Maximo Open Forum

I'm on a mission to learn how to use Calendars the right way.  Please help me on my journey:

As I understand it, there should be a fairly generic "baseline" Calendar and Shift.  You assign that to the Person record as the Primary Calendar and Shift. (We're a single Org, single Site, so I don't think I'm going to need to worry about one Person needing multiple Calendars.)  As this Person deviates from that baseline with vacations, sick time, etc., you should use the Modify Person Availability action.  Sound right so far?

Here's my current problem:  I have that generic baseline Calendar.  I added a Holiday for July 4th (to be observed on the 5th) to that Calendar.  I applied the Calendar to my Person record.  Now I want to adjust my availability so that I'm working that day.  I added a row to the Modify Work Dates section with a Reason Code WORK on the 5th.

I added a 1-hour Assignment at noon on the 5th to a Work Order.  It's not seeing that I'm available on the 5th.  It looks like it's starting my availability on the 6th.  What am I doing wrong?
#EverythingMaximo
#Scheduling
#WorkManagement

------------------------------
Travis Herron
Pensacola Christian College
------------------------------

Travis,

The easiest place to make edits to "personal" calendars is in the Assignment Manager tool as this directly affects the available hours of work. But let's back up a step first. 

First, you mentioned adding the calendar to your person record. Did you also add the shift?

Second, when you created the Holiday for July 4th (on the 5th) on the calendar, did you make it a working or non-working holiday, because if you make it non-working, then it won't let you schedule anyone to work on that day. The purpose of adding "holidays" is to add non-working days to the calendar. I think this might be where the actual problem you are seeing is.

Let me know if this helps!

------------------------------
Anne Antonelli
Technology Training & Consulting, Inc.
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-17-2021 15:55
From: Travis Herron
Subject: Person Calendars -- how to use a generic calendar with a Holiday but add a work shift

I'm on a mission to learn how to use Calendars the right way.  Please help me on my journey:

As I understand it, there should be a fairly generic "baseline" Calendar and Shift.  You assign that to the Person record as the Primary Calendar and Shift. (We're a single Org, single Site, so I don't think I'm going to need to worry about one Person needing multiple Calendars.)  As this Person deviates from that baseline with vacations, sick time, etc., you should use the Modify Person Availability action.  Sound right so far?

Here's my current problem:  I have that generic baseline Calendar.  I added a Holiday for July 4th (to be observed on the 5th) to that Calendar.  I applied the Calendar to my Person record.  Now I want to adjust my availability so that I'm working that day.  I added a row to the Modify Work Dates section with a Reason Code WORK on the 5th.

I added a 1-hour Assignment at noon on the 5th to a Work Order.  It's not seeing that I'm available on the 5th.  It looks like it's starting my availability on the 6th.  What am I doing wrong?
#EverythingMaximo
#Scheduling
#WorkManagement

------------------------------
Travis Herron
Pensacola Christian College
------------------------------

Wow, Calendars are hard!  And I'm getting the impression that it's not even feasible for us to ever achieve it.  For the sake of illustration, let's assume I have one base Calendar for ALL our employees, and apply one Shift to the Calendar.  That Shift is Monday through Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM, with 8 Shift Hours each day (so an implied hour lunch break).  Here's some of the strangeness that I've found so far:

• If I apply a Shift, and then apply a Non-Working Time (e.g., Holiday), then Maximo overwrites the Shift Hours for the Shift to be 0:00.  But if I first apply the Non-Working Time then apply the Shift, then the Shift Hours for the Shift don't get changed -- it stays at 8:00.
• In order for anyone to have availability on a particular day, the base Calendar has to have some Shift Hours on that day.  So in the previous bullet point, if those Shift Hours remain at 0:00, then no one is going to be able to have availability that day, no matter what you do in the People application, Modify Person Availability box.
• Since I had to change the Shift Hours back to 8:00, that means everyone connected to this Calendar is going to have availability that day!  Kinda defeats the purpose of having applied a Holiday to the Calendar.  So, if I have 100 people connected to the Calendar, and I have a 5-person "skeleton crew" working that day, then I have to make 95 entries into the MODAVAIL table.  To do that efficiently, I'll at least need to teach people how to put that into a CSV and import it; and/or make a custom app for just the MODAVAIL table.  It would be much better to be able to manage the exceptions, but I'm not seeing how. . .
• Suppose there's one member of your team that comes in early.  We'll say he works 7 AM to 4 PM.  To get the availability to show up correctly, you can't just Mass Modify all his entries to be 7 AM to 4 PM.  You have to make an entry for 7 AM to 8 AM with a WORK reason code, and another entry for 4 PM to 5 PM with a NON-WORK reason code.
• I suspect then that if we got Scheduler, which adds another concept of Shift Breaks, the amount of effort it would take for us to manage it would be tremendous.  We have people go to lunch every 15 minutes between 11:00 AM and 1:15 PM.

