Leaving the schedule board today can be cumbersome because you have to re-enter your preferred settings every time you come back. You may also find it frustrating that your admin has the power to override your choices and reset the board to the default settings. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could save your personal preferences and have them ready when you need them? The schedule board now boasts improved navigation patterns to help YOU manage your schedules more efficiently!

Remember my board

The schedule board now works with your computer’s local cache to reload with the last accessed parameters as chosen by you, no configuration necessary! That means you can leave the schedule board to check on your resources, update requirements, or even grab a hot cuppa, all while your board stays the way you left it.

 The cache will save and reload the following parameters automatically: 

1. Last accessed tab: Save time by not having to reload the tab its relevant resources and bookings 

2. Map panel open/closed: Map remains in the state that you left it in 

3. Viewtype: Gantt/list view – Schedule board  

4. Viewmode: hourly/daily/weekly 

5. BoardStartDate: Continue with the last accessed date range, resets to today’s date after 15min 

6. Columnwidth: zoom level of the board stays the way you want it 

Many of our users have told us about their struggles trying to return to today’s date when switching between date ranges. We’ve thus added a new “Today” button next to the date range control, that helps you quickly return to today’s date range, wherever you may be. 

Shareable links, as Easy as 1 2 3 

What if you want to share your settings with others or add a bookmark of your settings to your browser? We’ve added a new one-click button that helps you generate a URL link that captures all the following schedule board parameters: 

1. Last accessed tab 

2. Map panel open/closed 

3. Viewtype: Gantt/list view 

4. Viewmode: hourly/daily/weekly 

5. Columnwidth: zoom level of the board

Saving and sharing your favorite board setup has never been easier! 

Step 1: Click on the “…” more button at the top right of the schedule board 

Step 2: Click on “Copy link” button 

Step 3: The generated link has been saved to your clipboard.

The use cases are numerous, for example:

1. Add the copied link to a bookmark in your browser. Whenever you click on this bookmarked link, the browser will launch the board with your preferred parameters 

2. Share the link with your colleagues/team to share a setup that works for you, and teach them optimize their workflow  

You can also configure Schedule Board URLs manually: Open the schedule board from a URL | Microsoft Learn 

More details on schedule board caching and URL addressability can be found here: Learn more about schedule board

The post Your Board, Your Way – Optimize schedule board navigation patterns in Universal Resource Scheduling appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The work hour calendar multiple recurrence feature is a new URS functionality that allows you to create and manage work hour calendars with more flexibility and efficiency. You can now define multiple recurrence patterns for your work hour calendar events, such as daily, weekly or monthly, and specify different start and end dates for each pattern. This way, you can easily accommodate different work schedules, holidays, and special events in your organization.

The new multiple recurrence feature in the upcoming V2 work hour calendar can help you to:

• Add multiple recurrences within a single day, to represent different instances of recurring shift work e.g. morning, afternoon and evening shifts in a single day with different recurrences
• Have overlapping recurrences within a week e.g. A recurrence for Mon and Wed, and a recurrence for Tues. Previously the Tuesday recurrence would have deleted the Mon and Wed entries; now they can coexist alongside each other.
• Input work hour events in different timezones, which is helpful for workers who travel. Previously, the calendar supports only one timezone across all work hour calendar events.

What are work hour calendar events and why are they needed?

Work hour events define when a resource is available to perform work, and they exist as 2 types:

• Occurrences (one-time events) are work hour events that happen only once on a specific date and time. Occurrences always take priority over Recurrences. E.g. team cohesion days, seminars or emergencies.
• Recurrences (repeating events) are work hour events that repeat on a regular basis according to a pattern and frequency. E.g. rotational shift work, weekly cadences, monthly client visits

Occurrences and recurrences can be used today in URS to define different types of work hours, such as working hours, non-working hours, breaks and time off.

How did URS handle work hour events before (V1 work hour calendar)?

Before this update, only 1 recurrence event is supported per calendar day, for a given date span.

Scenario 1, Jane is a doctor who does shift work at various clinics:

• Recurrence 1 (morning shifts): 7am-12pm UTC, repeats Mon, Tues, Wed
• Recurrence 2 (afternoon shifts): 1pm-5pm UTC, repeats Tues, Wed, Thu
• Recurrence 3 (night shifts): 7pm-11pm UTC, repeats Wed, Thu and Fri

The old work hour calendar does not support more than 1 work hour event per calendar day, so this scenario would not be supported

Scenario 2, John is a utilities engineer with different work hours on alternating days:

• Recurrence 1: 8am-5pm UTC, repeats Mon, Wed and Fri
• Recurrence 2: 6am-8pm UTC, repeats Tues and Thu

Adding both recurrences was not supported in the old work hour calendar; Recurrence 2 would have deleted the Mon, Wed and Fri entries from Recurrence 1 for a given date span.

