll say, here’s all my work orders for today.

So now I have a really nice view of the day. If you have different people working for you, different resources, and again, play with these. Try the day horizontal view or the day vertical view.

(4:22 - 5:54)

So if I do day vertical, you’ll see what this does. It has today’s date. And now I’ve got a column for each of the resources I’ve picked.

So you can see which work orders are assigned to whom. If you want to reassign work, it’s as easy as grabbing that work order and saying, I’m going to assign it to this person. And that reassigns that work easily between people.

So I can reassign here. I can reassign Schwartz over here to Lisa’s column. And now I’ve rearranged my date very easily.

Horizontal view is basically the same thing, except each of your resources is in a row instead. So maybe you like this view as far as how to plan what your day looks like. And again, all of these items are clickable.

And then you can go straight into the work order and edit it by clicking on the Edit link. Or you can mark it complete. Or you can go to the series if you want to.

Typically, you’ll just drag and drop here. But if you ever need to edit it, you can do that. So play with these different views and find the one that works for you best.

And maybe it’s a combination of them. But you see how easy it is to change between the different views to get what you want to look at. Another item is if you use the activities.

For example, if you plan meetings or so on, you can include those on the calendar by checking that box. And when you do that, you then have the ability to also put things in by color. So you can see all of the users by color.

(5:54 - 6:53)

So let’s check both of those. Let me go down to today’s date. And you can see I have everything the same color.

The reason for that is if I open up my settings, I’ve only got the Gary resource. So let me bring up the Gary Method one and the Lisa one. And now you’ll see that these are here by color.

So I can see who is assigned to what. You can assign the different colors to your users on the user screen. And whatever color you assign in there is what it will apply when bringing up this view.

Another setting that’s handy, especially when you’re doing a color mode, is you click on Settings over here and say Colored Event Background. Instead of it just being white with a line, if you do this, now you’ll see that it’s colored the background and it makes it very clear and visible on your view here as far as which resource is which. And again, you can try the vertical view.

(6:54 - 7:20)

You can try the horizontal view. You have a lot of options here that you can play with. So I would say just try this out, play with it, find the views that work best for you, and go from there.

So now we’ll move on to another feature that’s new with the calendar in the latest version. And that’s the wait list. So I’m going to actually go out of the calendar.

(7:21 - 10:49)

And I’m going to go back into this screen, which is my work order list. I’m going to bring up all my work orders for today. And I’ve pre-populated a work order already here that I’m going to use as my example.

So I’m going to click on that and bring it up. And you’ll see what it is as I’ve created a work order for the Browers to meet the HVAC guide to repair the non-working condenser. And everything’s set up as you normally would.

But you’ll notice there’s one difference here. Under work order status, I have this set to waiting on someone else. So the reason I would use this is, let’s say that you need to create a work order.

You just kind of want to put out there that there’s some work that has to be done. You don’t know when to schedule it. In this case, it’s waiting for someone else because you have to wait for the HVAC company to tell you when they will be able to come out and do the work.

So we’ll set this to waiting for someone else. Now what happens is, when you have this particular work order, and you are on the not started view, the default view, and I’ll change that here, you’ll notice that that particular one is no longer shown. Because technically, it’s in a waiting status.

It’s on hold. It doesn’t show up. The only way you can get it to show up is to go to the work orders in a date range, make sure that the date is selected that it was on the work order, even though it’s in wait list mode.

And here you’ll see this waiting on someone else. Now what’s an even easier way to find the wait list and reschedule it is using the calendar and the new wait list feature. Let’s go into calendar.

I’m going to go back to my weekly view for, well, this is for next week. So that’s perfect. You’ll notice over here in the settings box, we have the wait list.

If I click on that, that will bring up for me any work orders that I have entered that are in waiting mode. So you’ll see here is the one we just looked at for the HVAC guy. So this little tab for wait list will bring up all of the ones that you have set in wait list mode.

Then to assign them, all you have to do is grab them from here. And let’s say the HVAC guy called and said, I’m going to come meet you at nine o’clock Tuesday. So I can come over here, drag that to nine o’clock Tuesday, let it go.

And it’s now assigned. In fact, I’m going to change this and I’m going to assign it for 90 minutes as well. So now, here we go.

We have that one assigned. So let’s say the HVAC guy calls and says, you know what, we’re just so busy and I’ve got a sick, I can’t make it Tuesday. Let me give you a call back.

Well, let’s put this back on wait list mode. And that’s as easy as grabbing that work order, dragging it back over here to the wait list column and letting go. And now it’s back in wait list mode.

And then you can always reassign it in the future if you need to. That’s it. Very simple, easy to use.

Play with the different options that are on this screen. You can always click over here and hide or show the settings to give you more room for the actual calendar portion or use this, especially when you want to use the wait list. I hope this was helpful.

If you have any questions, please let me know. Have a great day.