Managing Appointments

Within ServiceTrade, Appointments are the groups of Services that represent a body of work to be performed by one or more Techs, at a specific point in time. This article will guide users through managing those Appointments via the Job page.

When you create a Job, you must select a service, if you don't schedule and assign.

Scheduling Multi-Day Appointments

This section will cover scheduling Multiple Appointments for a Single Service and Multiple Appointments for Multiple Services.

Creating Multiple Appointments for a Single Service

From the Job page, click the text "Schedule This Appointment." The text then becomes fields you can use to schedule your Appointment.
Click on the field containing the date, and a new option will appear to "Choose multiple days."
Click each date for which an Appointment is needed and then click "Done."
Finish by selecting the desired start time and expected duration and clicking the blue "Save" button to the right. You will now see multiple identical copies of your Appointments.
Note: If a service is scheduled for a single day, the service appointment cannot be changed to a multi-day appointment and the Choose multiple days button will no longer appear as an option.

Note: Appointments created from a single service are copies of that original service. This means that marking one instance of the service as complete will mark all instances complete.

Adding Additional Appointments

To schedule multiple blank Appointments, Click the "Add New Appointment or Service" button.
- Important Note: If you have a Service on a currently unscheduled job, the button "+ Add New Appointment or Service" will not appear (See below.)
  
  Once you schedule the Appointment with a date and time, the "+ Add New Appointment or Service" button will reappear (See below.)
You must select Add a New Service, Add an Existing Deficiency, or Add an Existing Service at this location. You can select from the tab options below.
- Add New Service:
  1. Follow the normal steps to creating a service. See Creating and Managing Services for additional details.
- Add Existing Deficiency:
  1. Click the Choose a Deficiency dropdown and select the relevant deficiency.
  2. The deficiency's asset will be prepopulated in the asset field. The asset's Service Line will prepopulate the service line field. The deficiency's proposed solution will prepopulate in the description field.
  3. Follow the normal steps to creating a service. See Creating and Managing Services for additional details.
- Add Existing Service:
  1. On the Show: dropdown, select whether you want to view Services not already on this job, Services already on this job, or All services. You can add services that are already on the job to as many appointments as you would like. This allows you to have multiple appointments for the same service.
  2. Check to select the service(s) that you want to add to the appointment.
Click Save when done.
You will now have an unscheduled and unassigned appointment.
You will need to schedule, assign, and release the appointment for the tech to perform work.

Releasing Appointments to Technicians

It is useful to be able to create and schedule Appointments for your Technicians without immediately giving those Technicians visibility to their schedules.

For instance, you may want to finalize a Technician's schedule for next week without showing those Appointments to the Technician until you are finished. To meet this need, ServiceTrade provides the capability to release Appointments to Technicians.

Appointments not released to Technicians do not appear in those Technicians' mobile and tablet apps. Technicians who are subscribed to upcoming Appointment email notifications also do not receive those notifications for unreleased Appointments. Lastly, the technician will not be visible in the Service Link until released.

You can release (or unrelease) Appointments from the Dispatch Board and Job Page.

Appointments currently released (visible to the Technician) will have a green dot indicator.
- A released Appointment on the dispatch board. Click the "Released" button to unrelease it.
- A released Appointment on the job page.
Appointments not currently released (not visible to the Technician) will have a grey dot indicator.
- An unreleased Appointment on the dispatch board. Click the "Release" button to release it.
- An unreleased Appointment on the job page.
Release (or unrelease) an Appointment from the Job page by clicking the "Actions" menu and choosing Release Appointment (or Unrelease Appointment.

How to Bulk Release and Unrelease Appointments

This section will explain how to release and unrelease appointments in bulk.

On the Navigation Bar, click the Jobs button to open the Jobs list page.
Click the Jobs drop-down menu and select Appointments to perform a search for the appointments that you want to release.
Enter info into the relevant search fields to find the appointments you want to release.
Click the Search button when done.
- Example: If you want to release all appointments scheduled for tomorrow, search for the Status 'Scheduled,' and enter tomorrow's date into both the Schedule: From and Schedule: To date filters, then click Search:
Click the checkbox(s) next to each appointment you want to release, or click the checkbox at the top of the list to select all the Appointments shown on the screen.
Click the gear icon at the top of the list and select Release/Unrelease Appointments from the drop-down menu that appears.
You will be prompted to either release or unrelease the selected appointments.
- Click to select Release Appointments to release all the selected Appointments to your technicians. (Which makes them visible in the technicians' mobile apps.)
- Click to select Unrelease Appointments to remove the selected appointments from your technicians' mobile apps.
Click the Release appointments button.
- Note: You'll see a warning if you attempt to release Appointments that have already been released (or if you attempt to unrelease Appointments that are not yet released.

Manage Default Release Appointments Settings

By default, all newly created Appointments are immediately released to Technicians. Account administrators can change this default behavior by following the steps below.

Click on your User Profile Image in the upper right corner.
Click on Account Settings in the drop-down menu.
Click to expand the Account Preferences accordion.
Under the Automatically Release Appointments section, click and choose the appropriate setting for "Enable Auto Release."
- If you choose "Yes", Appointments will be released automatically.
- If you choose "No", you must manually release each Appointment to your Technicians before they see those Appointments on their mobile and tablet apps.

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Note: This setting will apply to all Appointments for all of your Technicians in all Offices. Only newly created Appointments are affected by this setting. Changing this setting does not change the released status of existing Appointments.

Canceling Appointments

With ServiceTrade you can cancel a Service, an Appointment, or a Job. Canceling a Job will close the Job and cancel all the services and Appointments associated with the job.

When canceling an Appointment, you will have three options.

Keep this Appointment's services on this job - All open Services on this Appointment will be moved to an unscheduled Appointment on this job.
Remove this Appointment's services from this job - All open services on this Appointment will be removed from this job. They will be available at the job's location and can be added to other jobs.
Cancel this Appointment's services - Cancel all the open services on this job. They will no longer be available at the job's location, and they cannot be added to other jobs.

Note: Canceling a service on an Appointment will leave the option to reopen that Service. Deleting or removing will not.

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Managing Appointments