Schedule View
Get a clear overview of your daily planning in your Schedule view. Here you have a very organized and well laid out daily calendar showing your loading docks with the booked and available slots. Select the day, location and facility you want to book a slot for on the left-hand side of the screen where the monthly calendar is displayed (see filter bar below). Doing so allows you to see what’s available and what’s already been taken and by whom. The milestones and ETAs are displayed for each slot. This view is for internal users only, so carriers will not see it.
This is where the actual time optimization starts. When the ETA of a driver is late, you can drag and drop that slot to a later available slot or switch it with a driver who has already arrived. (For warehouse managers, it’s like playing chess, only you get to move the pieces anywhere you like, no pieces have to be kicked off the board and everybody wins!)
When dragging a slot, the suitable slots are automatically calculated for you, based on the labels, in-and outbound traffic, and other settings.
Book a slot
See that jazzy yellow button on the upper right corner of the screen? You can miss it...You know what that does, right?
Do you already know which slot you want to book? You can click it and you will be redirected to the booking wizard.
In the booking wizard, you (or your carrier) are asked to answer some questions. These questions can be managed in your settings.
To book another slot with the same information, select the checkbox at the bottom of the last page. The current slot will be booked and this page will be reloaded to book another one.
Schedule View (aka. your calendar Holy Grail)
Looking at the daily schedule you’ve selected, here’s how you can navigate around it:
You can collapse the facility by clicking on its name (ie. warehouse south). Each section has an hourly timeline divided into 30-minute slots, but this length of time can be changed in your settings (which will be explained later). If you want to know more about this section, hover over the name (Dock 1, for example) and click on the info icon that appears on the right. In the flyover that appears, you can see:
Which activity type can be booked here
Which labels can be booked
the booking rules (when can it be booked by a carrier)
The time slots appear as blocks that become grey if you hover over them. Blocks with a ‘+’ icon are available while booked slots will be filled in with relevant info about the booking.
If you choose to enable the ETA function in the customized view settings (more on this below), you will be able to see the estimated time of arrival in the slot. If a carrier is late, it is colored red so it will grab your attention. You can drag the slot and move it backwards to an available slot or switch it with the slot of another carrier that has already arrived or that will arrive early.
The system automatically calculates the slots that this is possible for (not all of them are of course because if a section has the activity type “inbound” and the order is “outbound”, you will not be able to switch it there).Not enough information in the slot? Click on it and a flyover opens that allows you to fill in whatever’s missing.
Flyover
This is where you can see the milestones and easily update them. You can also see the information that was added by you or the carrier when booking a slot.
Do you want to edit, cancel or reschedule the slot? Click on the arrow icon on the top right of the flyover and the slot detail page opens.
Add and edit all the Booking information and Milestones in the Slot View page.
Based on your role and permissions, you will/won't be able to add and edit certain details.
Choose what you want to see in the filter bar
On the left-hand side of your schedule view, there’s a drop-down menu that allows you to choose which schedule you want to pull up based on the location and facility. You can keep it to these two elements or, if you want to search further for a certain carrier or activity type, you can also click those boxes to give you a more specific look at what’s on the day’s agenda. (Or if you’re simply curious to know what DHL is going to pick up for Sony at the North Warehouse in Antwerp). So you get to momentarily eliminate the general info to find what you want. And, if this info at the margins is annoying and you just want to see the daily calendar itself, you can click it away.
Info Button
By clicking on the info icon at the top, a box will expand showing you a legend (no, not Brad Pitt, sadly). This legend shows the milestone statuses (color-coded) and milestone types (number-coded) so that you can make sense of your schedule view (and so your schedule looks like a pretty rainbow).
If the milestone types and statuses are not clear, read up here.
The Customized View Button
Clicking on this button gives you a drop-down menu where you can select the view displayed -- schedule view or edit schedule -- choose which slot info is shown and change the size (for those who need glasses but aren’t willing to admit it, or for those maverick warehouse managers who are managing everything on their mobile device). This customized view can be changed easily in this menu by simply checking or unchecking the box that applies to you.
View type
This is where you can make last-minute changes to the schedule on the fly, such as change opening hours (if you’ve slept in) change lunch breaks (if you’ve been invited to a fancy business lunch) edit slot duration (if you get into a great conversation with a driver and forget to unload), and even enable or close a section for some reason, for example when pirates set it on fire or aliens abduct the warehouse staff.
Grid size
This allows you to zoom in or out. By selecting ‘large’ you get an overview of the whole day and can see all the slots, or you can zoom in if you’re more of a “take things as they come” sort of warehouse manager, or just very detailed oriented.
Slot info
Choose which information you want to see in the slots. For example, if you’re at the gate waiting for a carrier to arrive, the driver’s name and the license plate number are going to be more relevant than the activity type, of course. Plus, it’s always nice to greet your driver personally when they pull up.
Possible errors you might see in this view:
If you haven’t yet created or applied a template, then it’s possible you might experience limited functionality. You also need to set up a few things in settings to make the best out of your schedule view.
No locations
Whoops! It seems like you have deleted all the locations. Add a location, facility, and corresponding sections in your settings. (link to the correct article)
No facility
You have created a location without any facilities (this can be a warehouse) or sections (a loading dock for example). Add them to your settings. (link to the correct article)
No section
You’re almost there! Go to your settings and create one or more sections. These are the loading docks of the warehouse. (link to the correct article)
No template
You’ve set up your locations, facilities, and sections. Bravo! Now you still have to create and apply a template. (link to the correct article) Once you’ve done this, you can start booking slots!
List view
Is the schedule view not enough? Go to the list view. Here you will get an overview of all your orders in a grid, which makes it easy to search and filter.
(link to the correct article)
That’s it, that’s all!
We’d love to say more about this, but we sort of feel that would be over-explaining things. No one likes TMI, even when it comes to business. Except for maybe logistics folks...wink!
