The Scheduling Manager allows staff to manage their inspection schedules, meetings, events, and sick/vacation days through one interface. This ensures no events are missed. The system is a customer appointment management (CAM) targeting the mobile workforce. It automatically routes and schedules on-site appointment activities.
There are 3 main operations managed by the scheduler:
- Inspection Schedules
- Personal Schedules
- Department, Group, or Agency-Wide Events
Important Note
- The Scheduling Tool system is not used to create inspections or search for inspections. Inspections are created from within specific records such as permits and projects. Learn more about Creating & Managing Inspections.
Article Navigation
- Access the Scheduling Tool
- Display Gantt Slide Chart
- Display Regular Calendar View
- Manage Events
- Assign District
- Inspection Processing
- Notification System
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Access the Scheduling Tool
- Sign in to your site
- Select Scheduling Tool in the navigation bar
- The scheduler will open in a new tab
Display Map
The Display Map area shows all open inspections. The user may either view all inspections or just their assigned inspections.
Users can switch between Map and Satellite views. At the bottom right of the map, the street view control (with the icon of a man) can be dragged and dropped onto any point on the map to display the street view of the given location. This can help visualize the tax parcel before actually going to the location.
Clicking on any parcel in the map will pop up information pertaining to the inspection. Clicking on the inspection number will take you to the actual inspection.
Display Gantt Slide Chart
The Display Gantt Slide Chart area is the key area for scheduling inspections. The interface allows the user to drag and drop inspections to a specified inspector and a specific date and time.
- Jump to Date: Staff can jump to a specific date to view the inspections scheduled or completed for that date. The system does not delete inspections that were completed as it is part of the record retention system.
- Search Inspectors: Start typing an inspector's name and the system will list all inspectors meeting your search criteria as you type.
- Full Screen Mode: This opens the scheduler in a separate browser tab. To exit and return to the regular size, simply close the full-screen mode browser tab.
- Color Coding: Green is used to show completed inspections. These are inspections that were resulted and closed with a status of either pass or fail. Yellow displays current inspections that are not past the due date but that have not been completed. Their status is still open or pending. Red identifies inspections that are past the due date and time that have been marked as pass or fail status.
- Open & Unassigned / Requested: These checkboxes control what displays in the request queue.
- Requested Inspections: This area to the left of the Gantt chart lists inspections where an inspection record has been created but not assigned to an inspector or scheduled with a date and time. Records in this area can be dragged to the Gantt chart. Once changes are committed to the scheduler, all the inspection records are updated to reflect the identified inspector and date/time. An email is also sent to the inspector and applicant or contractor notifying them of the scheduled inspection. This area matches the requests displayed in a list format in the inspection request queue.
- Gantt View: Choose to display the Gantt chart by Day, Week, Month, or Year.
Using the Gantt Chart
The user may drag and drop one or more inspections from the queue to the Gantt area. The system will prompt the user if the inspector is not allowed to carry out the said inspection. The inspector restriction can be controlled from the Assign District tab and can be based on the district, occupancy, or inspection type. The user may drag one or more inspections into the Gantt and commit the changes. The relevant users (inspector, owner, and requestor) are notified only once the user has clicked Commit Changes. If the user wishes to discard an action, they must refresh the page. The refresh calendar button reloads the events from the server but does not refresh the queue.
Display Regular Calendar View
This view shows a regular calendar view (month, week, day) of an inspector. It defaults to the calendar of the logged-in user. The user may also edit an inspection/event by clicking on an item.
- For user: Allows a user to toggle between the calendars of inspectors. Selecting all inspectors in that view shows the calendar for all the inspectors.
- Jump to date: Allows the user to directly jump to a specific date and see the calendar view for any inspector for that date.
- Print: This button prints the list of inspections corresponding to the selected inspector.
- Refresh Calendar: Reloads all events from the server.
Manage Events
The Manage Events tab lets the user create or update municipality-wide, user-level, or group events that are either one-time or recurring. This view opens in edit mode when the user has clicked on any event from one of the above views or the bottom event queue. The view opens in create mode by default if no event has been clicked on. This tab is used to schedule any type of event but is not for scheduling inspections.
Below the event details area is the event list with all of the events/meetings (every scheduled event but inspections) listed for review.
Assign District
The Assign District view allows staff to assign the roles, inspection restrictions (by occupancy class and building/fire inspection types), and Gantt group (district) of any user.
- Users: The system will list each supervisor/inspector or inspector group in user management. The user column identifies the user's rights level.
- Occupancy Class: Select one or more occupancy classifications. This will allow inspectors to complete inspections meeting the occupancy classification for that inspection record. This data is maintained in the tax parcel system.
- Building Inspection Types: Select one or more building inspection types that the inspector is authorized to complete.
- Fire Inspection Types: Select one or more building inspection types that the inspector is authorized to complete.
- Districts: Pick the district the user is assigned to. The system checks the tax parcel database for the inspection location and identifies the district assigned at that level. If they are not assigned to that district, the system will not allow the inspection to be assigned to them. Not all customers have districts assigned for inspections. In this case, only one district (default) will be set.
- Note: If a user attempts to assign an inspector to an occupancy class, inspection type, or fire inspection type they are not authorized to complete, the system will warn and not allow the inspection to be assigned.
Inspection Processing
The main purpose of the scheduling manager is to manage the inspection schedules of multiple inspectors across various departments. This includes building, projects, planning, code enforcement, and fire/life safety. The scheduler has two inspection queues.
Inspection Request Queue
This queue lists inspection requests coming in from the public using the Citizen Portal or other public submissions. It lists the inspections that have not been assigned an inspector or an inspection date. Any inspection coming from the Citizen Portal will have a temporary inspection number assigned such as CP-RI-xxxx (randomly generated number based on date and time). The actual inspection number will be assigned when the inspection is given to an inspector and a date is assigned.
Inspections Queued
This queue lists all the open inspections within the system across all modules. These inspections have been assigned to an inspector but have not passed or failed. They are still being worked on. If used as designed, managers/supervisors and inspectors can quickly and effectively manage all their inspections.
Search Inspections
By default, all the Requested and Open inspections are listed below the search inspections area under the Queue sections. The search parameters available in the search area are:
- Parcel-specific fields: Such as Occupancy Class and Map Number
- Inspection-specific fields: Such as Inspection Type, Districts, and From/To Dates
- Specific Inspector
The search also filters the draggable inspections available on the left side of the Gantt Chart. Please remember to click the clear search button if you want to initiate another search.
Notification System
As inspections and other events and meetings are scheduled, the system will notify the concerned inspector and other associated staff using the built-in email system.
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