Robin
Hi everyone, it's half past 12 so thanks very much for joining us today. It's really good of you to join us. It's our first one of these webinars that we're going to be running on the last Tuesday of every month throughout 2023.
Robin
You should be able to see a chat window and a Q&A window and if somebody can pop in there that they can see us and hear us that'll be really helpful just in case we're talking to nobody at all. So I'm just waiting for somebody to message to say you can see and hear us.
Robin
Can't see anybody yet.
Kim
Somebody's raised their hand though.
Robin
Let's see. Can see and hear, can't use the chat though? Okay we'll work on why you can't use the chat. Thanks very much for good. Yeah great.
Robin
So people are saying everything's fine. Apart from the chat seems to be disabled but the Q&A is working. So we'll go with the Q&A. Thanks Ben. Yes I've just realised that we've disabled the chat. I did say it was our first one.
Robin
Be kind to us. That'd be really good. By the way we've got a giveaway on this webinar. The best question we get today we'll get one of our t-shirts. So I've got the t-shirt here ready. The best question today we'll get that sent out to them.
Robin
So this is the Alpha Tracker Tuesday tips and tricks webinar. Why on earth I came up with that name. I have no idea. I'm Robin if you don't know me. I'm the director here at Start Software. This is Kim who looks after our customers.
Robin
You'll have met Kim if you've had any training on Alpha Tracker or if you had any problems or questions. Alpha Tracker if you don't know what it is, is our software for environmental consultancies. Typically asbestos consultancies but can be others too.
Robin
And what we're looking at today is the diary and the wallboard. Now these are central features that are part of Alpha Tracker that most Alpha Tracker users will be using on a day-to-day basis. But you might not be getting the most of them and you won't know about some of the new features that we've put in.
Robin
So we wanted to share that with you today. You can ask any questions you like at all about what we're covering and Kim will keep an eye on the question panel and give me a dig in the ribs when there's a question that's popped up that we should be answering.
Robin
Or if you've got questions about other parts of Alpha Tracker please do feel free to ask them and if we have time we'll get to them. So let's just dive in. So you can all see my screen at the moment.
Robin
I'm just going to switch to one of our systems here and go straight in to find where the diary appears. Now I'm going to get to it by typing, I'm going to go straight into my own diary to begin with.
Robin
So this is my calendar coming onto the screen here. This is my own personal diary within Alpha Tracker. And actually while I'm here I'll just mention this box at the top. You might not be familiar with the search box.
Robin
The search box came into the product a couple of years ago. You can use it for searching for any menu item at all. So you can type in menu items into that box and it will find them just like I did. So I started typing calendar and it found me all of the options with calendar in.
Robin
You can also use it by the way to search for project numbers or quote numbers, client names, client IDs, even site contact names. It's like a Google search for Alpha Tracker. So I tend to find menu options that way.
Robin
And as another aside, again, in case you've not come across the feature, you might notice at the top of the screen, I've got my favourites bar and these are all of the menu options that I use most regularly.
Robin
And I've clicked the little star by them to put them in my favourites list. So any menu option in Alpha Tracker, you've got the star here to the side. If I click the star, it will pop it into my favourites bar and I can take it out of my favourites bar by clicking the star again.
Robin
So if you've not got into favourites, if you've not got your favourites bar set up, have a go at doing that because it's a huge time saver. Right, back to my calendar. So this is my personal calendar in Alpha Tracker.
Robin
Straighten appointment, you drag and drop. And once you've dragged and dropped, you can either type in a project number or more likely you're going to search for a project number. Not many people know project numbers off by heart, although there are some people around that do.
Robin
This is just telling me there's already some appointments for this job. Pick who you want to be on the appointment, such as me in this case. Start and end time will come up automatically. It's also mapping where the appointment is.
Robin
That's doing that from the address on the site. And that's all you need to do. That's how you save a basic appointment. So saving appointments in your diary is straightforward. You can also move appointments just with drag and drop.
Robin
I can move them to a different day. There are a number of different views of the diary. Most of you, I imagine, are using the working week because that's the most convenient, I think. Day view can be useful if you've got lots of appointments because you get more space to see them.
Robin
So I know a lot of people use that. Month view is OK if you're not looking at many people. I think if you're using... If there are lots of people you're looking at the diary for, we'll come to that in a second, then month view can get a bit busy.
Robin
I do see people using that sometimes. The two or the three at the end are a bit different. Agenda gives you your diary in text form. Again, can be useful if you've got a very busy diary. Work shift and the last one just give you different sort of views, horizontal views and vertical views of the same sort of data.
Kim
I forget you can overlap appointments as well.
Robin
That's a good point, yes, you can. So you can actually have overlapping appointments. You don't have to have one appointment finishing before the next one starts.
Robin
So that's the basic use of your own diary. Let's go up a bit more complicated and look at several people's calendars. I'm going to use the staff calendar for this. Staff calendar is where you're working to schedule the diary for a group of people.
Robin
Now you can either just pick individuals like I'm doing here and bring them up. So there we go, so I've now got five people's diaries. Once you've got them in this view, by the way, you can select or deselect to add or remove people from the list.
Robin
If I go back to here, we've also got teams, groups and offices that you can select from and you can mix and match. So I've got a group here that says software and that's going to give me all of the people in this demo company that are to do with software.
Robin
You might have one that says asbestos or you might have one that says water hygiene or fire risk. So you can group them. Yeah, sites for versus admin stuff. Offices, if you're a big organization, you've got different offices set up.
Robin
So you've got a Southern office and a Northern office or you've got a, like we've got a UK office and an Australia office, then you can also select people on that basis. And teams are ways of grouping people who tend to work together.
Robin
So if you've got a senior surveyor and a junior surveyor or assistant surveyor working together as a team on a job for a few months, you can group them together and call them whatever name you want to call them.
Robin
Once you're in the staff calendar, as I mentioned, if I just go back into that, you've got all the same views available for you. You can move appointments around in the same way. This can get busy. So this is where I think day view comes in.
