Setting Up your System for Service Scheduling
Service items do not have a set inventory. However, if you need to make sure your services are set to deliver on the right day and your team isn't overloaded, you can use Service Blocks to schedule some of your service sales. Any service sales can be scheduled. You can even have multiple blocks for the saved service. Blocks won't prevent your team from selling a service, but they can keep your delivery team organized and prevent anything from getting double booked or sending out when it shouldn't.
You need to have a Service Block set up for each service you want schedule in a given day. Each block shows every day of the year and at least one Slot. You can create as many slots per day as you want. Slots could be categories, time of day, or positions; whatever fits your service needs.
To create a new block, go to Settings > Tickets > Blocks.
Click on Add Block to define the service you want scheduled and how many slots you need. In this example, we will use a newsletter service that can go out in the Morning, Afternoon, or Evening. We will create three slots for each option.
We now have all we need to start scheduling. The next step is for a user to schedule a sold service. To schedule a service, a user can go to Production > Service Scheduling.
On the page, the user can search for the block they want to use and click on a day and slot to schedule the service. You will need to select a company first and then will see all of the orders/line items that are for the service.
The service will now have a Schedule Date on all reports and that spot can't be used again.
The Service Scheduling system leverages the regular service statuses. However, to add additional information and visuals to the scheduler, you can map a standard system status to a block status. Doing so will show a user of the scheduler what they need to know and give them a visual clue as to where the service is. For example, there may be multiple statuses to complete the service, but all the scheduler needs to know is if it is in production or ready to go.
You can create your Block status and Mapping under Settings > Tickets > Blocks.
Click on Add Status to create a new status and then edit the status to select a background color and font.
Once you have your list of statuses, you can click on status mapping to set the block status when a service ticket status is updated. In this case, we will map In Production to multiple statuses, and ready to go and on hold to a single status
Important
There is one status you can't disable. You can edit the name and color of the status only. The reason is this status is triggered only when a ticket is marked as done.
Now, when you view the service scheduling page, you can clearly see what items are in what status by name and color. When tickets are marked done, the default block status will be uses and a check-mark will appear on the service block.
