Collaborative Scheduling is an optional add-on that allows firms to coordinate and schedule fieldwork dates with clients, track readiness, and monitor progress in real time.
Leveraging the intuitive user interface, firm users can plan fieldwork dates for all engagements and send reservation requests to confirm project expectations and timelines with clients. Clients can either accept the reservation to confirm they'll have things ready before the engagement starts or propose alternative dates.
1. Overview
With Collaborative Scheduling, firm users can:
- View a timeline of engagements in Scheduling that includes fieldwork start and end dates, deliverable due dates, and the percentage of information submitted or accepted.
- View firm users assigned to engagements.
- Reserve fieldwork dates and send a reservation request to the firm's main point of contact at their client company.
- Track the status of every engagement at a glance to see which are: Queued, Reserved, Pending Confirmation, Alternative Proposed, or Scheduled.
- Review, accept or counter alternative dates proposed by clients.
- See a full history of all scheduling activities and messages exchanged for each engagement.
2. The Scheduling Page
Click Scheduling in the left-hand navigation menu to open the Scheduling page. It shows the Fieldwork Start and Fieldwork End dates for every engagement plotted on a timeline. Each engagement's Schedule Status is denoted by colour, with a diamond icon representing the Deliverable Due date.
NOTE: Fieldwork Start, Fieldwork End and Deliverable Due dates are Reserved when users create an engagement or bulk create multiple engagements.
Use one or multiple filters to narrow the list to view a subset of engagements.
- Engagement: filter by engagement title or code
- Client: filter by client company
- Engagement Status: isolate engagements by their status (Draft or In Progress)
- Users: filter for one or multiple firm users assigned to the engagement
- Scheduling Status: one or more of the five Schedule Statuses
- My Engagements: show only engagements you are a part of
- Overdue: show engagements where the fieldwork or deliverable date has passed without being marked complete
The Scheduling Status legend above the timeline also acts as a filter. Click a Status to filter the relevant engagements.
Reading the Timeline
- Engagement timeline colour: reflects the engagement's current Schedule Status (more details below).
- Diamond: marks the Deliverable Due date for the engagement.
- Hover over an engagement timeline bar to view details such as Title, Fieldwork Start, Fieldwork End, Deliverable Due, and progress on requests submitted or accepted.
Click an engagement bar to open the details pane on the right, where you can update the Schedule Status, Send Reservations, and review the engagement's Scheduling History.
3. The Schedule Status Workflow
Engagements move through a defined sequence of Schedule Statuses.
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Queued. When an engagement's Schedule Status is Queued, its Fieldwork Start, Fieldwork End, and Deliverable Due dates can be edited by stretching, shrinking or drag-and-dropping the timeline bar.
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Reserved. By default, an engagement's Scheduling Status is Reserved when it is created. In Scheduling, firm users can either send a reservation request to the main client contact or update the Scheduling Status to Queued by unpinning the engagement timeline bar to edit the dates.
Reservation requests should be sent to client contacts who have the authority to review and accept the reservation to confirm they will have things ready for fieldwork. Alternatively, clients can propose an alternative start date.
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Pending Confirmation. When an engagement's scheduling status is Pending Confirmation, the reservation request has been sent, and the engagement team is waiting for the main client contact to confirm the fieldwork dates and that they will be ready for fieldwork, or to propose an alternative date.
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Alternative Proposed. The client has responded with alternative dates for the firm to review and accept, or propose alternative dates.
- Scheduled. Both the Client and the Firm have agreed, and the dates are confirmed.
NOTE: The Schedule Status is different and independent of the Engagement Status (Draft or In-Progress). An Engagement can be in Draft and be Scheduled at the same time.
4. Tips and Best Practices
- Use the filters to isolate, group or batch engagements that you want to act on.
- Keep engagements in Queued while internal planning is underway. Pin to Reserved to signal that the dates are firm and Reservation Requests are ready to be sent.
- Use the By User view when planning capacity. It groups engagements by user, making it easier to spot utilization gaps and scheduling conflicts before they happen.
- Use your mouse trackpad to scroll left and right
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