Robin
If you're looking at lots of people, then day view is really handy because you can see more, much more. Ah, good question already, thank you. Helen, you're already in lead for the t-shirt here.
Robin
Are the groups already populated? No, you can set them up yourself. So it's one of the screens in Alpha Tracker where you set up the staff. You can allocate people to groups and define the groups yourself.
Robin
So you can call them whatever you want to and put whatever you want in them.
Kim
Groups and subgroups as well.
Robin
Oh yes, subgroups, good point. So yes, you can have surveyors as a group or asbestos surveyors as a group and you can have subgroups of people with different qualifications.
Robin
We'll come back to qualifications actually later. So that's how you put appointments in staff diaries. But how do they get to see, how do the staff get to see their appointments? Because likely as not, site staff in particular won't be logging into a laptop to see their diaries.
Robin
Well, fortunately in Alpha Tracker, you can do this a number of different ways. The easiest way I think is to link your work Alpha Tracker diary with either a Google Calendar or Microsoft Exchange Calendar.
Robin
So what that means is we use Google Calendars ourselves. So if I just hold that up to the screen, you can vaguely see my diary there. Whenever an appointment goes in my diary in Alpha Tracker, it automatically and instantly goes into my Google Calendar.
Robin
But we do the same for Microsoft Exchange as well. So if you use Outlook for your diary, your personal diary or your site or your work site diary, Alpha Tracker can sync with those. So that's really useful.
Robin
So I wanted to mention that, I wanted to mention something else actually at this point, which is, oh yes, you can also Alpha Tracker, no Alpha Tracker mobile, Alpha Tracker mobile which is our app in the app stores, also has the diary feature in.
Robin
So if you cite staff using Alpha Tracker mobile to sign off jobs or to look at asbestos registers or to do water hygiene work or fire risk work. They can also see their appointments in Alpha Tracker mobile.
Kim
Jane's got a question for us on bank holidays?
Robin
She has. Can we add bank holidays to all diaries? Yes, you can. There's a repeat feature which I'll show you in a moment. So thanks, Jane. It's a job we do at the start of every year as we put bank holidays into all diaries.
Robin
And you can have special project codes for things like bank holidays, holidays, sick, training, webinars, that sort of thing. So you can have sort of non-productive, we call them, time. So not chargeable time.
Kim
Usually U-project, aren't they?
Robin
Yeah, we call them U. Yeah, generally U-project, you found unproductive. Let's just look at a bit more detail actually at an appointment. So if I click to bring up the details of an appointment, let's just do it in a little bit more detail.
Robin
So I mentioned the map before. You can do mapping from, actually I won't use that one because that's in Brisbane. And as Dan lives in the UK, that's going to give us a very long journey. What I'll do is I'll go back to my own calendar and I'll pick up this appointment instead.
Robin
I wonder if Google Maps can actually do a driving route from Helford to Brisbane. I think it could try as well. So here we go. Here's a job in Shrewsbury and my home postcode is there. So I can automatically look map from the surveyor's home postcode, or the site staff's home postcode, office postcode or previous appointment.
Robin
That's a nice feature. So if you're, if you're scheduling for people and you're not great with directions, that tells you whether or not you're giving somebody a crazy day. Let's have a look at some of these tick boxes.
Robin
So we've got confirmed what's that for with the green tick. We suggest you use that when you've confirmed with the client or the tenant, if it's a domestic job you're doing, or the house owner, that you're actually attending and that they've said it's okay.
Robin
So you get a green tick then on the diary appointment, you can see that there. Tentative is the opposite of confirmed. It's like penciled in. So if you're blocking time out and you're just trying to allocate time, we suggest you pencil it and use tentative.
Robin
We use that all the time. Cannot move, which gives you the lock symbol. Just take the tentative off. This is when you've either got a fixed appointment and the client says you have to be there at this time.
Robin
Otherwise, you know, I won't be there. I won't ba able to let you in. Or perhaps you've moved that appointment several times before. If you move it this time, you're going to be in trouble with the client.
Robin
If you tick that, you can't drag and drop. And if you do try and drag and drop, it will tell you that it's fixed. And then write up appointments. This is where you've got some site work. You're coming back to the office.
Robin
You're bringing the stuff back with you. You've got some write up time to produce the report. You can mark an appointment as write up time, which is a nice one. I'll also mention incomplete while I'm on this screen.
Robin
Incomplete allows you to mark an appointment as not being complete because, for example, they couldn't gain access. Not sure what reasons we've got on here, actually, on this demo system. Yeah. So we couldn't gain access or the client cancelled or the or the appointment had to be aborted.
Robin
If you do that, you get no entry symbol or other symbols that are similar on your diary. You can also the site staff can record that when they're out and about. And the point of that is it appears in reports in the system to tell you that it's an incomplete appointment.
Robin
It needs to be rebooked.
Kim
We're getting lots of questions in now.
Robin
Loads of questions. Right. Let's have a go at some of these. Can we view the value of the job? Yes, we can. We'll have a look at that in a minute, but not on the diary view.
Robin
That was a good question. Yes. So someone's saying, can it make a suggestion? It can. There's a make a suggestion button. Also, this work will stop you doing work that somebody is not qualified for. So if I show you that feature, if I book in a job for Dan here while I do that, Kim, can we read in some of the questions?
Robin
So if I book in a job, we set up a job earlier that's. Let's have a look. So if I do this one, we'll come back to that question in a sec. And if I try and book down in for this job, which is an asbestos survey and try and save that wrong job, I picked the wrong job.
Robin
Sorry. Or I didn't pick Dan one or the other. But if... I didn't pick Dan. in fact, if I pick somebody else that isn't qualified. What this will do is it will tell me that Dan isn't appropriate for this job on this day.
Robin
We've got a thing called the skills matrix, where you can record who's able to do what with expiry dates for training. And the system will tell you if you try and book something that's not appropriate, you can override it, by the way, and it's doing it by the by the role that's assigned here and the roles are linked to training.
Robin
So skills is something that we've just had a couple of questions about. So that's how that works. Right, let me move on, or answer more questions. We'll come back some of those, let me look at quite advanced questions, we'll come back to them in a minute.
