With the high-level challenges identified, more specific information needs to be gathered in order to design the solution from the correct perspective and with the required depth.
Our solution is going to be built based primarily on the needs of one group, although two other groups might also be involved as the solution matures. To fully understand the needs of the solution, each user group needs to provide information about the specific tasks that group needs to complete within the system. This information will then be used to design and develop the solution.
There will be one or more schedulers in one or more locations. From the business perspective, this allows for flexibility and redundancy, but it means that the schedule needs to be maintained in a location that all schedulers can access.
Schedulers take calls from customers and create appointments in the system. They need to see what’s in the appointment calendar and which technicians are available so that appointments can be made.
Schedulers also prepare the daily work assignments for the technicians.
Technicians won’t directly access the system in the initial deployment described in this chapter, but they can and likely will be more involved in subsequent phases as capabilities are added.
Technicians need to see what work has been assigned to them and what the details are for the customer and the work to be done. For this most basic scenario, they will get their daily appointments from the schedulers who produce reports based on the overall schedule.
Building a more mature solution requires technicians to be registered users of the system so that they can access their specific calendars and assignments. Other functionality is also available for technicians, which we’ll cover in the section Reviewing the Platform.
There are two key types of data used in this solution: the technicians being scheduled and the appointments themselves.
The technicians being scheduled will be managed in a list of their names and with descriptions of the skills and services they offer:
Name
Description
The Resources list will primarily be a lookup or reference list for the appointment data that drives the rest of the functionality.
Appointments are the main data elements you’ll be dealing with in this solution. You need to be able to capture the core elements of an appointment as it is set up with a customer, while also scheduling it at a time they request that is also available in your technicians’ schedule:
Customer name
Address or location of the work
Contact phone number
Contact email address
Start date/time
End date/time
Category of work
Description of work
Technician assigned
The primary need for this scenario is to replace the old scheduling book with an online scheduling solution that multiple people can maintain. After that core piece is created, other improvements can be implemented that directly affect customer service and communications.
Now the requirements identified will be aligned with SharePoint capabilities wherever possible, and a solution design will begin to emerge.