Scenario 3, Becca is a travelling salesperson who works in both Seattle and Singapore:

• Recurrence 1 (work in Seattle): 8am-5pm PT, repeats all days of the week
• Recurrence 2 (work in Singapore): 8am-5pm SGT, repeats all days of the week

Adding both recurrences of different timezones was not supported in the old work hour calendar.

How does URS handle work hour events now (V2 work hour calendar)?

The new V2 work hours calendar now follows the following logic:

• Occurrences have a higher priority than Recurrence rules for a given calendar day. So if there were two rules (one occurrence and one recurrence) on the same day, the daily occurrence or time-off occurrence will take the priority over the weekly recurrence for the entire calendar day.(Unchanged from previous)

• When there are multiple recurrences within the same date span:
  • If the times do not intersect, they will both remain on the calendar
  • If the times conflict, the rule that was most recently created/modified will be the one that is considered for the resource’s calendar. All other conflicting rules in the date span will be removed. In the event that some recurrences have conflicts on some dates but not on others, the rule will be spliced to retain the non-conflicting events, while removing the events on dates that do have conflicts.

Scenario 1, Jane is a doctor who does shift work at various clinics:

• Recurrence 1 (morning shifts): 7am-12pm UTC, repeats Mon, Tues, Wed
• Recurrence 2 (afternoon shifts): 1pm-5pm UTC, repeats Tues, Wed, Thu
• Recurrence 3 (night shifts): 7pm-11pm UTC, repeats Wed, Thu and Fri

Create Recurrence 1, Recurrence 2, then Recurrence 3 in succession. All will now show up on the calendar as seen below

Scenario 2, John is a utilities engineer with different work hours on alternating days:

• Recurrence 1: 8am-5pm UTC, repeats Mon, Wed and Fri
• Recurrence 2: 6am-8pm UTC, repeats Tues and Thu

Create Recurrence 1, then create Recurrence 2 in succession. Both will now show up on the calendar as seen below:

Scenario 3, Becca is a travelling salesperson who works in both Seattle and Singapore:

• Recurrence 1 (work in Seattle): 8am-5pm PT, repeats all days of the week
• Recurrence 2 (work in Singapore): 8am-5pm SGT, repeats all days of the week

As seen above both Seattle and Singapore work hours are both easily expressed on the V2 work hours calendar. Note that the Singapore work hours are shifted to match the dispatcher’s Timezone i.e. Pacific Time – the timezone of the calendar itself is visible at the bottom left of the calendar, and the dispatcher can be altered this in <Personalization Settings>.

What else has changed/remains unchanged?

Previously in the V1 Work Hour Calendar, only 1 recurrence is allowed per calendar day, thus adding any new recurrences will completely override the work hour events for that calendar day.

With the V2 Work Hour Calendar, the previous work hour events will only be overridden if there is a direct conflict in time between the 2 recurrences.

For instance, Joel is an equipment technician with the following work hours:

• Recurrence 1 (regular work hours): 9am-5pm PT, repeats all days of the week
• Recurrence 2 (temporary work hours): 1-9pm PT, only from Jul 10-14

Create Recurrence 1, then create Recurrence 2 in succession. As seen below, Recurrence 2 overrides Recurrence 1 for the Jul 10-14 period because there is a direct conflict between the recurrences. All other work hour events remain.

The following dialogue will now appear whenever a new work hour event is added, in order to remind users of this behavior:

Occurrences remain unchanged from the previous V1 calendar i.e. Occurrences always take priority over Recurrences and will override recurrences for the entire day.

For instance, Duke is an equipment technician with the following work hours:

• Recurrence 1 (regular work hours): 9am-5pm PT, repeats all days of the week
• Occurrence 1 (team cohesion): 6-9pm PT, only on Aug 1

Create Recurrence 1, then create Occurrence 1 in succession. As seen below, Occurrence 1 completely overrides all other work hours events for the Aug 1 calendar day even if there is no direct collision between the Recurrence and the Occurrence.

When will the V2 Work Hour Calendar be available, and how can I get my hands on it?

The V2 Work Hour Calendar will be available early-September 2023 in our Early Adoption Wave 2 update. You can opt in through Power Platform Admin Center, as seen below:

How can I find out more?

If you want to learn more about the new work hour calendar multiple recurrence feature, you can:

Read the documentation here: Edit work hour calendars by using APIs in Dynamics 365 Field Service – Dynamics 365 Field Service | Microsoft Learn

Join the community forum here: https://community.dynamics.com/

Contact the support team here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/contactus/

We hope you enjoy the new work hour calendar multiple recurrence feature and find it useful for your business needs. We appreciate your feedback and suggestions on how to improve our products and services. Thank you for choosing Dynamics 365!

The post Introducing multiple recurrence support for the work hour calendar in Universal Resource Scheduling (URS) appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.