Robin
So I'm going to move on for the moment. Where else can you see this information? That's important. So one of the most useful places to see diary information is actually on the project list screen, which is one of the workhorse screens in Alpha Tracker.
Robin
This is where you see your jobs that you've booked in. And what you can see here, if I scroll across, is the first and last date that they're in the diary for. So at a glance, you can see whether this job is in the diary, and when it's for and if it is in the diary, you can bring up all the appointments straight away.
Robin
So that's just in once on that day. And it's Dan, I think one of these other jobs we put in some more appointments for just one on that one. But you get the idea. So you've got this diary feature here.
Robin
And I don't think many people use this, partly because it's sort of scrolled across. You have to have quite a wide screen to access this. But it is useful. Another one that's really useful is projects not in diary.
Robin
And we think this is a screen that is useful for schedulers as a to do list, because these jobs aren't in the diary at all. So unless they go in the diary, they're not going to get done. You'll see here, we track contacts.
Robin
And what this is about is, typically, this is used by people who are contacting tenants for domestic work. If they can't get hold of them, they have to log how many times they've tried, because they need to report back to the housing association, for example, yeah, we tried to contact this tenant three times we had to give up, they just weren't talking to us.
Robin
So it's got that information on as well. We can just use it as a standard sort of to do list of things that need diarising. Another place you can see it, if I go back to the project list and bring up a job, these screens, there's a couple of places on the job screen itself, these screen buttons are slightly new, these are a new feature sort of, they used to be one button, we've split it into two.
Robin
So you can see all appointments by clicking the diary button. We can see the appointments split by member of staff using the project staff button. A couple of clients told us the old screen was slow.
Robin
So we've rewritten this completely. You should find that much faster to use if that's how you do your scheduling. And then in the financials and planning tab. There's also a feature here where you can see all the diary appointments for this job.
Robin
And you can also do something very clever with a screen job, just tell you about now. So if this is a repeating job, so it's something you're going to go back to every month. Because let's suppose it's water hygiene rather than surveying.
Robin
And you need two hours each time. I'll show you what you can do with this screen, which is really clever. So if I go back into diary appointments, now I've added that, this shows you at a glance, all the appointments for this job, there's only two at the moment, with a three year view of all of the appointments that are there starting in this month.
Robin
So that's February, March, April, May, June, July, and etc, etc. And if I want to book three years worth or two, let's do two years worth, doesn't matter, of appointments for this, let's suppose it's water hygiene work, I can do that or I haven't filled in who I want to go to.
Robin
Kim, would you like this work?
Kim
Oh, yes.
Robin
So that's now created a suggested schedule of monthly appointments for this job, I can actually create the appointments I can mark them as tentative or confirm them in one go.
Robin
And in one click, I've just created two years worth of appointments. They've gone in the diary, and I could then edit them in the diary, in the normal way, because they appear in the normal diary, even though I've just scheduled them that way.
Robin
So there we go. So here's two years worth of appointments. And you can see, I've got one appointment for each month going forward over the next couple of years, and it runs out in January 2025 or something.
Robin
Good new feature, that's a new feature alert. I think if you do regular work, water hygiene work, contaminated soils work, things where you're going back regularly, I think that would be a huge time saver.
Kim
Yeah, we've got a question here about whether we can add several appointments under one project number and that's exactly what we've done. Yeah, that's exactly as many as you like underneath each project.
Robin
Perfect. Oh, Dan, yeah, Dan, you can join in. Dan's also on the call with us today. He's shy, hasn't got his screen on, so he can answer some calls for us, which is super. More questions for us. Right, that's that one.
Robin
Final new feature I want to show you if you've not experimented with this. This one is seriously cool, is what we're calling the map scheduling view. And I know some clients use this because we've had some really good feedback, but not everybody is.
Robin
Now, this one's a bit different. So your domestic scheduling probably, and I think I've just managed to turn my camera. Kim, you might have to move over. Dan, have I just moved the camera? It's a clever camera.
Robin
I think it's tracking me. Oh, well, technology for you. Can you still see Kim just about?
Dan
Yes, yeah, still can see Kim.
Robin
We'll have to sit even closer together. So what we've got is the situation where you're doing domestic scheduling and you want to fill diaries with six, seven, eight appointments.
Robin
You've booked the work in and I've booked the work in with this job number. If I pick that one, we should see some appointments here. So these are jobs associated with this master job. Okay, this is the master project here.
Robin
By booking the work in like this, we can see the work on a map. And you can see we've got, if I can click and drag here, we've got three jobs that are in Bridgnorth. One, two, three. And I've got two jobs that are farther afield and I think they're in Dorset.
Robin
Yes, Dorset or somewhere. And what this allows you to do is pick a member of staff or more than one member of staff that you want to schedule for. So if I pick Dan in this case, here's Dan's diary. She's got a few appointments in already for today, but I can move and go day to day just by going here.
Robin
So if I go to the next day, it's got a Thursday, it's got nothing in his diary. Now I can, and I'll just go back in to where I was on the map. Now I can double click the appointments straight in his diary, or I can use the plus button, and it will then start filling his diary from the appointments I choose.
Robin
The really clever bit is as well that it will show you the best route between the appointments, which is this optimized button. So you can sort of make sure that you're not sending him all around the houses to do the work that he's doing.
Robin
This screen also has got text confirmations in. So again, aimed specifically at domestic surveying, you can send text messages to tenants to say you're coming. They have the option to, in the text message, confirm that they're available for the appointment or not really useful feature.
Robin
Good, that's a map schedule, a bit of a whistle stop tour, another new feature. All of these new features, by the way, are in the user guide, they're in the release notes. And if you call us, Kim can talk you through how to use any of them.
Robin
She can set up a one-to-one Teams call or Zoom call with you and talk you through any of the features that you want to run through. A couple of other places you can see appointments, we've got automated email. So you've got a feature in Alpha Tracker, where your clients can get emails a few days before the day before, even a few hours before the appointment to remind them that you're coming.
