How Appointment Distribution Works

How the Resource Utilization Score Is Calculated

Salesforce Scheduler tracks all service appointments and their assigned resources, and it stores resources’ utilization scores in the Appointment Schedule Aggregate object. The utilization score calculation is an asynchronous process. When a service appointment is created, modified, or canceled, the assigned service resource’s utilization score is automatically updated. If you mark a future appointment complete or can’t complete, the service resource is relieved and the utilization score is updated.

Depending on the utilization count type that you selected when defining your appointment assignment policy, the utilization score is calculated. The utilization count type provides two options for calculating the utilization score: the number of minutes a service resource is occupied for or the number of appointments a service resource is assigned. To select the frequency at which the utilization is calculated, define a value for the utilization calculation frequency in your appointment assignment policy. You can choose from Weekly, Monthly, and Parameter-based duration options.

Scheduling is a performance-intensive process. As the number of eligible resources increases, Salesforce Scheduler takes longer to fetch the resource list. To optimize the performance, Salesforce Scheduler shows the 10 least occupied eligible resources. To change the default number of service resources shown, change the value for the Number of Resources to Show (Appointment Distribution) flow attribute. If every one of these 10 resources is booked for a time slot, that time slot isn’t displayed when scheduling an appointment.

Appointment Distribution with Regular Scheduling

During an appointment scheduling process, Salesforce Scheduler fetches and shows a list of all the eligible service resources for the selected work type and service territory. However, when appointment distribution is enabled, based on the utilization calculation frequency, Salesforce Scheduler uses the service resources’ utilization score for a specific period to suggest the least occupied resources.

• Utilization Calculation Frequency: Weekly

  Salesforce Scheduler checks eligible service resources’ utilization scores for the current week and identifies the least occupied resources for the week. Then Salesforce Scheduler checks the resources’ availability for the next 31 days and, by default, sorts them based on their earliest availability date. To sort the resources based on their workload with the least occupied resource at the top, set the Show Service Resources by Availability flow attribute to False.

  

  Note To define the maximum number of least occupied resources to show, use the Number of Resources to Show (Appointment Distribution) flow screen attribute.
• Utilization Calculation Frequency: Monthly

  Salesforce Scheduler checks eligible service resources’ utilization scores for the current month and identifies the least occupied resources for the month. The rest of the behavior is the same as it is for weekly.

• Utilization Calculation Frequency: Parameter-Based

  Salesforce Scheduler checks eligible service resources’ utilization scores for the next 31 days from the current date and identifies the least occupied resources for the month. The rest of the behavior is the same as it is for weekly.

Appointment Distribution with Anonymous Scheduling

During an anonymous appointment scheduling process, Salesforce Scheduler fetches all the eligible service resources for the selected work type and service territory and shows their time slots on the time slot screen. However, when appointment distribution is enabled, Salesforce Scheduler uses service resources’ utilization scores to find and show the time slots for the least occupied resources. When the user selects a time slot, the least occupied resource on that time slot is automatically assigned to the appointment.

The utilization score that’s considered for identifying the least occupied resources depends on the utilization calculation frequency. For anonymous scheduling, we recommend that you use parameter-based frequency. To identify the least occupied resources for that period, Salesforce Scheduler checks resources’ utilization scores for the number of days shown on the Time Slot screen. It then shows the available time slots pertaining to those resources.

Note For the weekly or monthly frequency, the actual date range that’s used to calculate the utilization scores can be different from the range that’s displayed on the Time Slot screen. That means some of the displayed time slots can be based on obsolete utilization scores. Therefore, to avoid incorrect resource allocation, we don’t recommend using weekly or monthly frequency with anonymous scheduling.

Appointment Distribution with Multi-Resource Scheduling

Salesforce Scheduler considers equal duration of time for each service resource when calculating utilization for multi-resource appointments. For example, three service resources are scheduled for a multi-resource appointment for 30 minutes. When calculating the resource utilization, Salesforce Scheduler considers each of these resources busy for 30 minutes out of the total time duration selected for utilization calculation.

Appointment Distribution with Concurrent Scheduling

Salesforce Scheduler multiplies the concurrent appointment time slot by the number of people the appointment is scheduled for when calculating utilization for concurrent appointments. For example, a service resource has a scheduled concurrent appointment with three people for a work type for 1 hour. When calculating the resource utilization, Salesforce Scheduler considers the service resource for 3 hours out of the total time duration selected for utilization calculation.