Available Hours

The powerful scheduling features in JobOrder allow you to schedule staff, rooms, and equipment linked to activities in Jobs.

To track resource availability and utilization and to help with scheduling, JobOrder needs to know when each of your resources is available. This information is stored in the Available Hours Area, one record for each combination of resource and date. You can manually change a resource's availability by adding or editing records in this Area. Usually you will use JobOrder to generate most of these records automatically using an administrative function.

Whenever you add a new Resource, you specify the days and hours it is typically available on the Hours page of the Resource record. The defaults are stored in a special Resource record created by JobOrder called Working Days Standard. You can change the default working hours by editing this record.

You should specify any days your organization does not work by creating records in the Holidays area, one record for each ordinary workday that most everyone in your organization will not be working. If there are a few people who will be working on a certain holiday, you can manually add Available Hours records for them.

Adding Available Hours for a Year
Before each year begins, you should have JobOrder create Available Hours records for all your resources. You can create Available Hours records for many years at once if you like, but we suggest doing only one year at a time. If your fiscal year matches the calendar year, you can do it at the same time as you close out accounting.

NOTE: Adding Available Hours for all your Resources can take a long time if you have a lot of Resources. We recommend starting the process at the end of a workday and letting it run overnight in this case.

You should also add Available Hours records for each new resource you add to JobOrder. This is most easily accomplished by clicking Add Hours on the Hours page of the Resource record, but can also be done using this procedure.

To add Available Hours records for a year:
  1 Bring JobOrder's main palette to the front.
  2 Choose Holidays from the Administration menu to open the Holidays Area. Add a record for each ordinary workday that most everyone in your organization will not be working.
Holidays are for exceptions: days you would normally expect to be working, but won't be. "Normal working days" are defined in the Hours page of each Resource record. If none of your Resources are marked as being available on weekends, for example, it is not necessary to define each weekend as a Holiday.
  3 Close the Holidays Area. At the main palette, choose 'Add Available Hours for Year' from the Administration menu.
  4 Choose to add 'Available Hours records for all Resources'.
You may also choose to add Available Hours for one Resource, or for all Resources in a particular Department. If you are not adding Available Hours for all Resources, click Choose Resource or Choose Department as appropriate to choose the Resource or Department for which you want to create Available Hours records.
  5 Enter the year for which you wish to add Available Hours.
  6 Click Add Available Hours.
JobOrder begins creating the Available Hours records for the specified resources for the specified year. Any existing Available Hours records for those resources in that year are deleted first.
  7 If there are any exceptions (for example, people who will be working on holidays), open the Available Hours Area and edit or add records to handle them