Robin
That's a built-in feature in Alpha Tracker, just needs configuring on your system. So you've got automated emails to your clients. You've also got internal automated emails, Tracker Dashboards, we call them.
Robin
So for example, in our own business, the night before each day, we get an email with everybody's appointments into the following day. So we all know what each other are doing. I think that's the run-through of the diary side we wanted to cover.
Robin
Yeah, any more questions that we... Janice, you want to see the route plan of an action? I'll come back to that once I've done the wallboard. If we've got time, we're packing in a lot today. Dan, if you can pick up some of those other questions, that'd be really cool.
Robin
While, we just show the wall board. So the last thing I wanted to show you was the wall board feature. Now the wall board is amazingly cool. It's incredibly fast and really useful. And often we find that our clients use the diary on one screen, if they've got two screens on their laptop or their laptop and another screen and the wall board and another.
Robin
I'm going to flick back to another system to show the wall board. Let's show you what the wall board can do. So it's just a view of your diary. So you can pick as many people as you want to show the diary, to show the wall board.
Robin
I'm going to pick some people I've got linked to software here. And I'll show you the two views that you've got, the two main views. So first of all, see how fast it is. I just came up for February. I can go forward to March and go forward to April.
Robin
I can go a month at a time. New feature alert. We can also go a week at a time as well. If you're looking in detail at a week, you can do a week at a time. New feature alert here. You can now do three months at a time in the wall boards.
Robin
I'm doing February, March and April. You can also do six months, brand new features. So you've got much better opportunity now to look forward. What is it I'm looking at here? Well, I'm looking at hours and appointments per member of staff with a total at the bottom.
Robin
These are like a bar chart running across. So I can see where we're fully occupied and then we're going forward into March, April, May. We've got gaps and we need to start filling people's times and the appointments, the actual blocks in the diary.
Robin
So Dan's diary here in April, we colour code, the types of work they're doing and the numbers show you how many appointments they've got each day. So by putting your mouse over each appointment and hovering, you get the full detail.
Robin
So it's like a planning tool. And in this view, we're looking at hours, but I can instead, if I go back here, looking at the financial view, if you've got that enabled on your system, you can also look in pounds.
Robin
So here, the system will automatically generate future income, so this is pounds per person and pounds at the bottom here each day and totals in pounds or dollars if you're in Australia, New Zealand.
Robin
It'll show you the total income being forecast for your business. Phenomenally useful, phenomenally quick and the other new feature that Tom's built into the wallboard, which is so cool, is that you can now view this by staff.
Robin
You can also view it by client, by project or by type of work. So that means you'll be able to look at a glance at the income that you're forecasting for your asbestos surveying versus your water hygiene work versus your fire risk work and over any period, either a day, week, month, three months or even six months and that's such a cool feature.
Robin
So as a planning and forecasting tool, the wallboard really takes some beating and it's so fast, so, so, so fast. So there's a whistle stop to all the wallboard. The wallboard is built into every Alpha Tracker but you can disable the financial view if you don't want everybody in your company to be able to, or anybody in your scheduling team to see the financial information in the wallboard, you can just show pounds instead.
Robin
Wow, so we've covered a lot here. I think we need to have a quick recap. I think that would be useful. So we've covered the basic diary features. We covered booking appointments, moving appointments, changing appointments, confirming appointments, marking them as tentative.
Robin
We covered, we talked about skills. So we know that we've got skills as a feature. So you can have skills based appointments if you want, including the system suggesting appointments to you. Oh, equipment, we didn't talk about equipment.
Robin
Yes, you can now log equipment against an appointment and you can also find, bring up a calendar appointment, something that we've been asked for lots. So as well as equipment that you can now log against an appointment, which is that button, the tool button, you've got an audit trail, which tells you who changed, created or moved appointments around.
Robin
So if you need to know why is an appointment in the diary this day, you can do that. We covered off where you can see calendars. We covered off Google Calendar Sync and Exchange Calendar Sync and reports and things.
Robin
We looked at all the new cool ways of scheduling, including mapping, and we've finalised with, finished off with the wall board. So a whistle-stop tour. We've had a phenomenal attendance today. I'm so pleased because it is our first one.
Robin
And I'm sure you've got, and we've got loads of questions that we haven't got to. Some we've answered, some that Dan's been answering. Thank you, Dan. All of the questions that we haven't answered, I managed to break my camera during the thing, all of the questions we haven't answered, we'll contact you separately outside the webinar and answer them.
Robin
And I think we'll pick the best question now for the t-shirt. I think Zainep probably asked the best ones. Sam wants to know how big the t-shirt is. We've got a full range, Sam. So you're OK. I can't remember how big you are, Sam.
Robin
That's a rude question. We do have a full range. All right, Dan's going to answer on your behalf there. Yeah, Zainep's going woo. Yeah, you won. I think Zainep wins the prize today. So this will just pop in.
Robin
Tell us what size you want. Zainep, just pop it in the chat. You get our Alpha Tracker t-shirt. And thanks again. Thanks again for coming. Thanks. It's our first one. Sorry if we had a couple of hiccups.
Robin
We'll get better at this. Next month, we'll cover. Should we cover next month? We might look at water hygiene next month. Possibly new feature in release 39. We'll see. But we'll let you know via LinkedIn and on the the blog and the newsfeed in Alpha Tracker.
Robin
OK, right. Comfy one coming your way. Thank you for that. Hope that was useful. Hope that you managed to watch that over your sandwiches and it didn't disrupt your day too much. Really appreciate you attending.
Robin
And we'll see you next time.
Kim
Thank you.
Robin
Bye. Bye.
Robin
Okay, so we started the webinar. I can see people joining already. Thanks very much. So we'll just give another few seconds because I can see the numbers shooting up now. And then I'll explain why my camera's not on.
Robin
Hopefully Dan and Kim, if you say hello, then people can see you.
Dan
Hello, hello.
Kim
Hello.
Robin
I can hear you loud and clear, that's good, and Dan can you hear me okay?
Dan
I can hear you absolutely fine, Robin. Yeah, all good.
