0001HELP ON HELP Help is organized into: Operating Instructions Glossary Users Guide Index and Table of Contents for the User Guide From any screen, pressing F1 will display the Operating Instructions for that screen while F2 will display the Users Guide. The operating instructions explain how to operate the system while the user guide explains how to use the system to schedule work. Once help is displayed, the glossary can be displayed by pressing F6 and the Index and Table of Contents by pressing F4. 0002The Index and Table of Contents are shown in alphabetical order. A specific subject can be displayed by moving the bar to it and pressingthe enter key. Pressing the first letter of a subject will position the list at that point. 0003MENUS Menus consist of an Action Bar with Drop-Down Menus. A selection can be made either by pressing the capital letter of the selection or by using the cursor arrows to move the selection bar and pressing Enter. OPTIONS MENU Colors: Choose between monochrome, standard colors or selecting you own colors. Printer: Choose your printer from a list. Also - add a new printer and define it. Channel: Choose the printer channel (LPT1, LPT2 or LPT3). 0004 Filters: Set the filters. Filters let you control what information is displayed on the screen or printed in the reports. VIEW MENU Displays the staff plan, work plan and holiday schedule. You can also change and add to the plans. ANALYZE MENU Skills: Displays an analysis of what skills are available in the staff plan vs. what skills are needed in the work plan. 0005 Utilization: Displays the percentage of staff utilization over time as well as who was under-utilized. Availability: Displays the availability, in workdays, over time for each staff plan person, before work has been assigned and scheduled. FILE MENU Merge: Merge a staff plan or work plan on disk into the plan currently loaded into memory. Save: Selectively save the staff plan, work plan and holiday schedule. 0006 Load: Selectively re-load the staff plan, work plan and holiday schedule on disk into memory - replacing what's already there. Merge Work Plan: Merge a work plan on disk into the work plan currently loaded into memory. Merge Staff Plan: Merge a staff plan on disk into the work plan currently loaded into memory. SCHEDULE MENU Compute a new schedule or view the previously-computed schedule. 0007REPORTS MENU Work Plan: Print the work plan contents - it can be filtered if only a portion of the work plan is needed. Staff Plan: Print the staff plan contents - it can be filtered. Job Schedule: Print the most recently-computed schedule summarized at a job level. Task Schedule: Print the most recently-computed schedule showing each task by job. Work Assignment Schedule: Print the most recently-computed schedule showing each task by person. 0008HELP MENU Help on how to use the on-line help system, user guide and glossary. QUIT Selectively save the work plan, staff plan and holiday schedule - then exit WorkQueue. 0009TASKS COPY: A Task can be copied by pressing Alt+C. The notepad, if any, won't be copied. DELETE: A Task and its notepad, if any, can be deleted by placing the cursor on the Task and pressing Alt+D. Any data element in a task can be deleted by placing the cursor on the element and pressing Alt+E. SCROLL: Tasks are too wide to display on one screen. The rest of the Task can be displayed by pressing F9. You can scroll up and down via the PgUp and PgDn keys. 0010 NOTEPAD: A notepad can be created or edited by placing the cursor anywhere on the Task and pressing F8. ADD: A Task can be added by moving the cursor to an empty line and keying in a Job and Task Number. Moving the cursor across the numbers with the Tab or Arrow keys will fill in the numbers automatically. MOVE: A Task can be moved to another job by changing the job number and then pressing F7 to make the transfer. ORDER: The order of tasks can be changed by changing the task numbers. Duplicate numbers will be allowed, temporarily, but do not leave them. When finished, press F7 to re-display the 0011 tasks in their new sequence. INSERT: A task can be inserted by moving the cursor to the line where you want to insert and pressing Alt+I. NODES: All tasks that refer to a node (either from or to) can be displayed by pressing F5. An alternative is to place the cursor on the node and press F5. LIST: If the cursor is placed on a Skill and F4 is pressed, a list of all the skill codes used in the Staff Plan and Work Plan will be displayed. You can also pick the one you want to use by moving the bar and pressing enter. F4 will work similarly for the From Node, To Node and Status. 0012JOBS COPY: A Job and all its Tasks can be copied by pressing Alt+C. Notepads aren't copied. DELETE: A Job, all its Tasks and all attached Notepads can be deleted by placing the cursor on that Job and pressing Alt+D. An element in a Job can be deleted by placing the cursor on the element and pressing Alt+E. NOTEPAD: A notepad can created or edited by placing the cursor on the Job and pressing F8. Use F6 to create or edit a Work file notepad. 0013 TASKS: Are displayed by placing the cursor on a Job and pressing Enter. SEQUENCE: Alt+S will toggle between Job Number and Priority sequence. ORDER: Jobs can be re-ordered by changing the Job Numbers but duplicates won't be allowed. If job number is changed, all related tasks and notepads will also be changed. When finished, press F7 to re-display the jobs in their new sequence. LIST: If the cursor is placed on the Status and F4 is pressed, a list of all status codes used in the Work Plan will be 0014 displayed. You can also pick the one you want. ADD: A new Job can be added by moving the cursor to an empty line and keying in a Job Number. Moving the cursor across the Job Number with the Tab or Arrow key will fill in the number automatically. NODES: All tasks that refer to a node (either from or to) can be displayed by pressing F5 and keying in the node name. An alternative is to place the cursor on the node and press F5. INSERT: To insert a job, place the cursor on the line where you want to insert and press Alt+I. 0015NOTEPADS LINE WRAP: Notepads will "line wrap" automatically so when keying, don't press enter at the end of each line - just continue keying until the ent of the paragraph - then press enter. ENTER: Press enter at the end of paragraphs or to skip a line. DELETE: Use Alt+E to delete the line the cursor is on. Use Alt+D and then Esc to delete the entire notepad. HIDING: All notepads are normally printed in the Staff and Work Plan reports but an asterisk (*) in position one of a note line will prevent that line from printing. An asterisk in position one of the first line of a notepad 0016 will prevent the entire notepad from printing. TITLES: A greater-than sign (>) in position one of a FILE notepad line will cause that line to be printed in the plan and schedule reports as a custom title. One line up to the entire notepad can be used for custom titles. 0017PEOPLE COPY: A Person and their time records can be copied by pressing Alt+C. Notepads aren't copied. DELETE: A Person, all its Time Records and all attached Notepads can be deleted by placing the cursor on that Person and pressing Alt+D. Any data element in a Person can be deleted by moving the cursor to it and pressing Alt+E. NOTEPAD: A notepad can be attached to a Person by placing the cursor on the Person and pressing F8. A notepad can be attached to the Staff Plan by pressing F6. Existing notepads are indicated by an "n". 0018 TIME: All time records for a Person can be displayed by placing the cursor on the Person and pressing the Enter key. SEQUENCE: The Person Number can be changed as a means of resequencing but duplicates won't be allowed. All related time records and notepads will automatically be changed. ADD: A new person can be added by moving the cursor to an empty line and keying in a Person Number greater than zero. If the cursor is moved across the Person Number with the Right Tab or Right Arrow key the Person Number will be automatically filled in. INSERT: A person can be inserted by placing the cursor where you 0019 want the insertion and pressing Alt+I. LIST: If the cursor is placed on a Skill or Initials and F4 is pressed, a list of all skills and initials used in the Staff Plan and Work Plan will be displayed. You can also pick the one you want. 0020TIME RECORDS COPY: A Time Record can be copied by pressing Alt+C. The notepad, if any, won't be copied. DELETE: A Time Record and any attached Notepad can be deleted by placing the cursor on that Time Record and pressing Alt+D. An individual data element can be deleted by moving the cursor to it and pressing Alt+E. NOTEPAD: A notepad can be attached to a Time Record by placing the cursor on the Time Record and Pressing F8. Existing notepads are indicated by an "n" to the left of the person number. 0021 MOVE: A time record can be moved to another person by changing the person number and pressing F7 to make the transfer. ADD: A new Time Record can be created by moving the cursor to an empty line and keying in a Person and Time Number greater than zero. If the cursor is moved across these two numbers with the tab or arrow keys, they will be filled in automatically. ORDER: The order can be changed by changing the Time Numbers. Duplicates are temporarily allowed but don't leave it that way. 0022 INSERT: A time record can be inserted by moving the cursor to the line where you want to insert and pressing Alt+I. 0023HOLIDAYS DELETE: A holiday record can be deleted by placing the cursor on it and pressing Alt+D. Any data element can be deleted by moving the cursor to it and pressing Alt+E. ADD: A new Holiday Record is created by moving the cursor to an empty line and keying in a unique Holiday Number. The number will be automatically filled by moving the cursor across the number via the tab or arrow key. ORDER: The Holiday Number can be changed as a means of resequencing but duplicates won't be allowed. 