Am I overthinking this all?  I'm expecting the end result to be that I'd see the exact hours each worker has availability.  Am I supposed to settle for just knowing that a worker has 8 hours available on a particular day, and not realize "oh, well that person is working nights that week"?  Am I supposed to settle for showing that everyone has availability on that Holiday and expect the planner to realize they shouldn't assign work to people that day, unless they know that person is indeed working that day?

If we had clean shifts where everyone came and went at the same time; if we had complete facility shutdowns; then this Calendars thing might work, but that's not us.  This is starting to look like an administrative nightmare.  It's also looking like the way to go is to have an empty Calendar (don't apply any Shifts to it), connect the Person records to the Calendar and that M-F 8A-5P Shift, and just handle everything in the MODAVAIL table, probably primarily via a data import.  

Can anyone think of a reason why I shouldn't follow that plan? Anyone actually figured Calendars out?

------------------------------
Travis Herron
Pensacola Christian College
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-21-2021 12:06
From: Anne Antonelli
Subject: Person Calendars -- how to use a generic calendar with a Holiday but add a work shift

Travis,

The easiest place to make edits to "personal" calendars is in the Assignment Manager tool as this directly affects the available hours of work. But let's back up a step first. 

First, you mentioned adding the calendar to your person record. Did you also add the shift?

Second, when you created the Holiday for July 4th (on the 5th) on the calendar, did you make it a working or non-working holiday, because if you make it non-working, then it won't let you schedule anyone to work on that day. The purpose of adding "holidays" is to add non-working days to the calendar. I think this might be where the actual problem you are seeing is.

Let me know if this helps!

------------------------------
Anne Antonelli
Technology Training & Consulting, Inc.

Original Message:
Sent: 06-17-2021 15:55
From: Travis Herron
Subject: Person Calendars -- how to use a generic calendar with a Holiday but add a work shift

I'm on a mission to learn how to use Calendars the right way.  Please help me on my journey:

As I understand it, there should be a fairly generic "baseline" Calendar and Shift.  You assign that to the Person record as the Primary Calendar and Shift. (We're a single Org, single Site, so I don't think I'm going to need to worry about one Person needing multiple Calendars.)  As this Person deviates from that baseline with vacations, sick time, etc., you should use the Modify Person Availability action.  Sound right so far?

Here's my current problem:  I have that generic baseline Calendar.  I added a Holiday for July 4th (to be observed on the 5th) to that Calendar.  I applied the Calendar to my Person record.  Now I want to adjust my availability so that I'm working that day.  I added a row to the Modify Work Dates section with a Reason Code WORK on the 5th.

I added a 1-hour Assignment at noon on the 5th to a Work Order.  It's not seeing that I'm available on the 5th.  It looks like it's starting my availability on the 6th.  What am I doing wrong?
#EverythingMaximo
#Scheduling
#WorkManagement

------------------------------
Travis Herron
Pensacola Christian College
------------------------------

One more, kind of related:

We have an employee that splits time as a Carpenter and a Locksmith.  For his Labor record, both Crafts are listed and Carpenter is the default.

I have a work order with an Assignment needing a Locksmith.  In Assignment Manager, I tried filtering the Labor table to match the work, and he didn't show up in the list.  It's only finding him in his Carpenter craft.

I actually have a fair number of workers, especially students who have an on-campus job, that work in multiple departments or "Crafts" -- for example, maybe on Tuesdays and Thursdays he has a 3 hour shift and works for HVAC, but three evenings a week he goes around and empties outdoor/parking lot trash cans (so the Sanitation team/craft).  Not sure how to properly show which Shift belongs to which Craft.  The best I can think of is to add a custom field to MODAVAIL with a custom lookup to Crafts or maybe Person Groups to record which team he's working for in that specific shift.