Robin
Great, so welcome to the second Alpha Tracker Tips and Tricks webinar. It's a bit confusing and complicated today, only with time zones. I'm actually in a different time zone to Dan and Kim. And I thought the time zone was going to confuse me.
Robin
But in fact, we've been caught out by the BST change that happened at the weekend. And I think for all of you that have managed to join, and there's lots of you that have, well done, you've joined at 12:30.
Robin
I think Zoom has been telling people to join at 13:30. So I think there's going to be a lot of people who are joining late or that we're watching it on the recording on YouTube. That's fine. Last time when we recorded it and put it on YouTube, we had over 100 people watch it after the event.
Robin
So this webinar is being recorded. It'll be on YouTube afterwards. And feel free to share it with colleagues afterwards or just watch it yourself just to follow along about what we were talking about.
Robin
The topic this time is the wallboard and the map scheduler. Now, these are two features that we introduced at last month's webinar, but we did it really quickly. And the feedback we had was that people wanted us to do a deep dive into these two features.
Robin
So I'm going to be running through the wallboard. And then Dan and Kim are going to show the map scheduler in a lot more detail. So if you're involved in planning or forecasting or finance, this is the webinar for you.
Robin
There's the Q&A chat. Sorry, the Q&A window in your Zoom thing that's popped up. If you want to just click that and say hello, that would be great. And that's the way to ask us questions. Now, last month we answered lots of questions during the webinar, but also Kim messaged probably 20 people after the webinar with answers to questions.
Robin
And we'll be doing the same this time. So if we don't get to your question during the Zoom, then don't worry, we will come back to you afterwards. Thanks, everyone, for saying hello in the Q&A. Much appreciated.
Robin
Nice to know that people are actually there and they can hear us OK. So that's all of that out of the way. I think we'll go straight into the wallboard then, Dan, I think. So I'll do that first. Yeah, and then I'll hand over to you in about 10 minutes for the map scheduler.
Robin
Can you see my screen OK, by the way, Dan?
Dan
Yep, all good, all good, yep, I can see that.
Robin
Great. So this is Alpha Tracker, you'll all know what Alpha Tracker looks like, and the wallboard is a feature that you either access, I've got it saved here as a favourite, either directly or more usually from the calendar view.
Robin
So if I go to staff calendar, and I'm going to pick up some people here to show you the calendar for, in fact I'll pick everybody up. The calendar, as you know, is where the appointments are made, but the wallboard is the planning tool.
Robin
So if I just, I'll just very briefly just show a day's appointments here in the in the calendar so you can see what the calendar looks like. This is where the detail of the appointments goes in, but the wallboard is the plan is the planning and forecasting tool.
Robin
Now the best people that are doing this, when we go and see clients, the best people in the resourcing teams have this view, the staff calendar view on one screen and they have the wallboard on a second screen.
Robin
And you'll see why now, if I bring the wallboard up, and there's two options, by the way, for wallboard, there's the non-financial one, this shows information in hours, and then there's the financial one which shows information in pound notes.
Robin
So if I go to the hours one first, and I'll show you what it is, then you'll see why it works so well if this is on one screen and the diary, the staff diary is on the other screen. So what is it we're looking at here?
Robin
Well, we're looking at the month that we're in, which is March 2023. I'm looking at the staff down the left hand side and these numbers are showing me the number of hours that are planned in for each member of staff in the month of March.
Robin
Now I don't have to look at March, I can look at April, or I could look at May, or I can go as far ahead as I want to. I can even go backwards, by the way. So I could even go back to February if I wanted to and look at last month, or indeed the month before.
Robin
So this is showing me hours planned for each member of staff. So what are the sort of blocks showing me on the screen? Well, running across the top, these are the days of the month. So this is the first, which must have been a Wednesday, second Thursday, third of March was a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, etc.
Robin
So you can see all of the time growing across, you can actually see what the weekends are because there's no time booked in. And then what we have against each person, so if I look at the first, which was a Wednesday, then big number, the number one, that tells me there's one appointment that day for Adam, in this case, of that type.
Robin
Now the grey in our wallboard are non-productive time, unproductive time, things like sickness, holiday, time off, meetings, that sort of stuff, okay? So there's one appointment of that type in his diary.
Robin
If I go to the Thursday, the second, there are three appointments in his diary, as you can see, and they're the mauve coloured ones. And I think mauve in our diary from memory is software development appointments.
Robin
So Adam's got three software development appointments. Now these are real people in our team here at start. In your case, if you're into asbestos and water hygiene and fire risk and health and safety, you'll be looking at, for example, you might see six here for six domestic surveys in the day.
Robin
We might see three and three, two different colours, two different blocks. They might have three domestic surveys and three water hygiene jobs, some temperature monitoring. So you can see at a glance how many appointments people have and what type of work they are.
Robin
If I look at the bottom of the screen, you can see we have this bar chart, this blue bar chart running across, and that's totalling up the planned hours in this case per day. So I've got lots of people in our team, we've got about 15 people that work for us.
Robin
So here we've got 15 people, and it's given me a nice simple bar chart at the bottom for the time shown for each, for the hours per day. So this at a glance, you can see if you're, if you've got days where you're a bit under resourced or indeed this day here, this looks like we're over resourced, we've got people perhaps working some overtime or working overnight on that day.
Robin
You can also look at the wallboard in a week by week view. So you don't even have to do it month by month. Now we use this week by week to sort of, you know, if we've got lots of people or lots of things we want to look at, or there's lots of blocks, this helps, because you can see more within each block.
Robin
And you can also look three months ahead. This is a new feature. So there we've got March, April, May, or six months ahead. This is great when you're planning out your big programs of work for asbestos re-inspections, water hygiene, temperature monitoring or shower cleans or clarifier monitoring, health and safety inspections, fire risk where you're going back time and time again.
Robin
So these three month views and six month views are brilliant for that. Another choice that you have at this point is how you're looking at the information. Now, I'm looking at it by staff member here in hours.
Robin
I'll come to the financial view in a second, but I can also switch to look by clients. I can look by projects, or indeed I can even look by project type. So I can look at the type of work that we're doing and how many hours are associated with each type of work.