0024INSERT: A holiday can be inserted by moving the cursor to the line where you want to insert and pressing Alt+I. 0025DATES The earliest date that can be entered into WorkQueue is January 5, 1981 (01/05/81). The latest date possible is December 31, 2050 (12/31/50). If a year of 00 - 50 is entered it will be interpreted as the year 2000 - 2050. If a year of 81 - 99 is entered it will be interpreted as the year 1981 - 1999. 0026STAFF UTILIZATION ANALYSIS This screen shows the remaining, UNUSED workdays for each person in the staff plan after work scheduling has been completed. This information aids in analyzing how the staff utilization can be improved. The aggregate utilization for the entire staff is shown at the bottom of the screen. SCROLL: To scroll laterally, use Tab/Shift-Tab to scroll an entire screen or Left Arrow/Right Arrow to scroll half a screen. To scroll vertically, use the PgUp and PgDn keys. 0027COMPRESS: Time can be compressed laterally so more of the schedule is displayed on a single screen. The default is each week displayed individually. A wider span of time can be displayed on a single screen by using the Ctrl/right arrow keys to "compress" time and Ctrl/left arrow to "uncompress" time. FILTERS: This display can be filtered to check the utilization of a single person or a group of people. 0028STAFF UTILIZATION ANALYSIS This screen shows the availability for each person in the staff plan before work scheduling. This information shows the aggregate effect of all the time records for each person. SCROLL: To scroll laterally, use Tab/Shift-Tab to scroll an entire screen or Left Arrow/Right Arrow to scroll half a screen. To scroll vertically, use the PgUp and PgDn keys. COMPRESS: Time can be comperssed laterally so more of the schedule is displayed on a single screen. The default is each week0029 displayed individually. A wider span of time can be displayed on a single screen by pressing the Ctrl/right arrow keys to "compress" time and Ctrl/left arrow to "uncompress" time. 0030JOB SCHEDULE Each bar represents the duration of a Job and the numbers imbedded in the bar are the number of workdays used, week by week. The beginning of a job is marked by a ">" and the end by "<". If a job has a target date, it is displayed as a "t". If a job was finished late, there will be an "L" on the right of the screen followed by the number of weeks it is late. If a job is incomplete (unfinished) a "U" will be displayed along with the number of unfinished workdays. SCROLL: To scroll laterally, use Tab/Shift-Tab to scroll an entire screen or Left Arrow/Right Arrow to scroll half a screen. To scroll vertically, use the PgUp and PgDn keys. 0031 COMPRESS: Time can be compressed laterally so more of the schedule is displayed on a single screen. The default is each week displayed individually. A wider span of time can be displayed on a single screen by using the Ctrl/right arrow keys to "compress" time and Ctrl/left arrow to "uncompress" time. TASKS: Placing the cursor on a job and pressing enter will display the tasks for that job. FILTERS: This display can be filtered to show the schedule for: a person or group of people; a job or a group of jobs. 0032TASK SCHEDULE Each bar represents the duration of a task. and the numbers imbedded in the bar are the number of workdays used, week by week. The beginning of a task is marked by a ">" and the end by a "<". If a task has a target date, it is displayed as a "t" on the time line. If a job was finished late, there will be an "L" on the right of the screen followed by the number of weeks it is late. 0033If a job is incomplete (unfinished) a "U" will be displayed along withthe number of unfinished workdays and a letter to indicate the cause: S Either the skill or initials needed by the task were not found in the Staff Plan or they were found but the person(s) didn't have enough available workdays to complete the task so it was not started. N The Not-Before date fell beyond the end of the schedule. F There was a dependent task (its To Node is the same as this task's From Node) that was not completed so this task could not be started. 0034SCROLL: To scroll laterally, use Tab/Shift-Tab to scroll an entire screen or Left Arrow/Right Arrow to scroll half a screen. To scroll vertically, use the PgUp and PgDn keys. COMPRESS: Time can be compressed laterally so more of the schedule is displayed on a single screen. The default displayed is each week displayed individually. A wider span of time can be displayed on a single screen by using the Ctrl/right arrow keys to "compress" time and Ctrl/left arrow to "uncompress" time. 0035SKILLS ANALYSIS SCROLL: To scroll vertically, use the PgUp and PgDn keys. 0036MERGING To merge a file on disk into the file in memory: Use the menu to key in the name of the file on disk. Use the menu to start the merge. You may merge as many files into memory as needed but you won't be allowed to exceed the capacity of the target file. The merge process can be filtered. This function merges data from a disk file into the target file in memory. It can merge either Staff or Work files. To start a merge, name the merge (disk) file and perform the merge. 0037PRINTERS CHOOSING: A printer can be chosen by moving the cursor to it and pressing F6. CONTROL CODES: The control codes for a printer can be displayed and edited by moving the cursor to the printer and pressing Enter. If you change any of the printer control codes they don't become effective until you place the cursor on the printer and press F6 (in other words, you must re-choose it). NEW PRINTERS: A new printer can be added by moving the cursor to a blank line and keying in the name of that printer. You must then press Enter and key in the control 0038 codes that run the printer. DELETING: A printer can be deleted by moving the cursor to it and pressing Alt+D. COPYING: A printer can be copied by moving the cursor to it and pressing Alt+C. It will be copied into the next unoccupied line. 0039FILE LIST To select a file, move the bar to it and press Enter. 0040PRINT CONTROL CODES Each column is an ASCII number. At the appropriate time, all ten numbers are converted to an ASCII character string and sent to the printer. For example, if you wanted to print report titles in boldface on a dot-matrix printer, the control characters would be 27 and 71. These would be converted to Esc/G and sent to the printer each time a reporttitle is printed. The codes are read and converted left to right until the first zero is encountered - that terminates the conversion. If you enter any number greater than 255 it is interpreted as ASCII Zero. PROPORTIONAL FONTS AREN'T SUPPORTED! 0041REPORT MENU START PRINTING: The report will not start printing until you choose this option. FORM: You can choose between three different forms for the schedule reports. SEQUENCE: You can vary the sequence of the Work Plan Report by choosing this option. Each time you choose it, the sequence will change. DISK OUTPUT: This will re-direct output from the printer to a disk file. 0042PRINTER OUTPUT: This will re-direct the output to the printer, instead of the disk file. ERASE DISK OUTPUT: This will erase any reports you have already written to a disk file. A report file is cumulative - each report you write to it is appended to the end. 0043NODES The Node display is used to confirm the results of your networking. The column of tasks on the left are those which must be completed before those in the column on the right can be started. You can trace your way through the network you've defined by pointing to the next node you want to trace with the cursor and pressing Enter. Pressing F5 will allow you to enter a node not currently displayed on the screen. The title of the job the cursor is resting on is displayed at the top of the screen. 0044PROJECT FILES When you start WorkQueue, the first thing you enter is the name of theproject file to be used. A project file is where the target file names(the files containing the Work Plan, Staff Plan and Holiday Schedule),screen colors and printer name are saved so you don't have re-enter them next time WorkQueue is started. You can create as many project files as needed and you can switch amoung them during a session. You can change the target files, displaycolors and printer as often as you wish for a project but only those in effect when you change projects or exit WorkQueue will be saved. Several project files can refer to the same target file. This is typical for the Holiday Schedule. 0045The name given to a project should be meaningful. For example, if the work in the target files is a list of personal work for youself then your initials will make a good name. If the work in the target files covers all the work in a department then an abberviation of the title that department would make a good name. If the work in the target files covers a specific project then an abbreviation of the project title would make a good name. 0046PRINTER CHANNELS Most personal computers have at least one printer port and they can support up to three. If you have only one printer port on your PC, it will be LPT1 (which stands for Line PrinTer one). If you have more than one printer port on your PC, you can switch among them. Whichever port you choose, it must have a printer attachedto it or you cannot print a report. 