One of the most important features in OpsAnalitica is the Scheduling Feature. Schedules accomplish the following:
They take the guesswork out of running the location by telling end users what needs to be done each day and when it needs to be done.
They have time frames where the checklists are active to ensure that Users complete the checklists when they are operationally significant and they don't pencil whip them out for the day at 8 am.
Schedules allow us to track if end users are doing what they are supposed to when they are supposed to easily.
Scheduling Rules that Apply to All Schedules:
You cannot have overlapping schedules.
You can't have a schedule that goes from 9 am to 11 am and have the next one starting from 10 am to noon.
You would need to have a 9:00 am to 10:00 am and then a 10:01 am to Noon.
The system doesn't know which schedule to attribute overlapping time frames to so it doesn't allow it to happen.
Start On: is the day that the schedule goes live.
Schedules are universal and run on time in every time zone.
From Time: is the time that the Schedule goes active and is clickable to the End User.
From Time of 11:00 am means that the schedule cannot be worked until 11:00 am.
To Time: is the time that the checklist is supposed to be completed by. It is the due time.
Late Notifications are triggered off of the To Time on a schedule, if the checklist has not been submitted on schedule before the To Time, then at the To Time a Notification will be sent out.
Allow Late For: is a period of time added onto the To Time where the checklist could still be started.
The first thing you will notice is that the Checklist Button in the Schedule becomes Red to denote that completing it is urgent.
00:00:00 stands for Hours:Minutes:Seconds.
00:30:00 represents a 30-minute late period.
If the To time is 1:00 pm and the Allow Late is 00:30:00 the end-user has until 01:30 pm to start the checklist.
If a checklist is started in the Allow Later Period the end user will be required to provide a comment on why the checklist was started late when they submit and the schedule status will be Late.
Late checklists in our platform aren't really bad, they were submitted checklists that got started late.
We use the late designation to determine if the schedule is too aggressive and hard to accomplish.
The real world happens and sometimes end users cannot get their checklists done before the To Time.
A best practice if you want to increase Compliance is to have Allow Late Periods that go from one instance of the schedule up to the next schedule starts.
Have a morning schedule that is due at 11:30. Have the Allow Late Period go from 11:31 to the beginning of the next schedule, this will ensure that people are getting the checklist very late still get credit for completing the checklist.
For a new schedule to work it has to be set in the future.
You can do that by adjusting the start date to tomorrow.
You can do that by setting the From time into the future and then get the schedule to create and adjust back later.
Repeat Every is the interval that you want the Schedule to Repeat on.
Location Filter: this allows you to set a Location Filter for each individual schedule.
If you leave this blank the schedule defaults to the Location Filter on the Checklist.
If you leave the Location Filter on the checklist blank then the checklist is available to all locations.
You can build specific location filters, and groups of locations, for specific schedules. EX: you might have a location filter for locations opened on Sundays and only apply that filter to the Sunday Schedule.
If you a random schedules or one-offs for certain locations you can use location filters to accommodate for that.
In the example above about locations opened on Sundays, you couldn't use the daily recurring schedule. You would have to build seven weekly schedules and just make each one for one day.
The daily recurring goes every day.
If you operate on the 13 financial reporting periods you should use monthly schedules and build them out and then update them once a year.
If you want to end a schedule at midnight actually make it 11:59 pm. 12:00 am is actually the next day and will show up that way.
Different Statuses of Schedules:
There are 3 different statuses for checklists on the schedule:
Available: This means this checklist is available to be completed.
Represented on the schedule as a Black and White Button.
The Food Safety AM and Shift Logs are available.
Late: This checklist has passed its To time and is now in the Allow Late Period.
Represented by the Red and White button on the Inventory Sheet.
Late Checklists will be at the top of the schedule.
When you complete a Late Checklist you will be asked to provide a comment on why it was late.
Not Available: A greyed-out button that cannot be clicked represents a future or not available checklist.
This checklist appears on the schedule for planning and communication purposes only. They are there to show the end user what is coming up later.
Schedule Statuses in Reporting:
Scheduled Checklists are ultimately either completed or missed. There are 4 statuses of checklists when it comes to reporting:
Available: This means that the checklist is currently scheduled and available to be worked on.
On-Time: This means the checklist was completed before the To Time on the Schedule.
This is what we want.
Late: This means the checklist was completed, which is good, but started late, or after the To Time.
The late designation was invented to show management when end users are starting and completing their checklists.
If you have a checklist schedule that has a lot of late responses, this might mean your schedule is too aggressive.
Remember, Late is completed, and that is good.
Missed: This means the checklist was not submitted within the time you allotted to have it completed.
Missed checklists are bad.
Once a checklist's Allow Late Period has expired, the end user can never get credit for completing that checklist on schedule.
You can reduce missed checklists by extending the Allow Late Period.
A common problem we see with new customers of the platform is that the managers haven't adjusted how they work their shifts and they miss checklists, then they go and complete them as one-offs, and they don't understand why they didn't credit for them.
Checklists have to be completed during the schedule to get credit.
You should anticipate that this will happen and train your teams about how the schedules work so they can adjust how they manage their time accordingly.
Complete: is the Sum of On-time and Late Checklists.
Complete gives you one number you can use to see how well a location and its team are doing at completing checklists within the schedule.
Complete is the inverse of missed in the past.
Complete % + Missed % should equal 100%.
Schedule Types:
Day
Week
Month
Quarter
Year
Each schedule is set up by default to repeat every day, week, month, etc. If you need to accommodate for random stuff you may have to go to the next higher level of schedule and configure it that way.
Day Schedules
For daily recurring schedules that happen every day at the same time.
You cannot turn these off for a day, if you have days where you are closed this would not be the schedule to use.
If you were closed on Sundays, you would use 6 weekly schedules configured for each day of the week.
Week Schedules
You will notice the addition of days to the weekly schedule.
If you want to run a full week schedule you would make your From Time at Monday 12:00 am to Sunday 11:59 pm.
If you want to have a schedule that just runs on Monday you would set it like this: From Time Monday 12:00 am to Monday 11:59 pm.
Month Schedules
You will notice that we switched from days of the week to days of the month.
The Platform is aware of the last day of each month, so if you want a schedule to run from the 1st to the last day of the month just select the 31st as the To Date and the system will adjust for February.
Quarter Schedules
You will notice that we have added the month of the quarter to this schedule.
These schedules will repeat on a quarterly basis.
Year Schedules
You will notice that now the month of the quarter has changed to the month of the year.
This is the kind of schedule you would use to schedule 1 date in a year or break the year into two halves.