Lesson 2: Scheduling & Editing Visits

In this lesson, we will book a Visit for an existing Job and then see how to easily edit the details.

Scheduling a Visit

There's a few ways to schedule Visits and we'll try them all out.

Here's a common scenario we can use here as an example.

Let's say we have a contractor Steven who we want to send out to do some pest control work the next day between 9am and 1pm. He is assigned to the Pest Control team in his profile.

Let's also say that we have already created the Job within TrackTrade but it is unallocated, no Visits have been set for anyone to go and work this Job yet.

Using the time controls at the top right we make sure we are in the Daily view and then we use the arrows to take us forward one day to tomorrow.

Next we scroll down to the Pest Control group and that is where we find Steven.

And now we're ready for...

Method 1: Click & Drag

All we have to do is click and drag over the time blocks that we desire so we click the block for 9am, hold and then drag all the way to 1pm. This quickly sets the start and end time for this Visit.

A few options will popup but here we want to add a Visit to an existing Job. This brings up the Select A Job overlay. You can search and filter through all the Jobs in your system to get the one you need and once confirmed you are brought to the final Book A Visit overlay.

Before finalising this Visit let's see the other route to bringing up this Booking overlay.

Method 2: Drag the Job onto the Schedule

Clicking on the Unallocated Jobs counter at the top expands the view to list all such Jobs currently in your system as interactive, draggable blocks. You'll need to know the right Job ID but if you're not sure then you can click the information icons to get Job details. From here we just drag over the Pest Control Job block to the rough timeslot you want (in the next step, you can adjust the times more precisely). This brings up the Book A Visit overlay.

What's the difference with these methods?

They're quite similar and they ultimately accomplish the same thing but Method 1 is better for nailing down the exact time quickly and Method 2 is better for quickly selecting the right Job. Play around with them and see what suits your workflow better.

No matter the method you will end up at the Book A Visit overlay where you can see and edit all the details. We're happy with our choices so we hit Book Visit and it's sorted!

Editing Visits

What happens when the customer phones up and needs to change the day or the hours? Not a problem.

Let's move it to the day after tomorrow and to the afternoon between 1pm and 5pm.

Again there's a few ways to do this. Simply clicking the existing Visit and then changing the details manually in the form is the most direct and manual way. However, clicking and dragging the Visit to the desired time on the scheduler is quicker and more intuitive so let's do that.

We'll need to do it in 2 steps; the day and then the hours.

To change the day we'll head to the Weekly view (Monthly works just fine too). We just click and drag the Visit from tomorrow to the day after and the day is changed.

For the hours we just do the same again but in the Daily view. Drag the block so, instead of 9am-1pm, it sits at 1pm-5pm.

All done! If this new Visit meant you had to change the assigned Staff going then it would be easy to change that too by clicking the Visit and hitting Edit.

Now we've learned how to book and change Visits directly from the scheduler. Next we'll look at booking in some holidays.

Next: Booking A Holiday (and more)