Robin
Now, this really comes into play when we start looking at the financial view of the wallboard. You can disable the financial view, by the way. If you don't want staff to see the numbers, perfectly understandable, you can disable it, but we've got it enabled in our system.
Robin
Now look what I'm looking at. So these are pound notes. These are pound figures of the income that's being generated by each member of staff in this case during the month of March with a total at the bottom left.
Robin
And again, at the bottom, we've got a bar chart running across with totals, with figures, showing where, which days, which weeks we're making money in March and where we're not making money. Now, in your particular cases, you might have a target figure per member of staff.
Robin
And in fact, we do. And you can see that's what the little red block is showing me there on Adam. So we've got a target set for Adam, target set for Catherine, target set for Dan, target set for Elaine, and where there's a red block.
Robin
This is showing me they're sort of underachieving, if you like, against their target. And you might have exactly the same. Dan, you're doing very well, I have to say, in March.
Dan
I was going to say, that's quite a good month for me, isn't it, yeah?
Robin
I don't know why I'm showing you this, you're going to want a bonus or something at the end of the month. It's payday at the end of the month as well, isn't it? So this is really good. So if you've got site staff, you've got your asbestos team, you need to be earning so much per person.
Robin
We're all in the same game. We're all trying to turn a profit at the end of the month. This is really helpful. So you can see at a glance, Adam's generating that in March. I can go forward a month, just like I showed you before, I can go forward two months.
Robin
And it's so good to be able to see this information in this form. I need to underline something as well for you. You get all of this information for free. You don't have to do anything different for this information to appear.
Robin
Just by booking information into Alpha Tracker, just the normal jobs, normal appointments, all of this you get for free. One last feature I'll show you before I show you how the system actually is calculating the values of each appointment is the search at the top.
Robin
So if you've got multiple offices in your business, you can pick. You can say, I'm only interested in certain offices. You can pick certain clients, you can pick certain projects or jobs, you might call them, and you can pick certain types of work.
Robin
So at a glance, you could instantly see all of the value of the asbestos work that your Northern office is doing month by month by month at a glance. Nothing else to do. And it is so fast. Tom has been working on this feature for a couple of months now to really improve the performance and it is lightning fast.
Robin
It's brilliant. So that's what the wallboard is. It's a planning tool. It's an overview. It helps you look week by week, month by month, quarter by quarter. You can look six months ahead and it tells you either information in hours or information in pounds or dollars if you're working in Australia, New Zealand, and you say you get it all for nothing.
Robin
That's the beauty of the wallboard. It doesn't cost you. There's no effort involved. You haven't got to put any extra information in. It just works. Right. For my last couple of minutes before I hand over to Dan and Kim, I just need to show you how it's doing it because it might not be obvious at all.
Robin
How is it calculating it? So if I book a new job in a new project in, I can try and explain. So projects come in two different types. Either they're fixed price jobs or they're not. It's as simple as that.
Robin
A fixed price job. So let's suppose I was putting in a £450 fixed price job. What's going to happen there is when I put this job into the diary, no matter how many appointments I put in against any number of people over any period, it will think it's got £450 to allocate across all of those appointments to spread that £450 across all of the appointments.
Robin
It won't go over it because it's a fixed price job. So this is ideal. If you're booking in a survey, the survey's been quoted out at £450 say, you put somebody in the diary, that appointment is essentially worth £450 to you.
Robin
And that's how the wallboard will calculate up the value. However, not all jobs are like that. You sometimes will be doing work, which is on a day rate or an hourly rate. Well, let's suppose it's a day rate.
Robin
So if I take this tick box off, that's where this box here comes into play, the estimated mandates. And what the system's now saying is, okay, it's a £450 job. And you're telling me it's going to take a day.
Robin
That means every day's worth of time you put in the wallboard, each of those days, the system will calculate is worth £450 to you. Okay, let me just say that again. So it's not a fixed price job. So the system is assuming that you're telling it how to work out a day rate.
Robin
Now, let me suppose it was a two day job, and you were charging it out at £600. Okay, so the system's going to know that each day is worth £300 to you, £600, two day job. So the effective day rate is £300.
Robin
That means however many appointments you put in the diary, it will calculate the values of those appointments at an effective day rate of £300. So as long as you get this tick box right, as long as you put the correct value in.
Robin
And as long as you put this figure correct, if it's a not a fixed price job, the wallboard will be correct. If you ever have any doubts, by the way, if you're looking at the numbers, you think, well, this doesn't look right.
Robin
It's easy to check because you can use the bars chart at the bottom. You can spot the days that look ridiculous. You know, you're earning hundreds of thousands of pounds and you're expecting to be earning a thousand pounds.
Robin
And you can then just drill down to the project and check you've set it up right. But essentially, as long as you put that information in correctly at the start, the wallboard will work as you'd expect.
Robin
Right, I can see we've got a couple of questions there. What I'll do, Dan, if I hand over to you and Kim now, and then probably do questions at the end, I think at the end of the 30 minutes, if that's all right, when we'll try and do that.
Dan
Yeah, that sounds like a good plan to me.
Robin
Cool, so over to you. Then if you want to finish, do your share and take over.
Dan
Fantastic. Yeah, we'll do no worries at all. So hopefully everyone can still hear us all okay. Do shout up in the question answers if you can't and I'll just go ahead and share my screen now. So hopefully you can all see that and I've got Alpha Tracker up and running.
Dan
Robin, can you see that okay?
Robin
I can. It looks great, Dan. Yeah, perfect.
Dan
Perfect. Great stuff. So as Robin mentioned at the beginning of the webinar, Kim and I are going to be running through the map scheduling tool. Now, it's a really, really cool feature that we've had in Alpha Tracker for a little while now.
Dan
And it's really good for booking in, for example, domestic surveys. So you've got lots and lots of properties you want to go out and survey, and you need to put all of those appointments in the diary.
Dan
That's just one example of what it's useful for. But I'll run through the features. I'll show you how it works. And obviously, if you've got any questions, do just shout up. So I've got map scheduling as a favourite up here, which I do love that feature.
