Define Location for Scheduling
Explanation
This activity is used to define Scheduling Information for a Location.
The Availability Defined flag describes the availability
of the Location. The values are set according to the following logic:
- Not Defined meaning that no availability has been
defined for the Location and that it's considered to be available at all
times.
- Location meaning that availability has been defined
for the Location itself, as well as possibly the connected Location
Type.
- Location Type meaning that availability has only
been defined for the connected Location Type.
Location Types are not mandatory when creating
scheduling details for a Location, but act as a template for Add Time Minutes, Lack of Coverage, Do on Location
Incentive, and Duration Overhead on the location. The location types can be
setup in
Define Location Type
and the information inherited
from the Location Type can be amended for each location. It is also possible to define
Availability Patterns for a Location Type. These patterns will not be inherited
to / visible on the Location, but will be used by scheduling, if no
availability has been specified on the location itself.
It is possible to group locations by defining a locality for the location.
It is possible to make a distinction between a location and a locality, by making
use of the Do In Locality Incentive. The Do In Locality
Incentive can be used together with the Do on Location Incentive.
Let's assume we have an apartment building where each apartment has a different
location, but all of the apartments in the building have the same locality.
By using the Do In Locality Incentive, it is possible to set
a hard constraint on the location and a softer constraint on the locality, and
make the scheduling engine schedule work within the same location (i.e. apartment)
together but not necessarily all work in the building at once.
If the
Do In Locality Incentive is not set then the Do on
Location Incentive will apply for both locations and localities. Recommended
values for Do In Locality Incentive are -1 or anything between
1 and 2. A value greater than 1 will act as a multiplier.
For more information about Locality refer to
Define Locality.
For each location there are three
tabs where additional scheduling information can be added.
- Regions where
it is possible to define the regions that the location is associated with.
Regions are optional. If a location is linked to multiple regions, resources
must be linked to all specified regions, either directly or via a parent
region (or have a value for out of region multiplier greater than
0) in order to be allocated work.
For more information refer to
Define Region
- Availability
where it is possible
to define the availability of a location. There are two types of Availability
that can be defined. Only one option can be used at a time.
- Define
Availability which uses a calendar. The Calendar is used to
determine the availability of the location. When a calendar is associated
with the location, availability records will be created for each working
period defined in the calendar. It is recommended to use Availability
Patterns over calendar availability as that is much more performant
and they never expire. The calendars are created in the Work Time Calendar
form and must be generated for a time period to be valid for use. The
Start Based flag will determine whether the availability should be enforced
only against the proposed start time of a job, or against the entire
duration of the job. As a simple example, suppose a job has availability
from 9:00- 17:00, and is scheduled at 16:30 for one hour. If Start Based
is enabled, this is a valid allocation, whereas if it was not enabled,
the allocation would violate the constraint since the activity will
not be completed until after the availability has ended. It is also
possible to define exceptions to the availability of the location by
registering an availability exception in the exceptions page. The exception
can either be Available or not. If "Available" is enabled,
the period between the specified times will define the location availability
i.e. when the location is accessible and work can be scheduled.
If "Available" is disabled, the period between the specified
times will be treated as location unavailability i.e. the location will
not be accessible during this time and no work will be scheduled.
- Use Availability Patterns -
The Availability Patterns are defined as basic data and allows an availability
such as "every weekday morning between 10:00 and 12:00 to be defined,
where the Start Time would be 10:00, End Time 12:00 and the Day Pattern
be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
The system will
automatically create detailed availabilities for the scheduling window
when the associated objects are transferred for scheduling. For Availability
Patterns, the value for Start Based is defined on the pattern basic
data itself. Read more about
Availability
Patterns
- If no
availability has been defined for the location and location type (if
connected), the location will always be available.
- Preferences - it is possible to define preferred or
unpreferred scheduling resources for a Location. Any value between 0 and 1
is valid.
- Setting a value of 0 means that jobs will not be scheduled to the
specified resource.
- Setting a value of 1 is a hard constraint and means that only the
resource(s) with this preference will be considered for scheduling,
regardless of any other preferences defined.
- Setting a value greater than 0 and less than 1 will act as
a sliding scale of preference, where a value closer to 0 will make it
less likely that the resource will be scheduled and a value closer to
1 will make it more likely that the resource will be scheduled.
The preference will be used to calculate the value of allocating
the job to the specified resources. Let's assume a job has a base value
of 1000, then the preferences would be applied as follows:
- Preference= 0 Value = 0 - (The job will not be allocated to this
resource)
- Preference= 0.1 Value = 200
- Preference= 0.5 Value = 1000
- Preference= 0.9 Value = 1800
- Preference= 1 Value = 2000
Prerequisites
- To use Regions, a region must have been defined in Basic Data in line
with Define Region
- To use availability, a work time calendar must have been defined and
generated
- To use
Availability
Patterns, at least on pattern must have been defined and it should be
in active state
- To use resource preferences, the resource must have been defined as
a Scheduling Resource in
Scheduling
Basic Data.
System Effects
- The Location can be associated with one or several regions.
- A work time calendar can be used to define the availability of a particular
location.
- Availability exceptions may be defined that takes precedence over the
location availability.
- Availability patterns can control the availability of the location.
- Resource preference can be defined against a location.