BillMax Scheduling Overview

Scheduling consists of Authorized Users' schedules, Appointments and a Calendar view.

Activating the Scheduling module in BillMax requires a license with Scheduling activated.

Authorized User schedule entries are entered via the Calendar accessed through Scheduling. One time daily and recurring weekly schedules may be created. In addition, time slots may be used to designate Authorized User unavailability and an optional Unavailable Reason specified.

Each Authorized User may be color-coded for ease of identifying schedules when viewing the Calendar. Each Authorized user may be associated with one or more Job Class. Appointment Types will use the Job Class to select Assignees for that Appointment Type. Each Authorized User may be excluded from the Scheduling system to reduce the potential lists of Assignees.

When the Calendar is accessed via the Main Menu or the Calendar is accessed via the User/Package/Service tab of an Account, an entry made from the Calendar is an Appointment.

Appointments are classified by Appointment Types. Appointment Types have several pieces of information:

Name
What Job Classes an Authorized User must have to be selected for the Appointment.
Data to be included for every document of the Appointment Type. This consists of free form text and a series of Name/Value pairs.
The Image File Class if images are desired on the document.

Note that all documents are generated using the XSL file /usr/local/billmax/cfg/xsltfiles/fo/appointments.xsl. Regardless of the name of the Appointment Type, all Work Orders/Documents will structurally be the same unless this file is modified.

When creating an Appointment, the list of potential Assignees is comprised of Assignees where the Assignee Job Class intersects the Appointment Type Job Class.

There are several visual cues for Appointments when looking at the Calendar view:

solid color
- silver - the appointment is assigned to an Authorized User (Assignee) that has not been color coded.
- grey - the appointment is not assigned.
- other - the appointment is assigned to an Assignee that has been color-coded.
Patterned with stripes of equal width - the Assignee may be scheduled but is unavailable.
Patterned with stripes of differing widths - the Assignee is scheduled.

The patterned entries show only when a specific Assignee is selected for the Calendar display.

Emails

Emails may be configured to be sent upon Appointment creation and Appointment modification of the date, time or status. In addition nightly processing may be configured to send an Appointment reminder email the day before the appointment. By default emails are sent to both the Account and User emails.

Emails are sent using the System Email Templates mechanism. Email templates are:

AppointmentScheduled - only sent if new appointment has the Status of Scheduled.
AppointmentChange - includes if appointment is deleted.
AppointmentReminder - sent during nightly processing the day before the appointment.

Variables available to the email templates are:

${user.*} - Fields from the User/Service Location record.
${account.*} - Fields from the Account associated with the User.
${config.*} - Fields from the Virtual Company associated with the Account.
${ACCOUNTNAME} - number, company, name on Account
${USERNAME} - number, name on User
${EMAILS} - Account and User emails combined
${APPTDATE} - normalized date of appointment
${STARTTIME} - start time of appointment - 12 hour format
${ENDTIME} - end time of appointment - 12 hour format
${NEWDATETIME} - a sentence reflecting the new date/time of an appointment.
${NEWSTATUS} - a sentence reflecting the new Status of the appointment.