Frequency Detail Feature

With the traditional Auto Scheduling feature, the appointments for the working days at regular time slots are scheduled. An enhancement to its functionality is offered in the form of a Frequency Detail Feature.

Suppose Jack, the sales manager at a pharma company is in charge of scheduling the weekly appointments for all his sales reps using Maplytics. It is easy to schedule regular appointments with Auto Scheduling but how can it be managed when certain clients are available only for a few days of the week and within fixed timeslots? Frequency Detail Feature would be helpful then. Using this feature, Jack would be able to schedule appointments for his on-field reps according to the availability of the clients at multiple locations.

Adding Client Frequency Details

To avail Client Frequency Details option, the checkbox for ‘Enable Meeting Frequency’ needs to be checked. The user can go to Settings > Default Maplytics Configuration Details > Auto Scheduling Tab and check on it.

Follow the link for the detailed steps or check the Configuration Details section ahead

To begin the process of scheduling according to the clients’ availability, the user needs to add the available days and time slots of the clients for appointments. For this, the Entity on which Auto Scheduling is to be performed needs to be considered. The records that have a selective availability need to be worked upon.

Suppose we are performing Auto Scheduling on the Accounts Entity. Within the Client record, the User would go to the Auto Scheduling tab which is a PCF Control.

Follow the link to understand the steps to add PCF Control or follow the Configuration Details section ahead

Accounts> Client Record> Auto Scheduling

There he would fill in the frequency detail of working days of the week and the corresponding work time slots the client would be available for. The user will have to repeat it for all the records that have an availability constraint.

Certain records may not have this constraint, so, during the final scheduling process, the records with defined frequency details would be plotted on priority and the open slots would be filled in with records without any availability constraint.

Note: The existing client records of the CRM that have an availability constraint, need to be updated with these details. The newly added records can be updated at the time of creation. Certain accounts may not have availability constraints and can be left as is.

Once done, the standard Auto Scheduling process as described above can be followed where the user can go to the Mass Actions within the View Data Grid and select the Auto Scheduling option.

Auto Scheduling Card

The appointment Scheduler/ Admin can select the user to be scheduled. Start and End locations can be provided as before.

With the Frequency Detail Feature, an additional slot of Consider Frequency gets added in User Details. If the Frequency Detail feature is enabled in the configuration, as seen above, the slot will be ‘Yes’ by default, else it’ll appear as ‘No’. In case the slot is ‘No’ the traditional Auto Scheduling process with no Frequency Details added can be carried out.

Once done, the Scheduler/ Admin can specify the Start Time and End Time, like the traditional Auto Scheduling Process, and Proceed.

Thus, a proper Appointment Schedule shall be created with the Frequency Details specified for the client records taken into consideration.

For two of the records available only on Thursday, the appointment gets scheduled on Thursday within the working/available time slot.