0047FILE LIST WorkQueue loads four data files into memory at the start of each session. Those files are listed here. For additional information, use the Index to see: Project Files Data Files System Files 0048FILTERS There are four filters that may be used singly or together. To turn a filter on, move the cursor to that filter and press Alt+O. If you press Alt+O again, it turns the filter off. Each filter can operate in Include or Exclude mode which can be changed by pressing Alt+I. 0049SCHEDULING START DATE: Is the date the schedule will begin. Work scheduling works week by week, starting each week on a Monday. If the date you enter isn't a Monday, it will revert to the previous Monday. TIME SPAN: Is the number of years the work schedule should cover. It can be from one to four years. Work is scheduled in 52 time increments. This means the time span you choose determines the resolution of the schedule (resolution is the amount of detail you can see). The longer the time span, the lower the resolution: 0050 1 Year = 1 week resolution 2 Years = 2 weeks resolution 3 Years = 3 Weeks resolution 4 Years = 4 weeks resolution 0051 Chapter 1 - Overview WorkQueue schedules work for a staff of people. The information you must supply is divided into the Work Plan, Staff Plan and Holiday Schedule. The Work Plan is a queue (list) of Jobs, subdivided into Tasks. The queue can consist of a mixture of unrelated tasks as well one or more networks of interrelated work. The tasks in the Work Plan can be easily reorganized and priorities can be assigned as needed. The Staff Plan consists of information about people. It identifies each person, their skills and availability (such as normal availability, vacations and overtime). 0052 The Holiday Schedules lists those days on which no work should be scheduled for the entire staff. The work schedule produced from this information is staff-driven, taking into account skills, the availability of the person assigned to each task, priorities and network inter-dependencies. Since the Staff, Work and Holiday information are separated, a number of different scenarios can be tried to determine, for example, what mix of skills will complete the work in the shortest possible time. Several analysis functions are provided to aid in optimizing the schedule. The following help screens give further guidelines on how to use 0053WorkQueue based on the "life cycle" of the work. PLANNING The roots of many scheduling problems are in the early planning phase.You should start using WorkQueue to record, organize and analyze your Work and Staff Plans from the beginning. The goal of the Work Plan is to record all the tasks that must be completed. The process of identifying the tasks should be as rigorous as possible - many scheduling problems arise from missing tasks, not bad estimates on known tasks. Don't, however, spend too much time trying to finalize the organization of the initial work plan, it can be easily re-organized and refined later. Be careful not to overlook "ancillary" work. For example, a new 0054project team consisting of 4 people (all existing employees) are organized to work on a new project. Some of those people are bound to have work yet to be finished from their previous project. If all of this work isn't added to the work plan, the schedule won't be accurate. The goal of the staff plan is to describe the skills and availability of the current staff, relative to the work in the Work Plan. For each staff member vacations, military leave, etc. should be declared or estimated. SCHEDULING This is where you finalize the staff and work plans. This is done by repeated cycles of producing schedules, reviewing the results, making 0055refinements and re-running the schedules. If possible, the reviews should be done by the staff that will do the work. It is important to explore as many alternatives as time allows to fully understand the affect of various staffing levels and skills. Thefinal plan, the one which will be used to carry out the work, should be the one least affected by either staff or priority changes, both of which will likely occur before the work is finished. Also, target dates should be assigned so progress can be periodically evaluated. WORK ASSIGNMENT Once the Work and Staff Plans are completed, the tasks in the Work Plan must be assigned to the people in the Staff Plan. 0056 There are two types of work assignment: Implicit and Explicit. Implicit assignments are made when a task contains a skill. Explicit assignments are made when a task contains a person's initials. The difference is whether you make the work assignment or the system. A good approach in this phase is to make sure that each person in the Staff Plan has several tasks explicitly assigned to them - the remaining tasks should remain implicitly assigned. This retains scheduling flexibility for unassigned work. In this phase you should also assign priorities, if needed. Prioritiesare a resource issue - if you had enough staff to work on all jobs at once there would be no need for priorities. If you don't have that much staff, which is the usual case, you must choose which jobs will 0057get done first. Sometimes this is done by assigning priorities to jobs. In many cases, however, the sequential dependencies of the jobs dictate the order of work assignment (dependencies are discussed underNETWORKING) and adding priorities to these task would have no effect. MONITORING Once work is under way, there are three primary uses for WorkQueue: Controlling: consists of recording the progress of work and making new work assignments as old ones are completed. The schedule should be re-run periodically to measure progress against the target dates. Adjustments: as changes in staffing and work priority occur, you explore alternative solutions to find the best fit, recording the results in the Staff and Work Plans. 0058History: the completion and final status of each task should be recorded for future use in performance reviews and retrospective evaluations. CLOSING THE BOOKS As work is finished and new work added to the plan, you will eventually run out of space in the Work Plan. The best way to deal with this is to use an accounting technique - closing the books. This means making a copy of the work plan under a new name. The old plan will be held, unchanged, as a record of the past. All finished work should be deleted from the new copy to make room for new work. The new copy will then become the operating work plan - until it runs out of space. 0059Although it is unlikely you will run out of space in the staff plan, the same technique can be used if you do. 0060 Chapter 2 - The Work Plan The work plan is divided into two layers: Jobs and Tasks. Each job represents a goal or product and consists of one or more tasks, which define each step that must be done in order to complete the job. When you create a new work plan, don't waste time trying to achieve good initial organization - you can easily reorganize later. The firstgoal should be to define tasks as rigorously as possible. Many scheduling problems arise not from bad estimates on known tasks but from tasks that are entirely missing from the plan. 0061JOBS Jobs are used to organize tasks and set high level target dates and priorities. Each job usually represents a goal or product and its tasks are the steps that must be completed to finish the job. The order in which jobs appear in the plan is important because when work is scheduled, people are assigned to tasks in the order they appear in the work plan. This means that those jobs appearing early in the plan are most likely to be finished. Sequence is decided by the Job Numbers unless Priority Numbers are present. Priority 1 is the highest priority while 99 is the lowest. Any job with a zero priority is assumed to be the lower than priority 99. 0062As a means of verifying the sequence you want in the plan, the Job Screen can be displayed in either Job Number or Priority sequence by pressing Alt+S. For more information about priorities, see the Glossary Help (F6). 0063TASKS Tasks are the fundamental unit of work in the Work Plan. While jobs serve to set priorities, organize tasks and set overall target dates, only tasks actually "consume" the people assigned to them. Each task represents work that must done in order to complete the job it belongs to. When you run the work scheduler, a person will be assigned to each task and the work will be scheduled based on the characteristics of the task and the availability of the person. When you create a task, don't attempt to fill in all the data elementsin the task, you generally need to fill in only a few. Which elements are required under what circumstances is explained in the following screens as well as the Glossary Help screens. 0064WORK CHARACTERISTICS When you create a task you need to consider the work characteristics that task contains. The Work Scheduler is programmed to recognize these characteristics: Assignment: of the task to a person in the Staff Plan. Work Effort: remaining to complete the Task. Repetition: is it a one-time or repeating Task? Future start: don't start a task before a certain date. Target Date: predict whether the task can be finished on schedule. 0065 Dependencies: what Tasks must be completed before this Task can be started. Meetings: how to make sure meetings occur on schedule. 0066WORK EFFORT and DURATION You cannot declare the duration of a task directly. Instead, the work effort is expressed as the number of work days needed to complete the task. The duration of the task will then depend on the rate at which the assigned person can work on the task. If the assigned person is working less than full time on the task, the duration will be longer. If the assigned person can work overtime, the duration will be shorter. 0067WORK EFFORT EXAMPLE Job Task Sta- Rem. Rep- No. No. Task Description tus Skill W/D eat Skip ╔════╦════╦══════════════════════╤═════╤═════╤══════╤════╤════╤ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ Analyze Annual Stmt. │ │ KS │ 10.0 │ 0 │ 0 │ In this task, a financial analyst (Karen Simpson) is analyzing some annual statements and it will take 10.0 (remaining) workdays to complete her analysis. If she were available 2 days per week, the taskwould take 5 weeks to complete. If she were available 5 days per week,it would take 2 weeks to complete. 