An assignment record in TSM is used for scheduling work related for a job. It contains information that is very similar to that of a timesheet, but with no financial details. For this reason it cannot be used for quoting technician time and is reserved specifically for scheduling jobs in conjunction with the Visual Scheduler.

There are three ways to add an assignment to a job, one of which – the Linked Primary Assignment is a automatic.

1. Open the required job. If you know the job number you can type it into the quick search field at the top right of the job card or search for it.<
2. Go to the Assignments tab.<
3. Click on the “Add Assignment” button. The Assignment Maintenance module will appear. Note the job card number and the Logged by and logged date fields are already filled in.<
4. Enter the Employee ID from the dropdown list. If the desired employee does not appear in this list, their record either does not exist in the Employee Maintenance or has a Date Finished. You can right-click in the Employee ID field to review the Employee record. See Entering an Employee for more information.<
5. Enter the assignment date and the start & finish time.

Note: unlike with the timesheet record where it is the billable hours that ultimately is the most important measure of timesheet duration, and the start & finish times are no compulsory, the assignment record needs precise start and finish times. The reason for this is so that it is meaningfully displayed on the Visual Scheduler.<

1. Enter the Assignment note. This field is not compulsory if there are notes elsewhere on the job that specify what needs to be done, but it can be useful if multiple assignments need to be delivered to the technician using the Assignment reports for example.<
2. Press “Save”. You can press “Exit” to return to the job card module or press “New” to add another Assignment. The arrows at the top of the module allow navigation between assignments for this job.<

This is the minimum information needed for a useful Assignment record in TSM.

For a detailed overview of this feature see using he Visual Assignment Scheduler.

1. Open the Visual Assignment Scheduler by going to Action → Visual Assignment Scheduler, or selecting it from the Task Bar.<
2. Browse to the desired day using the arrow keys or by typing the date into the field in the top left of the module.<
3. Click and hold the mouse on the starting time and drag the mouse to the end time.<
4. Release the mouse. The Assignment Maintenance module will appear. Note that the job number is blank and can remain so. An assignment with no job number is called a “note” and can be used for a variety of tasks including scheduling future work or recording the technician’s unavailability.<
5. Follow steps 4-7 in the workflow above to fill in the Assignment details.<

For this feature to work, the Job Card Setup 1 option for “Auto create linked primary assignment” needs to be ticked. It automatically creates an assignment for a job card based on the details located on the Job Logging tab. There are 4 criteria required for this to happen:

1. The Primary Employee ID – this will become the primary assignment’s employee.<
2. The Job Due date – this will become the assignment’s date.<
3. The start time – this will become assignment’s start time.

Note: these 3 criteria are enough to create an assignment, however a fourth one may also be useful:<

1. Estimated duration. This value added to the start time will form the assignments end time.<

Pressing “Save” on a job card after entering the above details will result in an assignment being automatically created for this job.

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The Assignment Maintenance module offers a few advanced features mainly to do with aiding the process of creating recurring assignments and reporting.

1. On the Assignment Maintenance module, press “Add Assignment”.<
2. Enter the Employee ID from the dropdown list. If the desired employee does not appear in this list, their record either does not exist in the Employee Maintenance or has a Date Finished. You can right-click in the Employee ID field to review the Employee record. See Entering an Employee for more information.<
3. Enter the assignment date and the start & finish time.<
4. Enter the recur frequency and time span (days, weeks, months or years)<
5. Enter the date until which the assignment is recur.<
6. Enter the assignment comment and any other additional details required for the assignment and press “Save”<

On the Visual Scheduler, you will see that multiple assignments have been created according to the recurrence period specified.

Note: Assignments will not be created on weekends unless the Job Card Setup 2 options for “We Work on” are selected for Saturday and/or Sunday.

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There are several buttons at the top of the assignment screen which offer functionality unique to this module.

Pressing the “Time” button at the top of the Assignment screen automatically creates a timesheet record with the same details as found on the assignment. If the time the technician work exactly or closely matches the assigned time this function can be extremely helpful when entering bulk timesheets. Assignments whose timesheets have been thus created are marked with a bell icon on the Visual Scheduler.

For this feature to work the employee needs to have an email address entered on their Employee record. Pressing this button generates an email with the job and assignment details to be sent to the employee.

For this feature to work, the SMS Gateway need to be enabled and configure on the Job Card Setup 2 and the Employee record needs to have a mobile number on it. Pressing this button will send an SMS message to the Employee with the assignment and job details. The message can be edited prior to sending.

This is another way of automatically setting the date and time for the assignment. The feature works by finding the next available half-day in the employee’s schedule and pops up a prompt offering to slot in the assignment there. There is a setting on Employee Maintenance called “Max Jobs / Half Day” which specifies the maximum number of assignments that can be fitted into one half-day slot until the scheduler has to find the next available slot.

Once again, the scheduler will skip Saturday and Sunday if they are not enabled in “We Work on” options in Job Card Setup Page 2.

The lower right corner of the Assignment Detail module contains 3 sets of Employee IDs and dates.

The first of these is populated automatically with the user’s Employee ID and the date the assignment record is created. The other two can be used for monitoring the Assignment’s progress and can be used in reporting. Reports→Assignments contain options to filter for Unacknowledged and Incomplete assignments. As is the case with the job card – the assignment is counted as complete when the completed date field has a value in it. Likewise, with the Acknowledged date – the assignments is not acknowledged if that field is empty.

This tab displays a list of assignments for the job and there are a number of buttons at the bottom that allow several tasks to be performed.

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There is an Unlink button that takes the assignment off the job but does not delete it from the database. The assignment will still appear on the Visual Scheduler. There is an SMS button that will send the assignment along with the job details to the Employee on the selected assignment.

Note: The “Delete” button at the top of the screen still refers to the job. To delete an assignment use the “Delete Assignment” button at the bottom of the tab.