Scheduling Software

Contents - Scheduling Software Index
Scheduling Software home

MULTI-DAY and REPEAT BOOKINGS


Multi-day and repeat bookings are important concepts in ResSched. The System Administrator must choose whether to use Multi-day bookings or not (no multi-day bookings is the default) and the choice has significant impact on how well ResSched works for your organization.

A multi-day booking is one that starts at one time on a calendar day and extends continuously to an end time on another calendar day. If the System Administrator has selected 'Use multi-day bookings' in System Preferences, the user must enter an end date as well as an end time for each booking. If 'Use multi-day bookings' has not been selected, the end time always refers to the same calendar day. Multi-day bookings are great for organizations that operate on a 24 hour basis with bookings that cross midnight, or for organizations that normally have bookings that continue for days or weeks.

For organizations with bookings usually that start and end on the same day, allowing multi-day bookings will be undesirable. In addition to the extra data entry for every booking, the Browse Bookings window will be more cluttered and show fewer bookings at a time. If your organization only occasionally has bookings that cross calendar days, you can simulate a multi-day booking using Irregular or Fixed Day options for repeat bookings (see below).

Multi-day booking is particularly suitable for situations where staff must be scheduled over 24 hours. In that case, the Default Duration in System and User Preferences should be set at eight hours (or whatever a typical shift is). The default duration will be added to the start time to create both the end time and end date automatically. Note: the Default Duration cannot exceed 24 hours.

Make the choice to use Multi-day bookings carefully. If you do use them, you cannot easily go back to no multi-day bookings. Any bookings that you create in multi-day mode will not show up properly in Browse Bookings and some Scan functions when you change back. You can, however, move to using multi-day bookings from not using them without problems.

A repeat booking is one that occurs more than once. The occurrences can be regular (there are five options for automatically scheduling regular repeats) or irregular (you must select each repeat yourself). Multi-day bookings can also be repeated but make sure the pattern selected is not shorter than the booking period. A multi-day booking that covers three days will conflict with itself if it is repeated every two days.

NOTE: When using some Scan windows, it is possible to drag and drop existing bookings into new time slots. This cannot be done when 'Use multi-day bookings' has been turned on in System Preferences.
   
Scheduling Software home