0068REPETITION A task can be repeated. An example would be testing of a product wherethe task is to periodically check the interim test results while the test is in progress. In the example below, the Repeat of 4 and Remaining WorkDays of 1 means that the task will be scheduled for 1 day each week for four weeks. If the task can't be finished in four weeks, it will be automatically extended, week by week, until completed. Job Task Sta- Rem. Rep- No. No. Task Description tus Skill W/D eat Skip ╔════╦════╦══════════════════════╤═════╤═════╤══════╤════╤════╤ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ Record Test Results │ │ TST │ 1.0 │ 4 │ 0 │ 0069REPEAT and SKIP - tasks Sometimes a repeating task shouldn't repeat every week but should skipone or more weeks between repetitions. Taking the previous example, the addition of a Skip of 1 would cause one week to be skipped betweeneach repetition of the task. In other words, it would be repeated every other week. If, due to staffing constraints or dependencies on other tasks, the task cannot be repeated one week, it will be scheduled for the next available week, etc. Job Task Sta- Rem. Rep- No. No. Task Description tus Skill W/D eat Skip ╔════╦════╦══════════════════════╤═════╤═════╤══════╤════╤════╤ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ Record Test Results │ │ TST │ 1.0 │ 4 │ 1 │ 0070NOT-BEFORE Some tasks can't be started until a fixed date in the future. An example would be installation of equipment that isn't yet delivered. In the example below, the task will not be started before 1/7/88 (the delivery date of the plumbing fixtures). If the plumber isn't available on that date, it will be scheduled as soon after that date as possible. Job Task Rem. Rep- Not- No. No. Task Description Skill W/D eat Skip Before ╔════╦════╦══════════════════╤ ╤═════╤══════╤════╤════╤══════════╕ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ Install Plumbing │ │ PLU │ 4.0 │ 0 │ 0 │ 1/07/88 │ 0071TARGET DATE A task can be monitored to make sure it is completed on schedule. Thisis done by putting a Target Date into the task or job. Each time a schedule is displayed or printed, the target date will be marked in the schedule and flagged if behind schedule. In the following example,the target date is 1/31/88. If the task cannot be completed by then, it will be flagged as late in the schedule. Job Task To From Target No. No. Task Description Node Node Date ╔════╦════╦══════════════════════╤══════╤══════╤══════════╕ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ Install Plumbing │ │ │ 1/31/88 │ 0072EMPTY TIME Sometimes you must allow a fixed amount of time to elapse between the completion of one task and the start of another. You do this by creating a task with the duration of the task in the Repeat field stated in weeks and no Remaining WorkDays, Skill or Skip. Empty Time only makes sense as part of a network (where it will delay subsequent tasks). The following example would allow 3 weeks for the delivery of plumbing fixtures: Job Task Sta- Rem. Rep- No. No. Task Description tus Skill W/D eat Skip ╔════╦════╦══════════════════════╤═════╤═════╤══════╤════╤════╤ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ Order fixtures │ │ │ 0.0 │ 3 │ 0 │ 0073EVENTS AND MEETINGS Lets say it's now 2/5/88 and you have to schedule a sales training class for two of your staff members for 3 days starting Monday, April 17 on. The best way is to create a job just for meetings, events and classes and add a task in that job for each staff member attending. Each task should be explicitly assigned to a staff member (meaning their initials are put in the Task Skill), have Remaining Workdays of 5.0 and a Not-Before Date of 4/17/88 and a Target Date of 4/21/88. The Not-Before Date will make sure the meeting is not scheduled before4/17/88 and the Target Date will flag the task if the meeting cannot occur on schedule. If you inserted this job at the bottom of the work plan, it probably wouldn't be scheduled due to conflicts caused by the jobs that appear 0074early in the plan. If, however, you inserted this job at the top of the plan it would be scheduled before any other work. The remaining work in the plan would then be scheduled around the event. Job Task Ski- Rem. Not Target No. No. Task Description ll W/D Before Date ╔════╦════╦══════════════════╤═════╤═════╤ ╤══════════╤ ╤══════════╤ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ Sales Training │ MD │ 3.0 │ │ 04/17/88 │ │ 04/21/88 │ ║ 01 ║ 02 ║ Sales Training │ JD │ 3.0 │ │ 04/17/88 │ │ 04/21/88 │ ║ 01 ║ 03 ║ Sales Training │ KS │ 3.0 │ │ 04/17/88 │ │ 04/21/88 │ 0075 Chapter 3 - Networking Tasks This is the declaration of dependencies between tasks. Using the From/To Nodes, you can relate Tasks to each other so that one Task won't be started until another is completed. For example: there are two tasks - Task one is to order a new PersonalComputer and Task two is to install it. To make these Tasks sequentially dependent you would make up a Node called INST for Install and place that node name in the TO Node for Task one and the FROM Node for Task two. You make up your own Node names like you make up your own Skill Codes.There can be as many nodes as needed and any number of Tasks can referto a node as either TO or FROM. 0076If the previous example is used and an additional task for testing thePC is added, it would appear as follows: Job Task To From Target No. No. Task Description Node Node Date ╔════╦════╦══════════════════════╤══════╤══════╤══════════╕ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ Order PC │ INST │ │ / / │ ║ 01 ║ 02 ║ Install PC │ TEST │ INST │ / / │ ║ 01 ║ 03 ║ Test PC │ │ TEST │ / / │ This could be graphically represented as: Order PC ┌────┐ Install PC ┌────┐ Test PC >────────────>│INST│>────────────>│TEST│>────────────> └────┘ └────┘ 0077ANOTHER NETWORK EXAMPLE: Job Task To From Target No. No. Task Description Node Node Date ╔════╦════╦══════════════════════╤══════╤══════╤══════════╕ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ Order PC │ INST │ │ / / │ ║ 01 ║ 02 ║ Install PC #1 │ TEST │ INST │ / / │ ║ 01 ║ 02 ║ Install PC #2 │ TEST │ INST │ / / │ ║ 01 ║ 02 ║ Install PC #3 │ TEST │ INST │ / / │ ║ 01 ║ 03 ║ Test PC │ │ TEST │ / / │ This example is similar to the previous one except three PC's are being installed. You should network the three installation tasks in parallel even if only one person is available to do the work. This will allow you to explore staffing alternatives that wouldn't be 0078possible if you networked in series, like the first example. Install PC #1 ┌─────────────────────┐ ■ Order PC's ┌────┐ Install PC #2 ┌────┐ Test PC's >──────────────>│INST│>───────────────>│TEST│>──────────────> └────┘ └────┘ Install PC #3 ■ └─────────────────────┘ 0079 Chapter 4 - The Staff Plan The staff plan is where you describe people, their skills and their availability. You usually create one staff plan for each project. Each staff plan consists of two layers: people and time. The people layer is where you declare each person and their skills. The time layer is where you describe the availability of each person in terms of their regular work rate, overtime and vacations. A staff plan can hold 99 people but only the first 50 will be used by the work scheduler. SKILLS Up to seven skills can be identified for each person in the Staff 0080Plan. These skills are matched to the skills in the Work Plan to assign tasks to people in preparation for computing a schedule. The most important skill for a person should be skill one, the next most important skill two, etc. A skill can only be three characters long so they must be an abbreviation of actual skill - for example, PLU for plumbing. There are no pre-defined skills in WorkQueue. You should record skill codes and their meanings in the file notes of the Staff Plan so you don't forget what they mean. You don't need to define all the skills a person has, only those relevant to the work at hand - so the most important skill for a person may not be their most proficient. Don't try to define skills too precisely - it's usually unproductive and confusing. 0081PEOPLE Each person on you staff should be entered into the Staff Plan, including their name, initials and skills. To be really useful, each person should be individually identified. This will allow you to make specific work assignments and to evaluate performance. In the early stages of scheduling a new project, however, it may be useful to define groups of people, instead of individuals. You do thisto find out how many people of a particular skill are needed to meet your target dates. Examples of both follow. 0082PEOPLE - person records The following is an example of a person whose initials are LD, name is Larry Davidson and has Writing and Financial Analysis skills: Per. Init- ┌───────────Skills────────── No. Ials Person's Name 1 2 3 4 5 ╔════╦═════╤══════════════════════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤═════ ║ 01 ║ LD │ Larry Davidson │ WRI │ ANA │ │ │ In this case, Writing (WRI) would be the primary skill and Financial Analysis (ANA) would be secondary. The result would be that this person would first be assigned to tasks requiring writing and assignedto financial analysis tasks only if no writing tasks were available. You make up your own skill codes - these are only examples. 0083GROUPS OF PEOPLE - person records The following is an example of a group: Per. Init- ┌─────────── Skills ────────── No. ials Person's Name 1 2 3 4 5 ╔════╦═════╤══════════════════════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤═════ ║ 01 ║ PG │ Plumber group │ PLU │ │ │ │ ║ 02 ║ EG │ Electrical group │ ELE │ │ │ │ ║ 03 ║ CG │ Carpenter group │ CAR │ │ │ │ In each case, a time record for each group can be manipulated to represent up to 20 people in each group. Assuming each person will be available 5 days per week, a time record containing a work rate of 50 days, for example, would represent 10 people. 