This article explains how (and when) to utilize the Areas concept in Resource Scheduling. Areas are only used in the Resource Scheduling.
Overview
Areas allow schedulers and primary staff to be assigned to a division of rooms different from how the facilities are arranged.
Determine when to use areas
If the way facilities (aka buildings, housing locations) and rooms are set up is NOT how schedulers and staff are assigned to work in the facilities, then Areas can be utilized to create more appropriate divisions of rooms to reflect how scheduling is actually divided.
Please Note: Areas are optional. Most facilities likely won’t need to utilize Areas.
Examples:
- I want to split Facility 1 into two Areas based on the Species, Facility 1 - Small Animals and Facility 1 - Large Animals
- I want to take all my Large Animal rooms across multiple facilities and combine them into 1 Area and assigned to my “Large Animal” schedulers/staff. The area is called All Large Animal Rooms and I will assign all Large Animal rooms to that area from Facility 1 and Facility 2 and Facility 3.
Advantages:
- Organization of schedulers, staff, and rooms reflects real-life if the above explanations match.
Disadvantages:
- Additional complexity to set up and manage that may not be needed.
Instructions
- Add area on Schedule Setup > Areas
- Assign Primary Schedulers and Primary Staff as needed.
- Go to Schedule Setup > Rooms.
- On each room, assign each room to that new Area from one or more different facilities.
Tip: You can assign Areas to different Units from the Facilities they are composed of in case that level of division of schedulers is preferred.