Dan
By the way, if you've not used a favourite feature, I would recommend using it. It's really, really, really good.
Kim
Very useful. Very useful.
Dan
It is. It is, isn't it? Yeah. So what we've got here is the map scheduling tool.
Dan
So I'm going to be booking in some work for Kim and myself today. So first thing you need to do is pick the staff that you're going to be booking the work for. Now you can pick just one person, or you can pick multiple people.
Dan
And like I said, I'll just pick Kim and myself here. You can also choose by office or teams. If you've got certain site teams that you want to book work for, you can filter by those as well, just using the options on the right here.
Dan
So I'll go ahead and select that. And then what we've got is mine and Kim's diary shown here. And you can see Kim's actually got one appointment booked in today down in Poole. So that's going to be a bit of a stretch to get to that one in two minutes time, Kim.
Dan
But we'll just let you off on that one. And essentially it gives you an overview of the people who you've selected and see what's in their diary for a particular day. And if we move forward to a couple of days, so let's say we want to book in some work for Thursday, we can see both Kim and myself, we've got nothing booked in.
Dan
So that's all good. We're ready to start scheduling some work. So what you can do is pick the time range that you want to book appointments for. So you can see, I've got it set to be eight o'clock till three o'clock, but you can just adjust these on the slider. So if, for example, you only want to book morning work, you can do it that way.
Dan
In this case, we'll go for the full day. And I think these settings, if I'm right, Kim, they're controlled on a repository. So you can change your starting end times of the day, I think.
Kim
It has a default setting. Yeah, that's it.
Dan
So if you've got staff working over nights, for example, if you have that set in, you can see into the evening as well. And then we've also got another slider here which allows you to specify the duration of the appointments you want to be booking.
Dan
So in the example I'll run through, these are going to be some domestic surveys. So we'll give two hours each for these, but as you can see, you can just slide up and down nice and easily to pick your duration.
Dan
And that's the staff side of things set up. Now what we're going to be doing is showing an example of how you may book in these jobs as well. So I've got no jobs booked in at the moment, but what I have had is, for example, an Excel sheet from a housing association saying you need to do some domestic surveys.
Dan
Here are all of the properties, and you can go out and survey those. So we've got this really cool site importer feature up here. So I'll talk you through that. So what we do is, first of all, we pick the client that we're importing for.
Dan
So we'll put this under our Start client. And then the way it works is you can choose a master project number. So master projects, for those of you that don't know, are essentially a way of grouping projects together.
Dan
So they're like the overview project, and then you can have jobs underneath them. So we'll set up a new master project, and we'll call this something like webinar domestic surveys or something like that.
Dan
So if you've got a planned block of surveys, you'd typically set up a master project just to keep everything nice and tied together. Yeah, so we'll set up a W project for webinar. And again, I'll pop it in under our Start client.
Dan
And I'll just blast through and add in this project here. So we'll set up a new site.
Kim
Nice short snappy title you've got there.
Dan
Yeah, definitely. Definitely, so there we go. Our webinar domestic surveys, 2023. So I'll save that away. And then what we'll do is we'll say these our asbestos surveys. So in terms of the master project, that's everything all set up, nice and simple.
Dan
And you can do this before going into the map scheduling tool if you wish, or you can do it whilst you're in there. It's completely, completely up to you how you do it. So now we've got our master project set up, we can pop this in and say, we're going to be doing work under this particular project.
Dan
So those of you that have used our import screens before, this will probably look quite familiar. So we've got a download template option, import option, and then the process option. So in typical Blue Peter fashion, I've got a spreadsheet, which I prepared earlier.
Dan
So what I'm going to do is import that. So just to recap, this could be a spreadsheet that you've received from a housing association. They want you to do a number of domestic surveys in a particular area or town, for example.
Dan
So I'll go ahead and import these. And it's really minimal information you need to put in. It's basically the site reference or UPRN, a client order number, if you have one to hand, and then the project value as well.
Dan
And so in this case, I'm just going to work on four particular sites, but obviously you can put as many as you wish in. So now that looks all okay, I will process these sites. And what I'll actually do is add these sites as projects under the master project we've just set up.
Dan
So hopefully you're all with me so far, and it's quite straightforward to do, but obviously the more you're in there, you get an idea of how to do that. So now we've set the master project up. This is where we'll put it in on our search option over here.
Dan
And this is where the map schedule starts to come to life. So you can see we've got the four jobs or the four sites that we just set up and created jobs for or projects for. And you can see these are actually popped on the map now as well.
Dan
So you can see that was one of the sites. This is another one, and they're all visible and showing on the map. And it's important to note that the red pins are ones that aren't scheduled. The green ones are the ones that are scheduled.
Dan
So you can easily see, if you're doing a big chunk of work, you can see which ones are scheduled and which ones aren't. So you can find the appropriate slots in the diary and things like that.
Kim
And it corresponds to the projects that we can see on the list.
Dan
It does. Exactly. Yeah, great point, Kim. So these ones they're showing in red over here. As Kim said, they correspond to the red map pins that we've got showing over here. And you can probably guess how you actually add the appointment with the big red plus button over here.
Dan
So all you need to do is basically pick the person you want to book it in for. So I'll try and book in some appointments for myself here. And if I go ahead and press the plus button, you'll see we're actually getting a warning saying I don't have the relevant qualifications for this.
Dan
Now this ties really nicely into the training matrix. So for those of you that don't know, there's a training matrix built into Alpha Tracker. So you can say that certain staff members have got certain qualifications to do particular things.
Dan
Yeah.
Kim
In this case it means that you, Dan Darkin, don't have the qualifications to do jobs of that type.
Dan
Exactly that. Yeah, thanks for that Kim. So I just wanted to show that within here we're also checking qualifications to make sure you can't accidentally book an appointment for the wrong person or someone who isn't qualified to do it.
Dan
So now I'll move over to Kim, who is qualified to do this type of work. And then we'll go ahead and add these appointments in. So simply click the button, and that's dropped in a block in Kim's diary from eight o'clock to 10 o'clock, because remember we're using our time range and our duration over here.