0084SPLITTING A PERSON - person records Sometimes it is necessary to allocate a fixed portion of a person to one skill and another portion to one or more other skills. In the following example, the goal is to insure that Felix spends half his time doing plumbing jobs and the other half doing electrical jobs. To accomplish this, Felix is entered twice in the Staff Plan, each time with a different skill: Per. Init- ┌─────────── Skills ────────── No. ials Person's Name 1 2 3 4 5 ╔════╦═════╤══════════════════════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤═════ ║ 01 ║ FJ1 │ Felix Johnson │ PLU │ │ │ │ ║ 02 ║ FJ2 │ Felix Johnson │ ELE │ │ │ │ Assuming Felix is available to do work 5 days per week, starting on 008510/07/88 and into the foreseeable future, the time record for each person record would be: Per Time Start Stop Work No. No. Date Date Rate Description ╔════╦════╦══════════╤══════════╤══════╤══════════════════════╕ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ 10/07/88 │ 12/31/99 │ 2.5 │ Base Rate │ ║ 02 ║ 01 ║ 10/07/88 │ 12/31/99 │ 2.5 │ Base Rate │ Note that each time record contains half his available time. If you aren't sure how time records work, read on! 0086TIME RECORDS The availability of a person to do work is determined by the number of days they are available each week. These available days are called workdays. By using more than one time record, you can establish a workday schedule which reflects the ups and downs of availability due to overtime, vacations, military leave, etc. The workday schedule can also be used to allow for unplanned work. Forexample, a normal workday rate would be 5 days per week, however, based on you own experience you might use a rate of 4 days per week. Another way of expressing this is you can only predict 80% of the workyou are going to do in the future. 0087You can also use a reduced work rate to reflect a lower productivity rate for new employees who will need several weeks or months to reach full productivity. In this case you could, for example, set their workrate at 3 days per week for the first 6 weeks and then increase it to 5 days per week, thereafter. Each Time Record contains a start and stop date as well as a work rate, stated in workdays per week for the time span covered by the start and stop dates. No tasks can be assigned to a person until they have at least one timerecord. The following help screens contain examples of time records. 0088BASE RATE - time records This is a time record which defines the normal rate at which a person is available. For example, if a person were working full time and joined the staff on 10/7/88 for an indefinite period of time, their base rate time record would be: Per Time Start Stop Work No. No. Date Date Rate Description ╔════╦════╦══════════╤══════════╤══════╤══════════════════════╕ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ 10/07/88 │ 12/31/99 │ 5.0 │ Base Rate │ Note the Stop Date, it was set far in the future so it wouldn't have to be changed until the real Stop Date is known. If you used a Stop Date of, for example, 12/31/89 and that person remained on your staff for several years, you would have to eventually extend it. 0089VACATIONS - time records Each vacation period should be recorded in a separate time record. Forexample, using the base rate already established, a vacation time record for a two week period starting 10/31/88 through 11/11/88 would appear as: Per. Time Start Stop Work No. No. Date Date Rate Description ╔════╦════╦══════════╤══════════╤══════╤══════════════════════╕ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ 10/07/88 │ 12/31/99 │ 5.0 │ Base Rate │ ║ 01 ║ 02 ║ 10/31/88 │ 11/11/88 │ 5.0-│ Vacation │ Notice the vacation work rate is negative! Vacation is time the personisn't available to do work so you want to subtract it out. If the baserate were 4.0, the vacation rate would be -4.0, etc. 0090OVERTIME - time records While vacations subtract from the base rate, overtime adds to it. For example, if you wanted to schedule 1 day per week of additional work (overtime) for a person for the month of December, 1988, you would do it with a time record like this: Per. Time Start Stop Work No. No. Date Date Rate Description ╔════╦════╦══════════╤══════════╤══════╤══════════════════════╕ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ 10/07/88 │ 12/31/99 │ 5.0 │ Base Rate │ ║ 01 ║ 02 ║ 10/31/88 │ 11/11/88 │ -5.0 │ Vacation │ ║ 01 ║ 03 ║ 12/01/88 │ 12/31/88 │ 1.0 │ Overtime │ Note that the Work Rate is a positive number since you're adding to that person's availability. 0091WEEKENDS WorkQueue doesn't know about individual days of the week so if you schedule 6 days of work for a week, it could mean that the 6th day wasworked on Saturday, Sunday or spread over weeknights. MISCELLANEOUS The Start and Stop Dates are included in the schedule. The order in which time records appear doesn't matter. If you accidently enter a combination of time records where the result is negative, it will be re-set to zero. If a Time Record covers only one day, you don't have to enter both a start and stop date, either one will suffice. 0092Chapter 5 - Assigning Work Work can be assigned both explicitly and implicitly. EXPLICIT assignments are made when a person's initials are put in a task instead of a skill. This means that person will always be assigned to that task no matter how many changes you make to either the work or staff plans. IMPLICIT work assignments are made when a skill is put in a task. The assumption is that skill can be found in the staff plan. If more than one person has that skill, the choice is made based on rules explainedbelow. 0093The following is an example of an explicit work assignment: Per Init- ┌─────────── Skills ────────── No. ials Person's Name 1 2 3 4 5 ╔════╦═════╤════════════════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤ ║ 01 ║ KS │Karen Simpson │ FIN │ WRI │ │ │ │ By placing Karen's initials in the task skill below, only she will be assigned to the task. Job Task Sta- Rem. Rep- No. No. Task Description tus Skill W/D eat ╔════╦════╦══════════════════════╤═════╤═════╤══════╤════╤ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ Analyze Annual Stmt. │ │ KS │ 0.0 │ 0 │ 0094The following is an example of implicit work assignment: Per. Init- ┌─────────── Skills ────────── No. ials Person's Name 1 2 3 4 5 ╔════╦═════╤═════════════════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤ ║ 01 ║ KS │ Karen Simpson │ FIN │ WRI │ │ │ │ ║ 02 ║ LB │ Larry Bull │ WRI │ FIN │ │ │ │ ------------------------------------------------------------ Job Task Sta- Rem. Rep- No. No. Task Description tus Skill W/D eat ╔════╦════╦══════════════════════╤═════╤═════╤══════╤════╤ ║ 01 ║ 01 ║ Analyze Annual Stmt. │ │ FIN │ 0.0 │ 0 │ The implicit assignment was made by placing FIN in the task. 0095For implicit assignment, the following rules are used by the work scheduler to choose who gets the assignment: 1. The scheduler will find all people who have the necessary skill (FIN in this example). From this list, those that do not have enough remaining workdays available to complete the task will be discarded. That is, a task is never assigned to a person who cannot complete it. 2. The task is then assigned to the person can both start the task earliest and has the highest skill level (1 - 7) for that skill. These rules insure that the person who is most proficient in a skill gets the assignment, balanced against the need to start the task as soon as possible. In this example, Karen would get the assignment 0096because FIN is her first skill while it is the second skill for Larry.Implicit assignments allow you to more easily explore staffing alternatives. As you are about to begin work, those tasks which will be started first should be explicitly assigned. It is a good practice to explicitly assign several tasks to each person in the staff plan sinceyou can seldom work on only one task full time - additional tasks are needed to fill in the slack time (such as waiting for the paint to dry). As assigned tasks are completed, new ones should be explicitly assigned but avoid the temptation to explicitly assign all tasks. There will always, of course, be exceptions to this approach. 0097 Chapter 6 - The Holiday Schedule Are days on which no work occurs. For example, if a person is available to work five days a week, during the week that Thanksgiving falls, they would be available only three days since it is a 2-day holiday. For example: Hol. Start Stop No. Date Date Description ╔════╦══════════╤══════════╤══════════════════════╕ ║ 01 ║ 12/25/89 │ / / │ Christmas │ ║ 01 ║ 11/24/89 │ 11/25/89 │ Thanksgiving │ The holiday includes both the start and stop dates. If a holiday covers only one day, only the start or stop date is necessary. 0098 Chapter 7 - Notepads A notepad can be attached to any Job, Task, Person or Time record. Onecan also be attached to a Staff Plan or Work Plan. One common use is to record a more complete definition of the work a Job or Task represents than the 20-character description can hold. For people, it might be a history of education. Additional uses include: Record the definition of each Staff Plan skill in the Staff Plan in the file notepad (F4). This makes them available on line and in the Staff Plan report since the file notepad in printed at the start of the report. 