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.
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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.