Dan
You can see it's gone green to say it's been scheduled.
Kim
Can I just point out the exclamation mark on there?
Dan
Great, so we've got additional notes for this particular site here, so if anything needs to be flagged up these will show as the little notification icon and you can see that this particular tenant is disabled so it's just a reminder to the site staff to say allow more time for them to get to the door.
Dan
For example, you could put things in for example about key codes to get into buildings and things like that but you've got all that information available on here as well which is really handy. So we'll go back and add in the other jobs and again it is literally as simple as pressing the press button, they'll get added and then you can see they're getting scheduled.
Dan
We've got a nice scheduled indicator here so we can see how many properties we have scheduled for that particular master job.
Kim
And as they go green, they drop to the bottom of the list, don't they? So we just have these unscheduled ones at the top.
Dan
That's it. And you can see now our map's starting to change and we've got green pins showing for the scheduled appointments. So we'll go in and drop in the other two appointments. And there we go.
Dan
We're all scheduled for that job. They're now in Kim's diary, as you'd expect. And this relates nicely to what Robin was saying. These will now be available in the Wallboard. Straight away, they'll be visible there because we've dropped them into the Alpha Tracker calendar.
Robin
Dan, quick question for me. So you could have imported hundreds of jobs there, hundreds of sites, couldn't you? And you could be scheduling over days and weeks and months. So we've only just, in your demo there, you just had four sites to import, but you could have imported 400 and then you could just be filling day by day by day.
Robin
Yeah, fine. Okay.
Dan
Exactly. Yeah, that's it. That's it, Robin. Yeah. So typically it would be a lot bigger number than the four we've got here. Yeah. Like Robin said, you could have hundreds of sites that you want to be booking through over a number of weeks.
Dan
So yeah, that's all capable in this tool, which is really nice. And then finally, once we've got everything booked in, we've got a really cool feature to allow you to essentially route and map between the different appointments.
Dan
So down here on the bottom left, we've got a couple of mapping options. So if I go to route this, you'll see it draws on a route from the first appointment we've got to the second, third and fourth. Now, this is actually the quickest route to do it.
Dan
But if they were in a different order, we've got an optimize button. And what that will do is say, actually, do this appointment first, and then this one second, because it will be quicker in terms of drive and getting there.
Dan
So it's really helpful to plan out where appointments are at if you've got lots in around the surrounding areas. And we really like that feature. And it just helps you see, oh, okay, they're going from site A to site B, this is the quickest way, or should they go to this particular one first, and then you can you can juggle around the diary.
Kim
Yes, quite helpful for scheduling stuff, not too knowledgeable about locations.
Dan
Definitely is, definitely is.
Robin
You've picked, you've got local knowledge there, Dan, haven't you? Because you've picked all places around where you live.
Dan
Very local knowledge around here, yes. Yeah if you were going somewhere that you didn't know particularly well this would be a really handy tool to help you work out the best routes for your site staff and then we can just clear that down and then we're back onto the to the staff view and that's our super quick run through tour of the map scheduling tool so hopefully that's given you an insight to what it's capable of.
Dan
I mean we really like it here and I mean it's such a useful thing to help you get stuff in the diary particularly when you're booking in lots of smaller appointments for numerous site staff.
Robin
A couple of questions Dan, that have been asked on the on the chat and somebody's saying the appointments that go in here, do you see them normally in the normal diary or do you only see them in the map schedule?
Dan
Nope, you'll see those in normal diaries. So if I
Kim
You can amend them from here as well.
Dan
You can, yep. So that's a good point. So you can you can double click on these and you can actually see the appointment details and amend them if need be. But you can actually view these in the calendar as well. So if I open up the staff calendar over here, and I'll just pick Kim, you'll see that those appointments we've just booked in are now in the calendar.
Robin
Okay, so they're just normal. They're normal appointments, you just book them in a different way.
Dan
Exactly that. Yep, that's it.
Robin
Okay, another question we have. Thank you Janice for this one is can you book in projects if you haven't linked them to a master project.
Dan
Yeah of course, yeah you definitely can. We're just using master project as an example but over here on the search side of things you can search by client so you can bring back all unscheduled projects for a particular client and then you can pick projects as well from this project list here and you can pick multiple ones and they'll then just show in the list below.
Dan
So yeah you can do that without having a master project selected as well.
Kim
It's just quite nice to group them together as a under a master project so that you've got a few of them all together and it makes it nice and quick to schedule them because you've got them all listed out for you.
Dan
Exactly yeah.
Robin
And you can say especially from the importer tool. Kim there's a question this is going to test you Kim there's a hard one coming up from Victoria. How do you... I showed the target figures per person on the wall board?
Robin
Do you know how to change the the target figure?
Kim
There, I know there's a setting where you can change a setting for the target figure.
Robin
I think we'll have to email the answer on that one. I can't remember it.
Kim
Yeah, more detail on that I'm not sure of.
Robin
Yeah, well, we'll email you that one. Thanks for the question. I know we can do it quite easily, but I can't remember exactly which screen. And I think, yeah, there were two other questions, but we answered them, we answered them by text as we were chatting along.
Robin
So I think that was really good. I think we've hit the 30 minutes. So for the people that managed to work out the time difference and the right time to watch it, nice. Thank you for joining us. If you're just joining now, and I can see quite a few people are actually just joining now.
Robin
This is actually the end of the webinar because Zoom got it wrong with the clocks going forward at the weekend. This has been recorded. It will be on YouTube in a day or two. And when it's on YouTube, you can watch it back.
Robin
We put some extra little bits and pieces in the YouTube recordings as well. So you do get a bit of bonus material if you watch it on YouTube, share it with your colleagues. And do join us for the webinar next month at the end of April.
Robin
So it's the last Tuesday of April, 12:30.
Dan
Yes, 12:30.
Robin
Thanks, Dan. Thanks, Kim. Thanks very much for joining us, everybody. And we'll see you next time.
Dan
Thanks, everyone.
Kim
Thank you.
Dan
Thanks.
Robin
Bye.
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