Scheduling overview

Scheduling is where you plan who goes where and when. A booking puts one or more technicians in the diary for a customer (usually against a ticket), with travel either side, and Tenvara takes it from there: the customer gets a confirmation with a calendar invitation, the technician checks in and completes the visit, and the time lands on the ticket through your contract rules.

Scheduling lives in the Team area, with the things that decide who is free: working hours, leave, public holidays and skills. The same area holds timesheets, expenses and company cards, and the people side: staff profiles, sickness, overtime, on-call and payroll.

The Team sidebar#

Open Team from the rail. The sidebar has three groups.

Schedule

• My calendar: your own bookings, leave and working hours. It is also under Home > My calendar.
• Team day: everyone's bookings for one day, a row per person.
• Dispatch: open tickets that need a visit, ready to drag onto a technician, on a timeline or a map. See The dispatch board.
• Wants another time: visits where the customer asked to move. It shows only while there are some.
• Bookings: bookings over a period as a table, with bulk actions.
• Workload: visits booked and project work due against each person's working hours, with their open tickets.
• Resource planning: who is planned on which project, weeks ahead. See Team and resource planning.
• Missed visits: visits marked no access, per customer.

Time off and pay

• Leave: ask for time off, answer requests, see who is away and your balance.
• Timesheets: your week of logged time against the hours you work.
• Expenses: expenses and mileage to claim back, and approvals.
• Company cards: card statements matched to what was claimed. See Company cards and the expense policy.
• Overtime and Sickness: the reports. See Leave allowances, sickness and overtime.
• Payroll: each pay period's figures and the export. See Payroll export and on-call pay.

People

• Staff directory: everyone who works for you, with their profile.
• On-call: one page with the Rota, Pages, Calendar and Hours tabs. See On-call rotas and paging.
• Check-ins, Goals, Kudos, Leaderboards, Badges and Me: the people side of the team.

Team settings at the bottom opens Settings > Scheduling. The numbers next to each entry are what is waiting for you, such as leave requests to answer or expenses to approve.

Note: Scheduling, time off and pay are for your own staff. Co-managed IT staff at a customer do not get these pages, and contractors see only their own visits.

Reading the calendar#

The toolbar across the top of the calendar controls what you see:

Each booking shows its title, times and customer, in the colour of its booking type. Travel before and after an onsite visit is drawn as a lighter, striped band marked travel, so you can see when the technician actually leaves and gets back. Hours outside working time are shaded, and a line marks the current time.

The Month view lists each day's bookings with their start time; a busy day shows the first few and a "+2 more" link.

The Team view is one day with a row per person, their team underneath their name. It is the easiest way to spot gaps and double bookings across the whole team.

Tip: The hours the calendar shows (07:00 to 19:00 by default) and the step bookings snap to when you drag them are set in Settings > Scheduling, on the General tab. Earlier and later hours are a scroll away.

Booking statuses#

Pencilled in, booked, confirmed and in progress bookings all hold the technician's time, so nobody else can be booked over them without a clash warning.

Next to the status a second badge shows the customer's answer, for example Customer confirmed or Wants another time.

Keyboard shortcuts#

Shortcuts only act when you are not typing in a dialog, a dropdown list or a menu.

Where else visits show up#

• Tickets: the ticket's Visits block lists its bookings and has Book and the Needs a visit switch. Once a visit is booked, the block moves to the top of the ticket's side panel, with Reschedule and Cancel visit on each visit to come. See Booking a visit.
• Customers: the Visits tab, under Service, lists every visit for the customer, what is coming up, confirmations still waiting for an answer and the time logged from visits.
• Sites: the Visiting card holds travel time, miles from the office, access notes and the site's pin on the map.
• The portal: customers see their upcoming and past visits, with visit reports, on a Visits page.
• Notifications: you are told when you are booked, moved or taken off a visit, when a visit is cancelled, when a customer confirms or asks for another time, and when a technician marks no access.

Maps, routes and repeating visits#

Every site is placed on a map, travel between visits is worked out by road, and a technician's day can be put in the shortest order. Technicians tell customers they are on the way by text or email. See Maps, routes and on my way texts.

Visits can repeat every few weeks or months, and the booking panel records parts used, photos and files, and prints a job sheet. See Job sheets, parts and recurring visits.

Customers receive a standard calendar invitation with each confirmation, which updates when the visit moves and is withdrawn when it is cancelled, and your team's own calendars can sync with bookings. See Booking pages and calendar sync.

Permissions#

Scheduling has its own area in Roles and permissions:

Which roles start with which level comes from their role template; the Dispatcher template is built for it. Anyone booked on a visit can see it and work it (check in, complete, mark no access) whatever their scheduling access. Everyone can see leave, ask for their own and keep their own timesheet. Pay figures (payroll and on-call pay) need the Pay and cost rates field group, and HR details on staff profiles are for administrators, the HR and office manager and the person's managers. Scheduling settings are changed by administrators.

Scheduling is a module of its own. A new Tenvara starts with the service desk only: switch on Scheduling in Settings > Modules to get the Schedule and Time off and pay groups (see Modules). Switched off, both groups disappear for everyone and the reminders and emails stop, while bookings, leave and timesheets are kept.