Planning

Plan who works when - shifts for people and equipment, open shifts, publishing, self-service, and links to time off, projects, sales, attendance and timesheets.

• Planning overview

  What SmartERP Planning is for, who uses it, what the nine Planning modules add, and how they fit with the rest of SmartERP.

• Concepts

  The vocabulary and rules of Planning - resources, roles, shifts, allocated time, publishing, conflicts, recurrence, workload - with worked examples.

• Quick start

  From an empty Planning to a published week in about fifteen minutes - one role, one template, three shifts, published to the employee.

• Set up roles

  Create the roles your shifts need, give them a colour and an hourly cost, and say who holds each role.

• Add materials to plan

  Plan vehicles, rooms and equipment on the same schedule as people, by creating them as materials with working hours and roles.

• Create a shift template

  Save a common shift - start hour, length, role, break and note - so you can create it in one click.

• Create a shift

  Create one shift for a person, a material or nobody (an open shift), set its time, role, break and allocated time, and save it as a draft.

• Work on the schedule

  Read the schedule, move, copy and delete shifts by dragging, select several at once, undo, use the keyboard and the To plan panel.

• Plan with a template

  Create the same shift for several people on several days in one step, with a preview of what will be created and what will be skipped.

• Repeat a shift

  Make a shift repeat every few days, weeks, months or years, and change or stop the series later.

• Copy, duplicate and split shifts

  Copy last week's shifts into a new week, duplicate one shift onto other days or people, and split a shift in two.

• Assign open shifts with Auto Plan

  Let Planning give the open shifts of a period to qualified, free people, choosing the lightest-loaded person first, and read why a shift could not be filled.

• Publish the schedule

  Publish one shift, a selection or a whole period; email employees their personal schedule link; republish changed shifts; and unpublish.

• Print the weekly rota

  Print a one-page landscape rota of a week, with the schedule's current filters, to pin on a wall or send as a PDF.

• Book time with a forecast

  Reserve a share of a person's time over days or weeks for capacity and project figures, without creating shifts.

• Resolve shift warnings

  What each warning on a shift means - overlap, wrong role, changed since publication, waiting for approval, switch requested and the bridge warnings - and how to clear it.

• Approve changes to published shifts

  Turn on change approval, see which changes wait for the shift manager, and approve or reject them.

• Take an open shift

  For employees - find the published open shifts you are qualified for, take one, and see your own shifts in My Planning.

• Give up or swap a shift

  For employees - hand a shift back as an open shift, or ask a colleague to take it, depending on what your company allows.

• Broadcast open shifts

  Email an open shift, when you publish it, to the people who are qualified and free, and let the first one to accept take it.

• Send shift reminders

  Remind employees by email, and optionally by SMS, a number of hours before each published shift starts.

• Plan around time off and public holidays

  How approved and requested time off and public holidays affect allocated time, the schedule, Auto Plan and warnings, and how to find shifts that clash.

• Plan within contracts

  See and avoid shifts planned outside an employee's contract, with the Contracts bridge.

• Require skills on shifts

  Ask for skills, at a minimum level, on a shift or a template, so that automatic planning and self-service only choose people who have them.

• Compare shifts with attendance

  See when employees actually checked in and out against their shifts, find lateness and no-shows, and alert the shift manager when nobody has arrived.

• Plan project tasks

  Link shifts to projects and tasks, spread a task's hours over working days with the Plan button, and let project managers plan their own projects.

• Plan sold services

  Mark a service as plannable so that confirming a sales order creates open shifts for the sold hours, then assign them and follow planned, remaining and done hours.

• Track time worked

  Compare planned hours with the time employees logged on timesheets, and let finished shifts propose draft timesheets that employees confirm.

• Portal guide - your schedule link

  For employees without a login - open your personal schedule link from an email, see your shifts, take open shifts and hand a shift back.

• Reports and dashboards

  Every Planning report and dashboard - what each figure means and how it is calculated - for planners, managers and HR officers.

• Roles and permissions

  The Planning security groups, exactly what each can and cannot do, which other groups matter, and how to give access.

• Configuration

  Every Planning setting, scheduled action and email template, with defaults, limits and effects, and what to prepare before the first shift.

• Integrations

  How Planning connects to other SmartERP applications and to email and SMS - what it reads, what it writes, and which bridge does it.

• Troubleshooting

  Symptoms and the exact text of Planning messages, with their causes and fixes - for planners, employees and administrators.

• Technical architecture

  Module map and dependencies, how the code is organised, the extension points the bridge modules use, the schedule's front end, and a data-model diagram.

• Data model

  Every Planning model with its important fields, constraints, public methods and the context keys that change behaviour, for developers.

• Security reference

  Groups, access rights, record rules, field restrictions and the checks done in code, plus the security of the public schedule links.

• Automation reference

  Scheduled actions, server actions, email templates, reports, public routes and the methods the schedule calls, with their XML ids, for developers and administrators.

• Testing and upgrades

  What the automated tests of the nine Planning modules cover, how to run them, and the upgrade and migration notes for each version.