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Scheduling Enhancements

Split Visits to Multiple Resources

Activities can now be split across multiple resources. Setting the maximum number of permitted resources on an activity will allow the activity, once split, to transfer to a different resource.

Options can be configured to control the behaviour of this transfer, such as limiting the amount of time permitted between one visit ending and the next beginning. This means that an activity can be set up so that the activity will be scheduled to run continuously, while switching from one resource to another. This can be useful for a supervision task passing to, say, a night shift worker once the day shift ends.

A handover time can be specified which will allow for a scheduled period of overlap between the two split visits so that one resource can hand the work over to the other. This extra scheduled time for the handover is in addition to the activity's base duration.

A new Split_Model table has been added to assist with configuring the new split functionality settings.

For more information, see Scheduling Concepts - Split Activities.

Ordered Activities Across Shifts

Activities with a forced order (i.e. set to ORDER_ONE_WAY or ORDER_TWO_WAY) can now be scheduled across consecutive shifts. This means that the two activities can still be scheduled without having any other activities being scheduled between them, but one of the activities could be the last activity on one day and the other could be the first activity on the next day.

For more information, see Scheduling Concepts - Linked Activities.

Minor Enhancements

  • Part pickups can now optionally be set to occur at the end of an activity rather than at the start. This is controlled by the new parameter PickupPartsAtEndOfActivity, which defaults to the new behaviour of using the end time.
  • SQL Server 2022 is now supported.

Performance Comparison

The general scheduling performance of the 6.14 version has been measured and verified against the 6.13 version. Appointment Booking performance was also remeasured. Benchmarking results are included in an appendix to the Architecture and Sizing Guide.