Introduction
Resource Planner is a tool to help you organise any set of resources which have to be booked or allocated over time.
For example:
- Classrooms and equipment in a school
- Vehicles and drivers in a transport organisation
- Workmen and tools in a service organisation
Resources are assigned to Jobs, which represent a single unit of booking. For example, a job might consist of a booking for a vehicle and driver for a specified period. Jobs are short-term things, to represent a single booking of one or more resources.
Jobs are assigned to Tasks, which represent customers, or perhaps long-term goals to be achieved. Tasks are long-term entities - one task may consist of a number of jobs.
Documents
Documents may be uploaded and attached to jobs - these might include instructions to staff, quotes, or invoices.
Regular tasks
Regular tasks may be set to repeat automatically at user-defined intervals. Often-used tasks may be added to a Quick Tasks menu, enabling jobs for these tasks to be booked by simply choosing from drop-down menus.
Contacts
Resource Planner also records Contacts, representing individual people with names, addresses, phone numbers, etc., who may be attached to jobs and/or resources. The job summary shows all the contacts assigned, so the relevant phone numbers, etc. are always to hand. Contacts may optionally be allowed to log in to use ResourcePlanner.
Actions
Timed actions may be attached to jobs - these might include reminders to staff, payment due dates, or anything which must be completed by a particular time. If an action is overdue, the job will show a red line underneath. You add actions in the Job editing screen.
Locations
You can track the location of resources, and the system can warn you if a resource is in the wrong place for a job you are editing. Ypu can add locations in the location editing screen.
Views
The main views in Resource Planner are Resource View and Task View, which show all the resources or tasks down one side, and colored blocks representing jobs across a calendar.
All the main views can be filtered to hide unwanted data.
Access levels
Resource Planner is fully multi-user, with four classes of access, from Supervisors (who may view and edit anything in the system) down to those limited to only viewing jobs for which they are a contact. This can be used to allow your customers to access the system, where they will only see their own jobs, not anyone else's.
Reports
Resource Planner includes user-defined Reports, which allow reports to be created to view any data in the system.
Customization
Resource Planner is highly customizable - customizable options include:
- Time units - whether items are organised by the minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, hour, day, week or month.
- Individual jobs, resources and tasks may be shown in different colors, and each color has a user-defined explanation shown in the chart key.
- Any number of extra user-defined job analysis fields may be created to hold text or numeric values, and shown in reports, and (optionally) in the charts.
- Resources and Tasks may be grouped together into user-defined groups, and shown in user-defined order, or they may just be shown in alphabetical order.
- The system can optionally automatically check for double bookings.
- All reports are fully customised.
- Each user may be shown up to ten user-specific personal pages, integrated into the Resource Planner menu - for instance, staff might see useful documents such as expenses sheets, while customers might see promotional material.
Logging in
In order to gain access to the system, you must first log in. You will have been assigned a login Name and Password by the ResourcePlanner administrator. [If you are the administrator, and are entering the system for the first time, try the login name "admin", and password "admin".]
If you tick the "Remember me" box, ResourcePlanner will ask your browser to store a "cookie", so that you don't have to log in again the next time you use ResourcePlanner. Be aware that this is dangerous if others have access to the same computer, as they will automatically be logged in to ResourcePlanner as you! The cookie will expire if you don't use ResourcePlanner for a while (how long is determined by the Server administrator), so you will have to login again.