0099 Record the definition of any status codes you make up (such as "WIP" for work in progress) in the Work Plan notepad (F4). Keep notes about the content of the Staff or Work Plan. This is especially important if you have more than one version of a plan. For particularly volatile or sensitive work, keep a diary of meetings, decisions, priority revisions, reassignments, etc. Although sensitive information about a person shouldn't be stored in a notepad, certain useful, non-sensitive information can be helpful: performance review dates, birthdays, telephone numbers, social security number, etc. 0100 Chapter 8 - Using Filters Filters are used to display, merge and print only that information youwant. There are three filters: Status, Job Number and Skill. Each filter consists of a list of up to ten values. Each filter can be used in either Include or Exclude mode. Include mode will "pass" only those items in the filter list while Exclude mode will "block" those items in the filter list. Once you set a filter, it remains in effect until you turn it off. Filters have no effect on work scheduling - all work is scheduled regardless of the filter settings. 0101STATUS FILTER For example, you have used the status code FIN to mark which tasks andjobs in a partially-completed work plan are finished and you now want a report containing only unfinished work. You would turn on (Alt+O) the status filter, key in the single code FIN and press Alt+I to set the filter to Exclude: ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐ │ │ Skill: FIN On -Exclude │ │ └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘ │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ If the filter were reset to Include, then only those Jobs and Tasks with a status of FIN would be printed. 0102SKILL FILTER A skill can be either a skill or a person's initials. For example, if you wanted the Job Screen to display only those jobs which contain tasks assigned to a person whose initials were BB, you would turn on the Skill Filter and key BB into the first filter value as follows: ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐ │ │ Skill: BB On -Include │ │ └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘ │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ The Job Screen would now show only those Jobs assigned (explicitly andImplicitly) to BB. If the Status Filter were still set as in the previous example, the combined effect could be used to print a Work Plan report containing only unfinished work assigned to BB. 0103JOB FILTER This filter is used primarily to print reports containing only specific jobs. The following Job Filter, for example, could be used to print a Work Plan Report containing only the Jobs in the list: ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐ │ │ Job: 01 03 07 On -Included │ │ └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘ │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ The Work Plan Report also has an option to print these Jobs in the order they appear in the list. 0104 Chapter 9 - Reports The reports print the Staff and Work Plans as well as three different views of the computed schedule. STAFF PLAN REPORT: All information in the Staff File is printed in this report. WORK PLAN REPORT: All information in the Work Plan is printed in this report. JOB SCHEDULE REPORT: Prints the results of work scheduling summarized at a job level. No task-level information is printed. 0105TASK SCHEDULE REPORT: Prints the results of work scheduling at a task level for each job. STAFF ASSIGNMENT REPORT: Prints the results of work scheduling at a task level for each job by person. Each of the reports can be filtered, which allows you to restrict the content of a report to only what you need. If unfiltered, all the detail is printed. 0106FORMS The schedule reports can be printed in three forms: Bar Shows duration of each Job and Task as a bar printed against a calendar background. The length of the bar defines the duration of the job or task and a [ marks the beginning and a < the end. Numeric Is the same as the bar form except instead of a bar representing the duration of a job or task, a series of number is used. Each number is the workdays used during each week. List Prints detailed information for each job or task but without the calendar background. 0107TARGET DATES In addition to showing the duration of scheduled work, the schedule reports also flag late work and unfinished work. If the job has a target date and it falls within the time period of the schedule, it will be printed as a small "t". If, according to that target date, thejob is finished late, it will be flagged and the number of weeks it is late will be printed. If the job cannot be finished, it will be flagged and the number of incomplete workdays printed. RESOLUTION AND WIDTH The schedule reports can be printed in different widths. The default is to print the entire schedule in a report one page wide. You can also print these reports two or four pages wide. The width effect the resolution of the report. The resolution of a report is the smallest increment of time that can be shown. The highest resolution is one 0108week while the lowest is 16 weeks. Resolution is affected by two factors: the time span used in the work scheduler and the width of the printed report. The work scheduler uses52 segments of time when calculating a schedule. If the time span is 1 year, each time segment will be 1 week; if 2 years then 2 weeks; if 3 years then three weeks; if 4 years then 4 weeks. Each report page prints 13 time segments. If you used a time span of 1 year in the work scheduler and left the report resolution at the default of 4, this would mean the report would be 1 page wide and eachtime segment would represent 4 weeks. 0109 ┌──────┬────────────────────────────────┐ This table shows the │ TIME │ NUMBER OF PAGES WIDE │ resolution that can be │ SPAN │ 4 │ 2 │ 1 │ obtained from a report ╞══════╪══════════╪══════════╪══════════╡ based on the time span │ 1 │ 4 weeks │ 2 weeks │ 1 week │ used in the work sched- ├──────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┤ uler and the width of │ 2 │ 8 weeks │ 4 weeks │ 2 weeks │ the report. ├──────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┤ │ 3 │ 12 weeks │ 6 weeks │ 3 weeks │ ├──────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┤ │ 4 │ 16 weeks │ 8 weeks │ 4 weeks │ └──────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┘ 0110Chapter 10 - Merging One or more files on disk can be merged into the file already loaded into memory. Both work and staff files can be merged. Merging is based on Job Numbers and Person Numbers. As a job is read from the disk file, the data in memory is scanned to see if that job exists - if so, that job and all its tasks and notepads are deleted from memory and replaced by the job in the disk file, along with all its tasks and notepads. The same process applies to each person, theirtime records and notepads. The implication is: if you want to add all the jobs in one file to another, you must first make sure that neither file has any jobs of the same number. The same comment applies to Person Number. 0111The safest way to perform a merger is: 1. Create a new, empty file by loading a file that doesn't exist yet. 2. The file you intend to merge into should be merged into the new file. 3. The remaining file(s) can then be merged into memory. This method keeps all original files intact in case you make a mistake. 0112SKILLS ANALYSIS This window displays a summation of skills as used in both the Staff Plan and Work Plan. For each Skill or Initials found in the Work Plan, the number of Remaining Workdays are totaled and displayed along with the number of people in the Staff Plan who have that skill, allocated across skill levels. The purpose of this analysis is to determine whether or not the Staff Plan is in "balance" with the Work Plan, in terms of both quality and quantity of skills. Examples follow. 0113The example below shows a Staff Plan that is out of balance with the Work Plan. First, the skill WRI has a total of 42.6 workdays remainingspread over 12 tasks but no people in the Staff Plan have that skill. None of those 12 tasks would be scheduled by the Work Scheduler. Second, the skill PRI has a total of 271 workdays remaining spread over 104 tasks but the Staff Plan has only one person with that skill and it's skill level 3. It is unlikely that all 104 tasks will be completed. The Staff Plan needs more people Rem No.of Skill Level with that skill, pre- S/I W/D Tasks 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ferrably at a higher ╒═══════╤═══════╤═════╤══╤══╤══╤══╤══╤══╤══╕ skill level. │ S:WRI │ 42.6 │ 12 │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ S:PRI │ 271.0 │ 104 │ │ │ 1│ │ │ │ │ 0114LOCATION OF WORKQUEUE FILES In general, it is advisable to store software files in a separate directory from data files. The WorkQueue program (WQ.EXE) can be started from any directory or drive as long as the directory where it is stored is in a PATH statement (see you DOS manual for a description of the PATH statement). The Printer Control file (WQPRINT.CON) and the two help files (WQHELP.SCR and WQHELP.NDX), however, cannot be "found" that way. When you attempt to print a report or display help, WorkQueue will look for the file in the current directory. If found, it will be used.If not found, you will be asked to supply the Path in which the file 0115is stored. The Path you supply will allow WorkQueue to find the files for the duration of the session but the next time WorkQueue is started, you will have to supply the Path again. One way to avoid this problem is to store the three files in the current directory. Another way is to add the location of the three files to the Environment Table by adding the following statement to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file: SET WQ=Path where Path is the location of the three files. 0116MINIMUM TIME The Work Scheduler cannot "see" individual days, the smallest increment of time it can deal with is a week. For example, the following fragment of a Job Schedule: 1 1 1 2 2 Job 15 22 29 5 12 ┌─────────────────────┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬ Build Wall >5.7 12 1.0< Each of the dates above is a Monday. Each increment of time is one week in length. The job was started the week beginning 1/15 and 5.7 workdays were scheduled during that week. What the schedule doesn't show is exactly which days of the week each of those workdays were scheduled. 