Time Blocks

Creating Time Blocks

Using the Create Time Blocks tool, you can create repeating Time Blocks for a specific product category, or for specific days of the week, and for a specific Product in a specific Territory, or any combination of these that suits your business needs. Time Blocks are helpful when you would like your schedulers to quickly book appointments but not necessarily assign them to a specific individual. 

You can use Time Blocks to set individual Staff Availability, or overall Scheduling Capacity. Use the Record Type dropdown to select which type of Time Record you want to create. 

• Use Staff Availability to set the availability of individual Staff members. If a Rep has a very specific schedule and can only be scheduled a certain times, or on certain days of the week, use a Staff Availability Time Block to set the schedule for an individual Rep. 
• Capacity Scheduling will be used to set the capacity of Appointments for a specific timeframe, for a specific Product category and for specific days of the week. You may have a Territory that is farther away from your office and you only book appointments in that Territory on one day out of the week. 

In the example below, our Service team only runs their Appointments only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the mornings. The rest of the week they are completing the service installs which result from the Service Appointments. For this reason, we only want Appointments for Service to be scheduled on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the morning. We have a total of 3 Service Technicians available who can each run 1 Appointment during the scheduled Time Block. Here is how we would set that up: 

Note: The End Date/Time I have selected is next year. This means we are committing to this Service schedule for the next 12 months and I will need to create new Time Blocks next year when these expire. This also means, once I save, I will not be able to quickly undo. I would need to Delete each Time Block manually from the Time Blocks Tab, or delete them using the Data Loader.  

Before Saving, the system will confirm how many Time Blocks you are about to Create. Because my Time Blocks extend until next year, I will be creating 145 unique Time Blocks, each capable of being related to up to 3 Sales Appointments. 

Assigning an Appointment to a Time Block 

Rather than Assigning an Appointment to a specific Rep, your schedulers can simply assign the Appointment to a Time Block for quicker scheduling with the Contact. 

Click Schedule on the Sales Appointment page

Then use the Time Block Calendar to select the appropriate Time Block for this Appointment. Notice that the Filters will automatically filter for Time Blocks in the same Territory as the Appointment you're scheduling, and for the same Product Categories on the Appointment. 

Once you select the Time Block from the Calendar, you will see the Name of the Time Block populated below (similarly to how Sales Rep and Time are populated when using the Scheduling Calendar). 

Using the Time Block Calendar to see Availability

From the App Launcher menu, navigate to Time Block Calendar. Here you'll see all the Time Blocks currently being used and their capacity, as well as how full each Time Block currently is. 

From there you will see the Time Blocks for each day, and how full each Time Block is to the capacity. 

When a Time Block has reached capacity, the color will change to Red to indicate the block is full:

Note that if a Time Block allows for overbooking but has reached capacity, it will display in Orange. This means your staff can still assign Appointments to the Time Block, even though it is already full. 

The setting which permits this is called "Allow Overcapacity Scheduling" 

Change Capacity of a single Time Block in a series 

If a staff member is out or has requested Time Off, as a best practice you should change the Scheduling Capacity for that day so you do not unintentionally overbook your team.

Navigate to the Time Block Calendar and click on the Time Block which needs to be edited. 

Click the pencil icon on the Capacity field and make the change.

Be sure to click Save to save your changes. 

You'll see that change immediately take effect and you'll see the new capacity shown on the Calendar block. Note: Changing just one Time Block in the series will not impact all Time Blocks in the series. 

Assign Appointments using the Dispatcher tool 

From the App Launcher menu, search and navigate to the Dispatcher tool

To locate all future unassigned Appointments, select All from all three Filters and then select Sales Appointments in the Object field: 

Below you will see the records which meet the Filter criteria populate in a list. Note if they have a clock icon next to the Appointment Date that means these Appointments are in a Time Block:

Click on the name of the Appointment to expand the details about the Appointment and then use the Scheduling Calendar to assign a Sales Rep 1 and (optionally) Sales Rep 2. The Appointment Time will default to the time originally selected but can be edited at this time. 

When finished click Save. Click on the next Appointment in the list to continue assigning appointments using the Dispatcher.