Any better ideas?

------------------------------
Travis Herron
Pensacola Christian College
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-23-2021 16:28
From: Travis Herron
Subject: Person Calendars -- how to use a generic calendar with a Holiday but add a work shift

Wow, Calendars are hard!  And I'm getting the impression that it's not even feasible for us to ever achieve it.  For the sake of illustration, let's assume I have one base Calendar for ALL our employees, and apply one Shift to the Calendar.  That Shift is Monday through Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM, with 8 Shift Hours each day (so an implied hour lunch break).  Here's some of the strangeness that I've found so far:

• If I apply a Shift, and then apply a Non-Working Time (e.g., Holiday), then Maximo overwrites the Shift Hours for the Shift to be 0:00.  But if I first apply the Non-Working Time then apply the Shift, then the Shift Hours for the Shift don't get changed -- it stays at 8:00.
• In order for anyone to have availability on a particular day, the base Calendar has to have some Shift Hours on that day.  So in the previous bullet point, if those Shift Hours remain at 0:00, then no one is going to be able to have availability that day, no matter what you do in the People application, Modify Person Availability box.
• Since I had to change the Shift Hours back to 8:00, that means everyone connected to this Calendar is going to have availability that day!  Kinda defeats the purpose of having applied a Holiday to the Calendar.  So, if I have 100 people connected to the Calendar, and I have a 5-person "skeleton crew" working that day, then I have to make 95 entries into the MODAVAIL table.  To do that efficiently, I'll at least need to teach people how to put that into a CSV and import it; and/or make a custom app for just the MODAVAIL table.  It would be much better to be able to manage the exceptions, but I'm not seeing how. . .
• Suppose there's one member of your team that comes in early.  We'll say he works 7 AM to 4 PM.  To get the availability to show up correctly, you can't just Mass Modify all his entries to be 7 AM to 4 PM.  You have to make an entry for 7 AM to 8 AM with a WORK reason code, and another entry for 4 PM to 5 PM with a NON-WORK reason code.
• I suspect then that if we got Scheduler, which adds another concept of Shift Breaks, the amount of effort it would take for us to manage it would be tremendous.  We have people go to lunch every 15 minutes between 11:00 AM and 1:15 PM.

Am I overthinking this all?  I'm expecting the end result to be that I'd see the exact hours each worker has availability.  Am I supposed to settle for just knowing that a worker has 8 hours available on a particular day, and not realize "oh, well that person is working nights that week"?  Am I supposed to settle for showing that everyone has availability on that Holiday and expect the planner to realize they shouldn't assign work to people that day, unless they know that person is indeed working that day?

If we had clean shifts where everyone came and went at the same time; if we had complete facility shutdowns; then this Calendars thing might work, but that's not us.  This is starting to look like an administrative nightmare.  It's also looking like the way to go is to have an empty Calendar (don't apply any Shifts to it), connect the Person records to the Calendar and that M-F 8A-5P Shift, and just handle everything in the MODAVAIL table, probably primarily via a data import.  

Can anyone think of a reason why I shouldn't follow that plan? Anyone actually figured Calendars out?

------------------------------
Travis Herron
Pensacola Christian College

Original Message:
Sent: 06-21-2021 12:06
From: Anne Antonelli
Subject: Person Calendars -- how to use a generic calendar with a Holiday but add a work shift

Travis,

The easiest place to make edits to "personal" calendars is in the Assignment Manager tool as this directly affects the available hours of work. But let's back up a step first. 

First, you mentioned adding the calendar to your person record. Did you also add the shift?

Second, when you created the Holiday for July 4th (on the 5th) on the calendar, did you make it a working or non-working holiday, because if you make it non-working, then it won't let you schedule anyone to work on that day. The purpose of adding "holidays" is to add non-working days to the calendar. I think this might be where the actual problem you are seeing is.

Let me know if this helps!

------------------------------
Anne Antonelli
Technology Training & Consulting, Inc.

Original Message:
Sent: 06-17-2021 15:55
From: Travis Herron
Subject: Person Calendars -- how to use a generic calendar with a Holiday but add a work shift

I'm on a mission to learn how to use Calendars the right way.  Please help me on my journey:

As I understand it, there should be a fairly generic "baseline" Calendar and Shift.  You assign that to the Person record as the Primary Calendar and Shift. (We're a single Org, single Site, so I don't think I'm going to need to worry about one Person needing multiple Calendars.)  As this Person deviates from that baseline with vacations, sick time, etc., you should use the Modify Person Availability action.  Sound right so far?