0117UNFINISHED WORK This happens when either a task cannot be started or it was started but can't be finished. To find the cause, look at the Task Display, Staff Utilization Analysis, Staff Plan and Work Plan to see if any of the following apply: 1. Look in the Task Display to see if a person was assigned to the Task (a blank person means none). If none were assigned, look in the Work Plan to see if you put a skill or initials in the task. If not, the task cannot be scheduled. 2. Look in the Work Plan and see if the initials or skill in the task also in the Staff Plan. If not, no person can be assigned by the scheduler. 01183. Look in the Staff Utilization Analysis to see if the person assigned to the task has been 100% utilized. 4. Look in the Task Schedule and the Work Plan to see if the task is dependent on a previous, unfinished task. 5. Look in the Work Plan to see if the task has a Not-Before Date too far in the future. 6. Look in the Staff Plan to see if the person assigned to the Task had an ending date in their time record that ended before the Task was finished. 0119PRINTERS When modifying and existing printer or creating a new one, keep the following in mind: 1. The widest report is 68 characters wide so it isn't necessary to use compressed printing - 10 characters per inch is fine. 2. You cannot use proportional fonts. If you do, the columns used in most reports will not line up vertically. 3. You must refer to your printer manual to set the control codes. In general, most dot-matrix printers use the same codes except for the bar character. Most laser printers use a different set of codes. 0120PRINTER CONTROL CODES The printer code screen lists all the control codes for a single printer. Each row of codes applies to one portion or aspect of the reports. Whenever a report is printed, the control codes are sent to the printer at appropriate times: Master Start/end sent once at the beginning and end of each report. Page Titles on/off sent at the start and completion of the titles at the top of each report page. Headings on/off sent at the start and completion of column and section heading on each report page. 0121Details on/off sent at the start and completion of each detail line on every report page. Line Feed sent to the printer at the end of each line on each report page. Form Feed sent to the printer at the end of each page to make the printer skip to the top of the next page. Bar Character is the single character used to print the bar in the bar form of the time-series reports. Top/Bottom Margin the number of lines to be skipped at the top and bottom of each page. 0122 Left Margin The number of character positions to be skipped before each line is printed. Page Length The length of a page in terms of printed lines. Most dot-matrix printer have a page length of 66 while most laser printers are 60 lines. Examples Follow 0123If, for example, you wanted to print an entire report in compressed mode (15 characters/inch) on a dot-matrix printer, you would use Master codes as follows: If you looked in the owner's Control Code 1 2 3 manual for the printer, it ╒═════════════════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤═ would tell you that an │Master start │ 15 │ │ │ ASCII 15 will turn │Master end │ 18 │ │ │ Compressed print on and 18 turns it off. Notice that the remaining codes (2-10) are left zero since they aren't used in this example. You can, however, add up to ten codes to achieve the effect you want. 0124Another example (also for a dot-matrix printer) - if you want to printthe page headings in boldface and the details in italics: The owner's manual would tell Control Code 1 2 3 you that Escape G turns bold- ╒═════════════════╤═════╤═════╤═════╤ face on and Escape H turns it │ Headings on │ 27 │ 71 │ 0 │ off. The Escape code is an │ Headings off │ 27 │ 72 │ 0 │ ASCII 27, G is 71 and H is 72. │ Details on │ 27 │ 52 │ 0 │ │ Details off │ 27 │ 53 │ 0 │ It would also tell you that Italics are turned on with Escape 4 and off with Escape 5. The numeralfour is an ASCII 52 and the numeral five is 53. 0125PARAMETERS When you type in the command to start WorkQueue: C:\>WQ (for example) you can also include the name of the project file to be used: C:\>WQ PAINT (for a project file named PAINT) "WQ" and "PAINT" must be separated by at least one space. This will bypass the opening screen and go directly to the Main Menu. 0126SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS This system runs under DOS 2.1 or later and requires at least 400K of free memory to run (after DOS is loaded). If you are using DOS 3.1, for example, the following memory would be needed: ┌────────────────┐ WorkQueue will adjust the size of the Work │ DOS 3.1: 40k │ Plan data array to use all remaining │ WorkQueue 400k │ conventional memory. If, as in the example, │ ════ │ only 400k is available then about 150 Jobs │ to run: 440k │ and Tasks can be loaded. If 600k is available,└────────────────┘ about 1200 Jobs and Tasks can be loaded. If the Work Plan you want to load is too big to fit in available memory, WorkQueue will tell you and estimate the amount of memory needed. 0127LICENSE TERMS WorkQueue is licensed software, not public domain software or free software. WorkQueue is copyright (c) 1989, 1990 by Lane Davis, all rights reserved. 1. You may make copies of this software and share it with others for the purpose of evaluation but you must copy all the system files. WorkQueue must be copied complete with all files, including this one. 2. You may evaluate the software at no charge but if you decide to use it, you must purchase a license. 0128 3. You may not modify any of the WorkQueue files in any way or decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer them. 4. You may not sell this software or distribute it in conjunction with any other product without a specific license to do so from Lane Davis. 5. No fee, charge or other compensation may be accepted or requested by any licensee. 6. Operators of electronic bulletin board systems (Sysops) may post WorkQueue for downloading by their users only as long as the above conditions are met. 0129 7. Distributors of public domain or user supported software may distribute copies of WorkQueue for a reasonable fee, subject to the above conditions. 8. A license allows a user to use the program on only one computer at a time. DISCLAIMER: In no event will the author be liable to the user for any damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use of or inability to use this system, even if the author has been advised of the possibility of such damages, or for any claim by any other party. 0130PRICE: $40, United States dollars, for each license. Volume discounts are available. UPGRADES: If you have already purchased a license for a previous version, that license can be upgraded to cover a later version for $20. SUPPORT: Questions, comments and suggestions are encouraged. They should be directed to the author by mail or through CompuServe electronic mail ID 73577,1675. You will receive a response within a reasonable period of time, usually 1-2 weeks. Priority will be given to those who have purchased a license. 0131WARRANTY: If a license has been purchased and the system is found to be unsatisfactory, a refund can be obtained within 30 days after the purchase of the license by writing to the author. The letter must be signed by the person who purchased the license. ORDERS: License orders must be accompanied by a check - no credit cards accepted. Orders should be sent to: Lane Davis 1714 Hybrid Place Clementon, NJ 08021 You must include 0132 The name, a person or a company, to which the license is to be issued. A mailing address. The version number you currently are using. Whether you want 5.25inch (360K or 1.2meg.) or 3.5inch (720K or 1.4meg.) diskettes. A telephone number would be appreciated. When you purchase a license, or upgrade a previous license, a licensed copy of the most recent version of the system will be 0133 mailed to you. The licensed version omits the "UNLICENSED" text on the opening screen. 0134LOCAL AREA NETWORKS Like most DOS software, this system can be run from a LAN even though it has no facilities that exploit LAN capabilities. If you choose to run it on a LAN, the most important consideration is file locking. Since WorkQueue loads an entire file into memory, recordlocking cannot be performed. This means you must use the LAN operatingsystem facilities to flag all WorkQueue files as non-shareable. If youdon't, more than one person can load the same file, making updates to the file unpredictable. With respect to licensing, you must purchase enough licenses to cover the estimated maximum number of concurrent users. In other words, you don't have to buy a license for each workstation on the LAN. For example, if you estimate that no more than three people will be 0135using WorkQueue at the same time, you only need three licenses to run it on a LAN, even if there are 50 workstations. 0136FLOPPY DISK OPERATION The following comments apply only to 360K 5.25" floppy disks where disk space is a consideration. WorkQueue can be run from floppy disks. First, insert system disk 1 into drive A. Start WorkQueue by entering: A:>WQ Once the WorkQueue program has been loaded, you will be prompted to insert System Disk 2 in drive A and leave it there for the duration of the session (you don't need to use System Disk 1 again until the next time you start WorkQueue). 0137You also need a data disk in drive B. When you store the data files on floppy disks, it's a good idea to store different projects on different disks. Although the data files don't use much disk space, the accompanying note files can get very large. If you store only one set of data files on each data disk, you won't run out of space. 