Skills Search

Skills Search

When you access the Employee Planner through the Workflow menu or Assignment Schedule tab you will have access to the skills search to identify employees that meet the criteria provided in the skills search.

The resource search consists out of 3 tabs:

• Availability
• Employee Skills
• Work Experience/Client Attributes
  

Skills Search - Availability

You are able to specify information for:

• Date Range : Enter the start and end date for the period that employees need to be available for
• Minimum Available Hours : The minimum amount of hours employees must be available for in the date range provided. Note must be taken that this does not necessarily mean that it will be consecutive hours but that the employee records returned will have the specified amount of hours available in the date range provided.
• Employee stationed record details : the information provided in the Department, office, company, centre and category fields will be used to filter employees and only employees whose stationed records match the information provided will be returned.

The skills search will only return employees that meet all the search criteria information entered. If you leave a field blank the skills search ignores the field and will not use that as input to the search.

Skills Search - Employee Skills

The Employee Skills section of the search allows users to specify details for any extra fields and categories that have been created for use with employees. Extra categories and fields can be maintained through the 'Maintenance > User Defined > Custom Categories' or Custom Fields menu options respectively. The information provided will be used as input to the skills search.

You will have the ability to specify multiple instances of a custom field or category if you specified it as a field that allow multiples. For example if you create a new custom category, in the 'Maintenance > User Defined > Custom Categories' menu option, called Language and tick to allow multiples:

Because the Allow Multiple box has been ticked you will be able to specify more than one option when choosing a Language in the skills search:

This is achieved by clicking on the drop down in the Language 'custom category' and putting a tick in the English and French tick box and then pressing the enter key.

To change the input criteria you can click on the drop down in the custom field and then remove the tick boxes in the unwanted options and add tick boxes to the desired options and pressing the enter key.

Skills Search – Work Experience/Client Attributes

The client attributes section work on the same principle as the employee skills section. You have the ability to specify details for custom categories and fields pertaining to clients. If you marked a custom category as allowing multiples you will be able to specify more than one option as input for the search criteria.


The Work Experience section queries timesheet information and will return employees that meet the criteria provided in the Client, Assignment Type, Assignment and Task fields.

As an example, if you enter Audit in the Assignment type, all employees that have worked on audit assignments that meet the rest of the search criteria provided will be returned to the result set.

Assigning work to Employees

You have the choice to fully or partly assign schedule stages to a single employee or a group of employees. To assign schedule stages to employees you need to identify the employees that will perform the tasks for a specific schedule stage, using the skills search, and then open the relevant assignment schedule and assign the schedule stages to the employees identified.

To load the relevant schedule after gaining access to the Employee Planner through the 'Workflow > Employee Planner' menu option use the 'Allocations - Load schedule' task bar option:

Alternatively, you can access the Employee Planner from the 'Schedule tab' on a client assignment using the 'Schedules - Employee' planner task bar option:

• If you access the Employee Planner from the schedule tab on an assignment the Employee Planner opens with the schedule details loaded. You can allocate the schedule stages to the employees in the Employee Planner or search for employees and then assign the schedule stages to them.
• If you assigned schedule stages for a specific schedule to employees you can open the Employee Planner from the Schedule tab and then click on the 'View All Allocated Employees' tick box to see the employees that have schedule stages assigned to them.
  

You can then continue to allocate schedule stages to the employees on window or use the skills search to identify alternative employees. It should also be noted that if there is a specific employee that you need to assign a schedule stage to, and that employee is not available in the current result set, you can add that employee record to the result set in the Employee Planner by using the 'Find - Add employee' task bar option.

This task bar option will add the employee to the current result set enabling you to assign schedule stages to the employee.

Assign Schedule Stages - Single Employee

To fully assign a schedule stage to an employee you can drag and drop the schedule stage to the specific area next to the employee’s name and the schedule stage will be fully assigned to that employee. To assign only a part of a schedule stage to a specific employee highlight the section of time that you are interested in, next to the employee’s name and then either drag the schedule stage from the Stage Details window to the selected area or double click on the schedule stage in the Stage Detail window to assign the schedule stage.

Remember that you can move the allocation to another employee by clicking on the schedule stage in the Employee Planner and then dragging it to the employee needed. You can also use the click and drag technique to drag the schedule stage to another date for the employee.

To delete the assigned schedule stage you can either right click on the schedule stage and use the 'Delete allocation' option or by clicking on the allocation and using the delete button on the keyboard.

Assign Schedule Stages - Multiple Employees

If you need to assign a single schedule stage to more than one employee you can do so following the steps described in the 'Assign Schedule Stages - Single Employee' section with the exception of where you place the highlighted section on the Employee Planner.

To assign a specific schedule stage to more than one employee you need to ensure that you highlight the area above the employees for the date and amount of time needed:

You can then drag and drop the task to the first employee on the list and you will be presented with the following question:

• If you click  'Yes', the schedule stage will be allocated to all the employees in the list. If you click 'No', the task will only be allocated to the employee that you dragged the schedule stage to.
• If you allocate a schedule stage to multiple employees by mistake that there is no option to delete all the allocations. You will have to delete the allocations one at a time.

Colour Setup

The Employee Planner is a visual display assigned schedule stages. You have the ability to change the colour display to view the information according to the:

• Client Partner:  this colour setting will show you all allocated schedule stages set to the specific colour chosen for the client partner responsible for that assignment.
• Assignment type: this colour setting will show you all allocated schedule stages set to the specific colour chosen for the assignment type.
• Chargeable/Non chargeable: this colour setting will show you all allocated schedule stages set to the specific colour chosen chargeable and non chargeable assignments.
• Status: this colour setting will show you all allocated schedule stages set to the specific colour chosen for the status of the schedule stages.
  

Colour Setup - Client Partner

To set up the colour preferences for client partners go to the 'Maintenance > Internal > Partners' menu option and create a colour preference for each client partner.

When you then click on the Client Partner colour preference in the Employee Planner all assigned schedule stages will reflect the client partner colour preference.

Colour Setup - Assignment Type

To set up colour preferences for assignment types go to 'Maintenance > Assignment > Assignment Type' menu option and use the Gantt Colour column to set up a colour preference for each assignment type.

When you then click on the Assignment Type colour preference in the Employee Planner all assigned schedule stages will reflect the assignment type colour preference.

Colour Setup - Chargeable/Non chargeable

To set up colour preferences for chargeable and non chargeable assignment types go to the 'Maintenance > Miscellaneous > Miscellaneous' menu option and create a colour preference for chargeable and non-chargeable assignment types.

When you then click on the Chargeable/Non Chargeable colour preference option in the Employee Planner all assigned schedule stages will reflect the chargeable or non-chargeable colour preference.

Colour Setup - Status

To set up the colour preferences for the status of the schedule stages go to the 'Maintenance > Assignment > Task Status' menu option and assign a colour to each task status.

When you then click on the Status colour preference option in the Employee Planner all assigned schedule stages will reflect their task status colour preference.