Scheduling work on the board: create, edit, move and assign

Work gets onto the board from the waiting panel on the right, by being drawn straight onto the grid, or from the Add menu. What is worth knowing is not how to drag but what a drop means: where you put something is its schedule, and how big you draw it is how long it takes.

The panel of work waiting

Down the right is everything that exists but is not on the board.

Scheduler → side panel

The first tab holds work that has been created but not placed, and the tickbox beneath chooses which sort you are looking at:

• Unscheduled — it has no date and time.
• Unassigned — nobody has been put on it.

The tab is labelled with whichever you are viewing and carries a count, so Unscheduled Event(s) (1) means one job, appointment or audit is waiting for a slot. Each entry shows its code and client, the services, and its state. The empty state names all three kinds of work at once: No Unscheduled/Unassigned Job(s)/Appointment(s)/Audit(s) Found.

The search icon narrows a long backlog.

Note

If the panel looks empty when you know work is outstanding, switch the tickbox — unscheduled and unassigned are two separate lists.

The Request(s) tab

Scheduler → side panel → Request(s)

The second tab lists requests — work asked for but not yet turned into anything — with a Filter By dropdown for narrowing a long list. A request is not work yet: it goes on the board once it becomes a job, an appointment or an audit, which is done from the request itself. See acting on a request.

Placing it: what the drop decides

Drag an item out of the panel onto the board, and the drop sets two things at once:

• the row or column you drop on — who does the work,
• where along the time axis you drop — when it happens.

So an unassigned, unscheduled job becomes assigned and scheduled in one movement, with nothing typed. The item leaves the panel as it lands and a confirmation appears: Job updated successfully, or the equivalent for an appointment or audit.

Drawing work that does not exist yet

Drag out a span across empty space and a job is created for exactly that stretch: the size of the drag is the duration. Draw two hours and the job is two hours — there is no end time to work out.

Empty space on a resource row offers Add New Event:

Resources Vertical → empty space on a row

Where you drew it fills in the form before you type anything — the date and time, and in a Resources scheduler the person too, because you drew it on their row or column.

Opening and changing work already on the board

Clicking a strip opens that job — the same window you read it in and edit it in.

Dragging a strip that is already placed changes the two things its position stands for:

• onto another person’s row or column — the work is reassigned to them,
• along the time axis — its date and time change.

That is the everyday fix when someone calls in sick, or when a morning job has to become an afternoon one.

The Add button

Add, top-right, is the way in when the work has no obvious slot yet: Add Job, Add Appointment, Add Audit, Add Request and Add Leave.

Add Job, Add Appointment and Add Audit open Create New, whose tabs choose which of the three you are making — the same form used everywhere else, and covered field by field in creating a job. Opened from the board it arrives prefilled with where you clicked; opened from Add it starts empty.

Add Request creates a request rather than scheduled work, for an enquiry taken while you are looking at the week — nothing lands on the board until that request becomes a job, appointment or audit. Add Leave books someone out rather than in; see booking leave.

If nothing will drop

• The row you want may be hidden by a filter — check Users and the kind-of-work dropdown. See what the board shows.
• The person may be on leave for that stretch.
• The panel may be showing the other list — unscheduled rather than unassigned, or the Request(s) tab.