Workforce - Scheduling

Overview

The Workforce module allows organizations to complete a variety of actions such as scheduling technicians, creating work orders, and configuring coverage areas and work types.

In this article, we'll be reviewing the Schedules section within the module, allowing you to schedule technicians, taking into consideration their availability, travel time, vacation time, and more.

Schedule View Legend

Within the Schedules tab, you'll be able to view all the currently active technicians, their upcoming and completed Work orders, and the travel time associated with them at a quick glance. 

These different types are denoted in different colours, highlighted in the image below:

• Grey: Completed Work orders
• Blue: Expected Travel Time
• White: Upcoming or Present Work Order

Technician Status

The Technician Statuses are indicated on the left-hand side of the Schedule. You'll be able to see all of the technicians' names and a tag with a unique icon and colour. Included below is an example photo of the technicians and their statuses.

Order Queue and Sorting

On the right of the Scheduling view, you'll find a clipboard button next to the Day/Week view buttons. When on the Day view, clicking that will open a menu on the right called Order Queue. Within this menu, you'll find all of the pending Work orders that need to be done and assigned to a technician. As some Work orders are more time-sensitive than others, gaiia also provides a "Sort by" function. We've included the options below: 

• Ability to sort by age (Newest to Oldest) or (Oldest to Newest)
• Ability to sort by priority (High to Low) or (Low to High)

Work Order Priority is set when the work order is created and is defaulted to ‘Medium’.

Date Selector

This function allows you to review historical schedules, Work orders, and travel times and complete advance scheduling! 

You also have the option to view the schedule in a Day view or a Week view. The Day view will have an orange line that appears to show the current time, but when viewing days in advance, your calendar will default to noon centred on the screen. 

The Week view gives you a calendar-like view of your technicians, their scheduled Work orders, and travel times. This might help when trying to view the overall picture for the week. Next to the clipboard button, there is also an expansion chevron (the arrows) which can be used to increase the size of the view. 

While in this view, you will not be able to click the clipboard button to view the Order Queue.

How to schedule a Work Order

Now that we've taken a look at all other aspects of the Scheduling module, we can now assign a Work Order. We've included the steps below on how to complete that:

1. Drag from the Work Order Queue to a White Space on the schedule, which indicates that a technician is scheduled and available.
2. If the technician is unqualified for the work order, denoted by diagonal grey lines, you will not be able to assign it to them. 
3. Once the work order has been assigned to a technician, it will also include travel times, determined by the technician's base location if they're starting their shift or their prior job location if they have just completed a work order. 
4. After that, hit save, and the technician will receive an email regarding this new appointment.

Tip: Hold the Work Order over the slot for 1-2 seconds to see the expected travel time before scheduling.

Alternatively, you can schedule a Work Order from the Work Order module. Simply click on the module, click on the Ellipsis menu, and hit Assign Technician. This will prompt a modal to appear, offering a more compact process to schedule the technician. From here, you won't be able to view the travel times.

Notifying the customer

When a work order is AutoAssigned from checkout, a customer communication is sent automatically: first the order confirmation email, followed shortly by an appointment confirmation that includes the date and time.

To achieve the same outcome for a manually assigned or rescheduled work order, use the save-time confirmation controls:

1. After assigning or moving a job, click Save. A confirmation modal appears so you can choose who to notify.
2. Toggle Customer notification on or off. If the time hasn’t changed (e.g., you moved the job between technicians but kept it at 5:00 p.m.), you can skip the customer email.
3. Toggle Technician notification as needed. Technicians are notified by default when jobs are assigned; uncheck this if the technician already knows about the change.
4. Click Continue to send the selected notifications using the appropriate template.

Configuring communications: Manage email (and optional SMS) templates in Communications > Templates. AutoAssign and Manual Assign each use their own template, allowing you to tailor the copy to the experience (for example, “Thanks for placing your order…” vs. “Thanks for working with our team to confirm your appointment…”). Standard template permissions apply—no new permissions are required.

Current behaviour and limits:

• Secondary technicians: When assigning a secondary technician, the system automatically sends an email notification to them. The confirmation modal only appears for the primary technician.
• Rapid reassignments: In early phases, moving a job between technicians within a few minutes may not resend a new confirmation automatically.
• Activity visibility: Notifications are recorded on the account via Communications. A Work order-level activity entry (e.g., “Appointment confirmation sent to…”) is planned so dispatch can see what the customer was told.
• Bulk actions: When saving multiple changes at once, the system surfaces which confirmations succeeded vs. failed so you can follow up.

Filters

Filters can help you schedule technicians and assign Work orders based on coverage area and work types. We've included some descriptions of how they work and an image of how the filters will display.

If you'd like to remove a filter, you can press the "X" to the right of the active filters.

• Coverage Area: Schedule by Coverage area to group all Work orders together and only show technicians in the area.
• Work Type: If you are trying to schedule for a unique skill set, use the ‘Work Type’ filter to find the qualified technicians and relevant Work orders.