Here's my current problem:  I have that generic baseline Calendar.  I added a Holiday for July 4th (to be observed on the 5th) to that Calendar.  I applied the Calendar to my Person record.  Now I want to adjust my availability so that I'm working that day.  I added a row to the Modify Work Dates section with a Reason Code WORK on the 5th.

I added a 1-hour Assignment at noon on the 5th to a Work Order.  It's not seeing that I'm available on the 5th.  It looks like it's starting my availability on the 6th.  What am I doing wrong?
#EverythingMaximo
#Scheduling
#WorkManagement

------------------------------
Travis Herron
Pensacola Christian College
------------------------------

Hi Travis,

You are correct, in order to assign or to see if there is capacity, you need to have shift hours.

Correct also, there are lots of implications with calendars, But where possible I encourage a single calendar and as many shifts as needed.  Though I have seen 1 calendar for each shift and this client had 10 shifts.  So when applying a vacation, you had to repeat across the 10 calendar, though in your case 9 as one would not have the holiday.

So that would be one option, but maintenance can be painful.  Think of a calendar as the generic company level one with any special change usually be at the personal level. 

Using modify availability is your second choice.  The only thing without Maximo Scheduler you are doing changes on a one-by-one basis.

There is a third.  If you have Maximo Scheduler, then my preference to use the Graphical Resource application.  This allows quickly (and in bulk) apply the changes as you have described.

There are potentially further solutions:

1. Do as you suggest an interface that uploads the change to the MODAVIL object.  We have done this from an HR system as the leave requests (and their cancellation) are done externally, but any extra time (OT) is done via the modify availability or Graphical Resource application.
2. Do the same, but use the MX Loader
3. Do the same, but use the Application Export/Import
4. Create an app the looks at the MODAVAIL object and make change in that.

Do no panic about shift-breaks.  It's just recognising (usually) when lunch is so when (and if you care about it) you are doing an assignment the day is effectively broken into 4 hour block + 30 min lunch + 4 hour block giving 8hrs of work, but they are on site for 8:30 hrs/day, and it's used in the Graphical Assignment application.  You "normally" can't work people for 8 hours straight, so how can you organise their work which this aids.

How granular you go is up to you.  Just remember for each extra detail it comes with additional management.

I like your example of the student working varied shifts.  A person can only have one shift, Maximo is not built for anything else.  but it is built to recognise that a shift can be made up of differing work period for a rotation.  An example in the mining industry is that Type A shift works on a repeating 28-day pattern of 1-weeks on days, 1-week on evenings, and 2-weeks on night.  That does necessarily help where a student may not have a fixed rotation, but that is needed when it comes to forward planning or at least it's assumed by Maximo.  Using the MODAVIL with a calendar assigned and blank shift will work as you don't need to select a date in order add their shift, but the downfall is that you can't do that in bulk.  So I see lots of work using this method.




It still feels that I'm missing something, but I'd need to map the work periods better.

------------------------------
Craig Kokay
ISW
Maximo Practice Manager
eMail: ckokay@isw.net.au
Phone: +61-411-682-040

IBM Champion 2021
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-17-2021 15:55
From: Travis Herron
Subject: Person Calendars -- how to use a generic calendar with a Holiday but add a work shift

I'm on a mission to learn how to use Calendars the right way.  Please help me on my journey:

As I understand it, there should be a fairly generic "baseline" Calendar and Shift.  You assign that to the Person record as the Primary Calendar and Shift. (We're a single Org, single Site, so I don't think I'm going to need to worry about one Person needing multiple Calendars.)  As this Person deviates from that baseline with vacations, sick time, etc., you should use the Modify Person Availability action.  Sound right so far?

Here's my current problem:  I have that generic baseline Calendar.  I added a Holiday for July 4th (to be observed on the 5th) to that Calendar.  I applied the Calendar to my Person record.  Now I want to adjust my availability so that I'm working that day.  I added a row to the Modify Work Dates section with a Reason Code WORK on the 5th.