0138SYSTEM FILES WorkQueue consists of four system files: 1. WQ.EXE - the WorkQueue program. 2. WQHELP.SCR - contains all the help screens. 3. WQPRINT.CON - contains all the printer definitions. 4. WQHELP.NDX - index to the help screens. 0139FILE NAMES Four files are loaded into memory when WorkQueue is run: Project file,Work Plan file, Staff Plan file and the Holiday file. You can display the names of the files currently loaded by choosing File/List from themenus. If you want to load different files, use the Files/Load choice on the menus. For more information, see PROJECT FILES. 0140DATA FILES The different types of data files are identified by their DOS filenamesuffixes: FILES Data Note ╒═════════╦═══════════╤═══════════╕ │ Work ║ RDC │ RNC │ │ Staff ║ PDC │ PNC │ │ Holiday ║ HDC │ * │ └─────────╨───────────┴───────────┘ * Holiday files don't have notes. For example, the current data file for a Work Plan named "PLUMBING" would be: PLUMBING.RDC 0141DATA FILE SIZES The maximum size of the various data files are: FILE Data Files Note Files ╒═════════╦═══════════════╤═══════════════╕ │ Work ║ 30,000 bytes │ 250,000 bytes │ │ Staff ║ 5,001 │ 50,000 │ │ Holiday ║ │ * │ └─────────╨───────────────┴───────────────┘ The maximum note file size assumes you have attached a notepad to every record in the data file (at 500 bytes per notepad). It is doubtful you would ever attach this many notepads. Even if you did, a set of fully-loaded files could still be stored on one 360K floppy diskette. 0142TASK DESCRIPTION Identifies the reason for or goal of the Task. For Example: Hold Review Meeting or Publish Annual Statement. 0143STATUS Status Codes are used for both Jobs and Tasks. You can make up your own status codes to meet your needs but 3 reserved codes have actual meaning to WorkQueue: FIN (finished), CAN (cancelled) and HLD (hold). The purpose of the Status Codes is to declare the status of a Job or Task. With respect to FIN, CAN and HLD the Job status will override any Task status. The reserved codes are used by the Work Scheduler to determine if a Task or Job should be scheduled. Any of the 3 reserved codes will not be scheduled - all others will. 0144SKILL The Work Scheduler uses skills to assign people to tasks. The skill in a Task must match one or more skills in the Staff Plan or the initials of a person. If not, no person will be assigned to the Task and, therefore, it won't be scheduled. If you put a skill in a Task, the Work Scheduler will assign a person To that task based on the person's availability and the work priority.If, however, you want to assign a specific person to a Task, use theirinitials instead of a skill. 0145DATES The earliest date you can enter into WorkQueue is January 5, 1981 (01/05/81). The latest date possible is December 31, 2050 (12/31/50). If you enter a year of 00 - 50 it will be interpreted as the year 2000 - 2050. If you enter a year of 81 - 99 it will be interpreted as the year 1981- 1999. 0146TARGET DATE Is the date by which a Job or Task must be finished. If a target date is entered, the Work Scheduler will use it to determine if the work will be completed on time. If not, it will be flagged as late in the schedule screens and reports. 0147ACTUAL START and ACTUAL FINISH These dates are used to record the dates on which the job or task was actually started and finished. They are for documentation only - the system doesn't use them. 0148NOT BEFORE DATE, REMAINING WORKDAYS, REPEAT and SKIP See the User Guide for an explanation of how these are used. 0149ACTUAL WORKDAYS Is where you store the actual number of workdays that were needed to complete a task. It is used for documentation only. 0150PRIORITY Zero means no priority while one is the highest priority and 99 the lowest (zero is lower than 99). There can be more than one Job with the same Priority Number. Within the same priority, Tasks are worked in order of Task Number within Job Number. If no priorities are entered, the Job Numbers are substituted. Priority establishes the sequence in which people are assigned to tasks by the Work Scheduler. The net effect is that tasks in high priority jobs are more likely to be assigned adequate resources than those in low priority jobs. As a means of verification, the Job screen can be viewed in priority sequence via Alt+S (and back again). 0151TARGET DATE Is the date by which a Job or Task must be finished. If a target date is entered, the Work Scheduler will use it to determine if the work will be completed on time. If not, it will be flagged as late in the schedule screens and reports. 0152ACTUAL START and ACTUAL FINISH These dates are used to record the dates on which the job or task was actually started and finished. They are for documentation only - the system doesn't use them. 0153STATUS Status Codes are used for both Jobs and Tasks. You can make up your own status codes to meet your needs but 3 reserved codes have actual meaning to WorkQueue: FIN (finished), CAN (cancelled) and HLD (hold). The purpose of the Status Codes is, of course, to declare the status of the Job or Task. With respect to FIN, CAN and HLD the Job status will override any Task status. The reserved codes are used by the Work Scheduler to determine if a Task or Job should be scheduled. Any of the 3 reserved codes will not be scheduled - all others will. 0154DATES The earliest date you can enter into WorkQueue is January 5, 1981 (01/05/81). The latest date possible is December 31, 2050 (12/31/50). If you enter a year of 00 - 50 it will be interpreted as the year 2000- 2050. If you enter a year of 81 - 99 it will be interpreted as the year 1981- 1999. 0155START and STOP DATE These dates declare the duration of the holiday. Both dates are included in the duration. If the holiday covers only one day, you onlyhave to enter either date but it won't cause an error if you enter both. 0156DESCRIPTION Is where you key in the description of the holiday. For example, Thanksgiving or Labor Day. 0157START and STOP DATE These dates declare the duration of the time Record. Both the start and stop dates are included in that duration. If the time record only covers one day, you only have to enter either date - but it won't cause an error if you enter both. 0158DESCRIPTION This is where you key in a description of what the time record represents. For example, overtime or vacation. 0159WORK RATE Is a rate stated in terms of workdays per week. It can be either positive or negative, depending on the purpose. For examples of how this data element is used, see the Guide. 0160DATES The earliest date you can enter into WorkQueue is January 5, 1981 (01/05/81). The latest date possible is December 31, 2050 (12/31/50). If you enter a year of 00 - 50 it will be interpreted as the year 2000- 2050. If you enter a year of 81 - 99 it will be interpreted as the year 1981- 999. 0161PERSON NUMBER Determines the order in which people are displayed on the person screen. This sequence is also important because when the work scheduler searches for a person to assign to a task, it does so in person numbersequence, choosing the first available person with the right skill. The net effect is those people who appear early in the list are most likely to be fully utilized than those near the end. You can change the number of a person to change their sequence in the list but duplicate numbers won't be allowed. If you change the person number, the time records and all notepads are automatically changed. 0162INITIALS In addition to uniquely identifying a person, their initials are also used by the work scheduler. If you place a person's initials in a taskinstead of a skill - that person is explicitly assigned to the task. This means no one else can be assigned. Initials should be unique - they shouldn't be identical to either another person's initials or a skill. 0163PERSON's NAME Is used only for documentation, it appears on various reports and screens. 0164SKILLS Are codes (abbreviations) you make up to identify the skills possessedby a person. Examples might be ELE for electrician, PRO for programmeror PLU for plumber. More than one person can have the same skill. Skill One should be the most important skill while Skill Five should be the least important. Skill One for a person may not be their most proficient but it must be the most important for the work in the Work plan. For example, a person may be most skilled at writing but if noneof the tasks in the Work Plan require writing then it isn't needed. You aren't trying to list all a person's skills - only those needed for the Work Plan. 0165MASTER START & END Sent to the printer at the start and completion of each report. PAGE TITLES, HEADINGS & DETAILS ON/OFF Sent to the printer at the beginning and end of each line type. They can be used to print titles and headings in boldface, details in italics, etc. LINE FEED Use ASCII numbers 10,13 for almost all printers. The 10 causes the printer to move to the next line and the 13 is a carriage return. BAR CHARACTER Is used to print the bar in the time-series bar reports. If you are uncertain, use 62, which is a [. Enter only one 0166bar character (a single 62, for example). PAGE LENGTH The number of lines per page, including the top and bottom margins. This is usually 66 for a dot-matrix printer and 60 for a laser. Only column one can be used. TOP MARGIN The number of lines to skip between the top of the page and the page titles. Only column one can be used. BOTTOM MARGIN The number of lines to skip between the page number and the bottom of the page. This number goes in column one. 2-10 can be used for the Form Feed code (ASCII 12 in almost all printers). If you use the form 0167feed code, it will be sent to the printer to skip to the top of the next page. If you don't use it, blank lines will be printed to get to the top of the next page. LEFT MARGIN The number of characters to skip left of each line. 0168
