Diary management overview

Multiple calendars can be maintained for different contractors, inspectors and housing organisation staff - referred to as resources - to help manage effectively all appointment-based services provided to tenants in response to repair requests and the like, thus ensuring that service level agreements (SLAs) are implemented, upheld and tracked. Multiple diary structures can be created to match all types of SLAs in operation and then linked to individual resource diaries, based on the terms of their contract. In its simplest form, a single resource diary can be created to mirror the contract hours of availability. However, the system also caters for the creation of multiple resource diaries within the same contract, reflecting the hours of availability for individual contractors and any known conflicting appointments that would preclude the booking of an inspection, on-site repair, etc. Recording this level of detail ensures that appointments offered to tenants can be secured with a high degree of confidence. As the variations in contractor availability may only be minimal, it is possible to create multiple diaries using the same baseline calendar structure and then define their working pattern through the entry of 'diary slots', thus saving time and effort.

The diary management work flow is summarised as follows:

• Calendars. Create any number of calendars (diary structures) to reflect the weekly and daily service patterns in operation for the allocation of, say, an inspection or on-site repair, based on the repair type. For example, a calendar may be created for 'standard repairs SLA' and invoked for all required services under the category of a planned repair. The hours of service could be set to 0800 - 1800 hours, Monday to Friday. Similarly, a second calendar could be created to cover 'emergency repairs SLA' with the extended hours of service being set to 0000 - 2359, Monday to Sunday.
• Non Working Days. Public Bank Holidays and religious observance days can be added to each calendar.
• Resource Diaries. Create any number of contractor, inspector or user specific diaries that fit onto the over-arching calendar, resulting in an availability grid. Where multiple diaries are created for the same resource, care must be taken to ensure no conflict of availability.
• Booking Unavailable Time. Staff training, company conferences, contractor and inspector holidays - indeed any known period of unavailability - can be blocked out from the resource diaries.

Once recorded, all information is visible to the business rules that inform the successful allocation of each scheduled appointment. These appointments can easily be tracked through individual contractor, inspector or 'system user' diaries.

Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of diary management, including:

• To create a calendar structure
• To add a non working day calendar entry
• To add an exception day calendar entry
• To create a resource diary
• To add a resource diary difference
• To add a resource diary definition
• To book unavailable time within a resource diary slot