I added a 1-hour Assignment at noon on the 5th to a Work Order.  It's not seeing that I'm available on the 5th.  It looks like it's starting my availability on the 6th.  What am I doing wrong?
#EverythingMaximo
#Scheduling
#WorkManagement

------------------------------
Travis Herron
Pensacola Christian College
------------------------------

Graphical Resource View looks like a huge leap forward in being able to achieve my goals!  There's hope!

(Now I just need to get some Scheduler licenses. . .)

Thanks for that point in the right direction. and to IBM for providing a demo site (scheduler.maximo.com/maximo).

------------------------------
Travis Herron
Pensacola Christian College
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-24-2021 09:45
From: Craig Kokay
Subject: Person Calendars -- how to use a generic calendar with a Holiday but add a work shift

Hi Travis,

You are correct, in order to assign or to see if there is capacity, you need to have shift hours.

Correct also, there are lots of implications with calendars, But where possible I encourage a single calendar and as many shifts as needed.  Though I have seen 1 calendar for each shift and this client had 10 shifts.  So when applying a vacation, you had to repeat across the 10 calendar, though in your case 9 as one would not have the holiday.

So that would be one option, but maintenance can be painful.  Think of a calendar as the generic company level one with any special change usually be at the personal level. 

Using modify availability is your second choice.  The only thing without Maximo Scheduler you are doing changes on a one-by-one basis.

There is a third.  If you have Maximo Scheduler, then my preference to use the Graphical Resource application.  This allows quickly (and in bulk) apply the changes as you have described.

There are potentially further solutions:

1. Do as you suggest an interface that uploads the change to the MODAVIL object.  We have done this from an HR system as the leave requests (and their cancellation) are done externally, but any extra time (OT) is done via the modify availability or Graphical Resource application.
2. Do the same, but use the MX Loader
3. Do the same, but use the Application Export/Import
4. Create an app the looks at the MODAVAIL object and make change in that.

Do no panic about shift-breaks.  It's just recognising (usually) when lunch is so when (and if you care about it) you are doing an assignment the day is effectively broken into 4 hour block + 30 min lunch + 4 hour block giving 8hrs of work, but they are on site for 8:30 hrs/day, and it's used in the Graphical Assignment application.  You "normally" can't work people for 8 hours straight, so how can you organise their work which this aids.

How granular you go is up to you.  Just remember for each extra detail it comes with additional management.

I like your example of the student working varied shifts.  A person can only have one shift, Maximo is not built for anything else.  but it is built to recognise that a shift can be made up of differing work period for a rotation.  An example in the mining industry is that Type A shift works on a repeating 28-day pattern of 1-weeks on days, 1-week on evenings, and 2-weeks on night.  That does necessarily help where a student may not have a fixed rotation, but that is needed when it comes to forward planning or at least it's assumed by Maximo.  Using the MODAVIL with a calendar assigned and blank shift will work as you don't need to select a date in order add their shift, but the downfall is that you can't do that in bulk.  So I see lots of work using this method.




It still feels that I'm missing something, but I'd need to map the work periods better.

------------------------------
Craig Kokay
ISW
Maximo Practice Manager
eMail: ckokay@isw.net.au
Phone: +61-411-682-040

IBM Champion 2021

Original Message:
Sent: 06-17-2021 15:55
From: Travis Herron
Subject: Person Calendars -- how to use a generic calendar with a Holiday but add a work shift

I'm on a mission to learn how to use Calendars the right way.  Please help me on my journey:

As I understand it, there should be a fairly generic "baseline" Calendar and Shift.  You assign that to the Person record as the Primary Calendar and Shift. (We're a single Org, single Site, so I don't think I'm going to need to worry about one Person needing multiple Calendars.)  As this Person deviates from that baseline with vacations, sick time, etc., you should use the Modify Person Availability action.  Sound right so far?

Here's my current problem:  I have that generic baseline Calendar.  I added a Holiday for July 4th (to be observed on the 5th) to that Calendar.  I applied the Calendar to my Person record.  Now I want to adjust my availability so that I'm working that day.  I added a row to the Modify Work Dates section with a Reason Code WORK on the 5th.

I added a 1-hour Assignment at noon on the 5th to a Work Order.  It's not seeing that I'm available on the 5th.  It looks like it's starting my availability on the 6th.  What am I doing wrong?
#EverythingMaximo
#Scheduling
#WorkManagement

------------------------------
Travis Herron
Pensacola Christian College
------------------------------