Show Available Slots that Match Multiple Criteria Schedulers often look for gaps in their schedules to find the open resources for each opportunity. But sometimes, gaps don’t tell the whole story. You may have invisible criteria like skill-matching, cleaning requirements, or multiple resources to schedule at once. Or you may be on the phone with an opportunity and must suggest available times as quickly as possible. In these cases, DayBack can suggest the best slots that match all of your requirements. Scheduling Criteria Are Often Invisible In the movie above, schedulers can see openings for the two technicians, but they can’t easily see if the required rooms and equipment are free at the same time. While DayBack can show different types of resources simultaneously, as the number of criteria increases, it can be hard for schedulers to see everything at once and still make good decisions. Our customers often have rules that constrain when an otherwise open slot can be scheduled. Here are some of the invisible criteria we’ve built out for customers: Because DayBack is highly scriptable, it can scrub open slots against a variety of criteria to render just the slots that fit all your requirements. When multiple slots match, DayBack can even rank them so you can present the most ideal slots to your clients first. You Have to *See* Slots in Context to Make the Best Decisions Many scheduling apps present possible appointments as a list of dates and times. Without showing more information about each slot, schedulers can book days too tightly, always suggest the same providers first, or create huge gaps in some provider’s schedules. Ranking slots can help, but we’ve found that highlighting ideal slots alongside existing appointments gives schedulers the information they need to make the best decisions. We’ve seen schedulers quickly offer to split appointments or to slightly change services when they see available slots in the context of other appointments, trainings, vacations, and breaks. Getting Started We customize the recommendation of slots for each deployment as part of DayBack’s implementation packages. Please get in touch if you think DayBack could make a big impact on your team.
15 Comments
Have you seen the product addressbookserver.com? (not the Apple product)
It is an address book and calendar server and includes a method to connect to the address book and calendar data through mysql / ODBC.
http://trac.addressbookserver.com/trac/wiki/FileMaker_Configuration
This has not been tested by me, but would seem to offer a direct connection from Filemaker to the Address Book and Calendar data.
It would be also nice to integrate calendar entries into the billing section.
As such, one would be able to easily create a time billing system.
ie a calendar entry could be marked as billable for the amount of time designated and for the $ amount designated. Each user would have a hourly rate etc…
We’re definitely going to be doing that, though not in the first calendar coming out in January (our replacement for Pro). Billing will be in the subsequent replacement for Pro Complete. We’re basing the billing component on a couple of cool mods requested over the last two years where we added invoice line items right to the appointment detail screen. So you can easily bill the appointment’s duration, but also easily add products or other services right there. And since you’re effectively making the invoice there, you’ll be able to print it right from the appointment as well. Should make ass sorts of professional services billing simpler.
Ed, since you already license Complete, so I’m not sure I understand your question. If you’d like to get inside the new calendar and see how it works you can purchase it at a discount (purchase an “upgrade”). We’ll have pricing when we’re closer to launch.
If we upgrade to Pro Complete, are we able to get Pro to see how things work?
Have you looked at directly supporting the CardDAV server (address book server) that is built into Snow Leopard Server?
Probably not doing CardDAV yet, just an improved version of the vcard export / import in our current calendar. But you never know. (Address book just isn’t a business platform–it’s so single user–but import export to refresh its contents onto your mobile devices seems to make sense.)
iCal integration is kinda important.
Do you think that you can either:
1. do it without a plugin?
2. support the iCal connector plugin?
3. develop a custom plugin?
4 or ?
We have an amazing solution to this on tap… more soon.
Address Book sync for contacts?
I don’t know if it’s possible, but something I’d like to see, because it would make the work in our industry MUCH more efficient, is an easy way to duplicate an event from the calendar, like the drag and drop.
Hi Kyra- we’ve added the ability to option-drag an event to duplicate it (hold down the option key while dragging). Is that what you had in mind?
Partly because I have since before FM’s Custom Menus and partly to get pop-down menus attached to any button/object. I also find Dacons Menu writer much easier to use and I do get a pile of other little ‘features’ which FM still doesn’t offer. Originally used CNS Menus way back but now use most of Dacons plugins. I find them easy and elegant.
Wish list looks pretty much like one I would have written. iCal integration not that important as xplat is now the order of the day. Resizing layouts is very important to Windows users, Showing events from more than one table is magic.
In a previous comment I noted that we are using the current calendar as an activity ‘hub’ for virtually every action a client can do from phoneIN, phoneOUT, onsite etc…many of which are not time related conventional calendar items. We’re also combining Todo activities into the Calendar table to get a combined overall view.
I’ve reset a ‘Home’ screen showing a Calendar Week in smaller portals and a list of todo items on the same screen, by user, as the first screen a user sees on daily login. Also converting most menus to pop down’s (Dacons MenuControl)
Slick. Wondering why you’re using Dacons instead of FileMaker’s Custom Menus. (Yea, you’ll love the mix of tables in the same view.)