After Dictionaries and Templates have been created, you can set up your units, facilities, rooms, areas, and staff here and make assignments to build the schedule. Start from Units.
Units
Units are the highest level of organization in Resource Scheduling. Unit schedulers, staff, facilities, and areas (optional) are all organized under units.
Unit Schedulers
Assign at least one unit scheduler to each unit. Note that this is for organizational purposes only, this unit selected by default in Daily Plan; no other functionality is tied to the unit scheduler assignments. Unit schedulers will still be able to view and edit other units even if they are assigned only to one.
Unit Staff
Assign all staff that will be scheduled in the system to a unit. Please note, that staff can be assigned only to one Unit.
If you need to change the unit for the staff, delete them from their existing unit and then add them to the new unit.
Staff can only be assigned to rooms in their Unit. However, they can be borrowed across Units on specific days in Daily Planning if needed.
QC Check
QC stands for “Quality Control”. Set QC Check to Yes if the Unit Staff is going to be assigned to QC Check activities in rooms.
Unit Facilities and Areas
Ensure that every facility and area is assigned to one of the units (excluding facilities that will not be scheduled).
Facilities
Facilities are intended to represent physical buildings. Facilities are organized by Units. A facility can belong only to one unit.
Add all facilities you want to schedule in the system (may already exist from 3G).
Assign unit schedulers as primaries across the facilities in the unit; at least 1 primary scheduler per facility.
Assign unit staff as primaries across the facilities in the unit; this will help organize staff within the unit.
Do as needed:
- Add activities to the facility level
- Add equipment as needed if using equipment type activities
Areas
Areas are user-defined collections of rooms that allow you to divide up the scheduling of rooms within a single facility into different units (rooms will be listed under their area's unit instead of their facility).
Suggested:
- Assign unit schedulers as primaries across the areas in the unit; at least 1 primary scheduler per area
- Assign unit staff as primaries across the areas in the unit; this will help organize staff within the unit
Do as needed:
- Add activities to the area level
- If you want to schedule completely by area, then make sure all scheduled rooms are assigned to an area. This will allow you to ignore facilities when scheduling.
Note: One area may contain rooms from multiple facilities. Useful for managing larger facilities.
Rooms
Suggested:
- Add all rooms you want to schedule in the system (may already exist from 3G)
- Add racks
- Add activities to the room
Do as needed:
- Enter Square Footage if using room type activities that are per sqft
- Add rack items as needed if using cage activities that have Use Rack Item not empty
- Add equipment as needed if using equipment type activities
- Assign staff to rooms that have dedicated staff that perform all activities in the room. It can be left blank and instead be assigned on a day to day basis via Daily Planning.
Room Info
- Square Footage: set the square footage if you have activities that are using the sqft metric.
- Start schedule on: enter a date if you do not want to this room's schedule to start until a certain date. Leave empty to start scheduling immediately (requires at least 1 room activity). If the date is changed after the schedule was already generated, then it will only delete today onwards to the new start date (historical data will never be erased).
- Stop schedule on: enter a date if you want to this room's schedule to stop at a certain date. Leave empty to schedule indefinitely. If the date is changed after the schedule was already generated, then it will only delete records from the new stop date onward but never before today will (historical data never be erased).
- Room alert: will show up in red on the first level of the staff's schedule (i.e. they are highly visible). Intended for short yet important messages that you want to assign staff to see immediately when viewing their schedule for the day.
- Room instructions: will be displayed in the room for the Husbandry staff. You can enter videos and pictures here too.
Racks
If you track your census by racks, then racks should be set up here.
- Rack ID: rack identification (you can enter a name, it is how it will be displayed in the system)
- Species: species associated with the rack. Rack species may be used to specify a metric.
- Cage Type: used to specify metrics.
- Rack Type: used to specify metrics.
- Current Cage Count: will be updated automatically from My Schedule/Rack Census. It can be updated manually too by the Schedulers in setup.
- Date Last Inventoried: will be automatically updated My Schedule/Rack Census
Rack Items</h3
- Rack ID: list of racks that you added on the Racks tab.
- Item: these items come from Setup-> Dictionaries-> Rack Item List.
- Current Count on Rack: will be updated automatically from My Schedule/Rack Census. It can be updated manually too by the Scheduler in setup.
Room Equipment
Add equipment to the room if you have any activity to schedule with equipment activity type.
Shared Recurrence
If you have two or more activities in the room that always occur together and are rescheduled together, then you should create a shared recurrence record. Once created, you can use it when setting up the recurrence of your room activities.
Example 1: if you have several sanitation activities done on the same day once a month, then create a shared recurrence record called "Monthly Sanitation" that occurs on a specific day once a month. Then go to those sanitation activities in the room and select Monthly Sanitation in their recurrence.
Example 2: if you have Change Out Cages and Change Out Bottles on the same day, then create a shared recurrence record called "Full Change Days" and select that shared recurrence on those two activities on the room.
- Add shared recurrence record:
- Use on your Room Activities or on your QC Check activities:
Room Activities
Activities drive the schedule generator. The room schedule will be generated based on the activities listed in this section. Recurrence information must be defined here for each activity.
Use Add/update room template to quickly add pre-defined sets of activities to a room. However, once a template is applied, you may continue to edit the activities directly in the room.
You can generate the schedule for this room only directly from here. Use the Regenerate Room Schedule button.
Note: If the room setup is not complete for the schedule to be generated, then you will see the error message. For more information about Generator error messages please see Handling missing information section.
Assigned Staff
Assign staff to the rooms here. Staff assigned to the room with "Schedule In Room" checked will be assigned to that room activities if they are working that day.
Limit to Racks:
For large rooms with many racks, specific staff can be assigned to individual racks to divide the room out to multiple staff.
Example:
- Bob assigned to Rack 1, 2, 3, and 4
- Sally assigned to Rack 5, 6, 7, and 8
Note: Assignment Priority of 1 is for the primary staff in the room. They will always be assigned to a room on the days they are present. Assignment Priority of 2 and on will be automatically assigned on the days the primary is not present.
QC Check
QC Check activities will not be automatically assigned to the room staff. They can be assigned to a specific person (Assignee column).
A list of available assignees comes from Unit Staff with QC Check set to Yes.
Preview Room
Preview Room lets you see your room at 4 weeks period perspective. Allows the user to preview how a room's activities will appear on the schedule without having to generate the schedule.
It also allows you more easily see where human error was made when entering the room's data. This will show as a special alert icon.
Note: the alert icon will always be red. In order to see the icon details hover over the icon and the alert text will show. If there is any information missing, the special link will display next to the room name.
Staff
- Staff info: Add nicknames to staff to help Scheduler to identify them. Add Business Role and Contact Type to help categorize staff. Add staff status to make him available in scheduling.
- Work Shifts: Work shifts are required for the staff to be scheduled in the system. Select a Shift Template to quickly add a preset work shift.
- Staff skills: add skill/skillset to the staff.
- Primary Facilities/Areas: assign facility/area as primary to the staff.
- Assigned Rooms: assign staff to room.
Staff Activities
Instead of being added to staff individually, Staff Activities are added here separately with the option of assigning applicable roles, contact types, facilities, and areas. Alternatively, the manual selection of one or more staff can be used.
Suggested: Add very basic staff activities, e.g. Lunch break, Email time, etc.
Do as needed: Consider adding generic staff activities if you want to allot flat time amounts to staff for handling unplannable events, e.g. "Helping PI's" or "Handle Incidentals".
QC Check Activities
This page provides an alternative way to view, add, and edit QC Check activities in rooms.