Planner - ORCA Docs

The Planner shows two weeks at a time with your people down the side and the days across. Each coloured block is a person on a job. Drag a block to move it, click an empty day to book someone, and anywhere someone is double-booked the day turns amber.

It has no data of its own. Everything on it is a calendar event, and everything you do on it changes a calendar event. So the calendar, the engineers' Today page and the night-before texts (see Site Clock) all read the same plan, and nobody has to type it in twice.

The Planner is a module. The ORCA team switches it on for your account, and once it is on you will see Planner in the sidebar. If you do not, ask us.

Reading the Planner

Open Planner from the sidebar. It starts on the Monday of this week and runs for fourteen days.

Rows are people. Everyone with the Operative role always has a row, so an empty week shows you who is free. Anyone else who has a booking in the fortnight gets a row too.
Blocks are bookings. A job keeps the same colour wherever it appears, so you can follow one job across the fortnight. A booking that isn't linked to a job (a holiday, college) is grey. Click a block's name to open the job.
Today has a warm line under its date, and weekends are tinted.
Booked is the last column: a small bar and a count such as 7/10, meaning that person is booked on 7 of the 10 weekdays shown. If they have clashes, the number of days with a clash appears underneath.

Use Two weeks before, This week and Two weeks after to move about. Calendar takes you to the calendar itself.

Clashes

If someone has two bookings on the same day, that day is shaded amber and both blocks shrink to half height so they fit. That is all it does. ORCA doesn't stop you double-booking someone, because plenty of people really are on two jobs in a day.

Moving a booking

Drag a block onto another person's row, another day, or both.

All its days move. If the booking runs Monday to Wednesday and you drop it on the following Thursday, it now runs Thursday to Saturday. Drag from whichever day of the booking you like. What counts is how far you move it.
The times stay. A 7:30 start is still a 7:30 start on the new day.
A shared booking is split. If three people are on one event and you drag one of them to a new day or person, only that person moves. The other two stay exactly where they were. ORCA does this by taking that person off the original and giving them a copy.
Dropped onto a colleague already on it, on the same day, the two of them simply share the booking.

When it's done, a short note at the bottom of the page tells you who is now booked and from when.

Dragging needs a mouse, so on a phone you can read the Planner but not move things on it.

Booking someone onto a job

Click an empty day on someone's row. A Book box opens, headed with their name and the day.

Type in Filter by number or client to narrow the list, then pick the job from Pick the job. The list is your open jobs.
Set For how many days in a row, from 1 to 14.
Click Book.

ORCA creates an all-day calendar event linked to the job, with that person assigned. It is the same kind of event you would make from the calendar, so it appears there straight away, and the night-before text and the engineer's Today page pick it up.

The job list comes from the job list your Site Clock uses. If your account has no site clock set up, the box says so and suggests adding the event on the calendar instead.

Taking someone off

Hover over a block and a small cross appears. Click it and ORCA asks you to confirm, because it removes that person from every day of the booking. If they were the last person on it, the calendar event goes too.

Who can change it

Anyone can look. Changing it is for the office: everyone except people whose only role is Operative. Engineers see the same Planner, read-only, with no cross on the blocks, and clicking an empty day does nothing.

If your old planner was a section of its own, that one is hidden and this is the only Planner in the sidebar. The records in the old section are kept, just not shown.