Setting Up Priority Values With Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization

When the optimization engine calculates the score for a schedule, it considers the penalty applied to each appointment that can’t be scheduled. When the engine compares two schedules, the one with the lowest total penalty is preferred.

The total penalty for not scheduling an appointment is composed of two parts:

• Base penalty. The penalty value assigned when an appointment isn’t scheduled. This value is calculated as the sum of all service objective weights configured in the scheduling policy + 100. For example, if a scheduling policy is configured with objective weights.
  • Minimize Travel: 100
  • Schedule ASAP: 20
  • Preferred Resource: 50
  The weight of the base objective is (100+20+50) + 100 = 270. This formula makes sure that the penalty for not scheduling an appointment is always higher than the penalty for scheduling an appointment.
• Priority penalty. The penalty value is based on the priority value. The priority penalty value is calculated as the sum of all service objective weights configured in the scheduling policy x 50 x the percentage corresponding to the priority value).

When you use a 1 to-10 priority scale, the penalty percentage values assigned to priority values are nonlinear.

Priority Value	Penalty
1	100%
2	80%
3	60%
4	20%
5	15%
6	10%
7	8%
8	6%
9	4%
10	2%

When you use a 1 to 100 scale, the penalty percentage values assigned to priority values are linear.

Priority Value	Penalty
1	100%
2	99%
3	98%
4	97%
5	96%
Etc
97	4%
98	3%
99	2%
100	1%

For example, if an appointment has a priority of 3 and the scheduling policy is configured with these the following objective weights.

• Minimize Travel: 100
• Schedule ASAP: 20
• Preferred Resource: 50

The total penalty for not scheduling the appointment is base penalty + priority penalty. Using a 1 to-100 scale:

• Base penalty = (100+20+50) + 100 = 270
• Priority penalty = (100+20+50) X 50 X 0.98 = 8,330

The total penalty for not scheduling the appointment = 270 + 8,330 = 8,600.

The total penalty calculation provides the optimizer guidance on which appointments are more important to schedule and which appointments can be left off the schedule when there’s no availability to schedule all appointments. Consider a lower priority appointment with priority 53. The total penalty for not scheduling that appointment is ((100+20+50) + 100) + ((100+20+50) X 50 X 0.48) = 4,350.

Because the penalty for not scheduling a priority 3 appointment is higher than the penalty for not scheduling a priority 60 appointment, the engine prefers a schedule where the priority 3 appointment is scheduled.

The nonlinear penalty percentage for the 1 to-10 scale and the broader 1 to-100 scale is designed to handle scenarios where scheduling multiple lower-priority appointments is more valuable than scheduling a single higher-priority appointment. For example, a priority 1 appointment incurs a penalty of 8,770 for not being scheduled, while a priority 3 appointment incurs a penalty of 8,600. While the penalty for not scheduling a priority 3 appointment is less than the penalty for scheduling a priority 1 appointment, the penalty for not scheduling two priority 3 appointments is higher (8,600x2=17,200 which is greater than 8,770) and preferred over one priority 1 appointment.

Using the scale of priority values, you can choose values for service appointments so that a higher-priority appointment can still outweigh multiple lower-priority appointments. For example, assuming scheduling an emergency appointment is more important than scheduling two installation appointments. You can set the priority value for the emergency to 1 and the priority value for an installation appointment to 53. The penalty incurred for scheduling an emergency at priority 1 is 8,770 and the penalty incurred for scheduling two installation appointments at priority 53 is 8,700, such that the penalty incurred for scheduling the emergency is higher than the total penalty incurred for scheduling two install appointments.