Workflow Scheduling within XPM

Background of Issue

A client engagement can contain multiple tasks such as annual accounts, GST's, coaching, etc.    These tasks need to be allocated so your practice manager has visibility of capacity within the organisation and your staff are aware of what to be working on and when these tasks are due.  XPM does not contain scheduling or capacity planning so we have created some reports to assist with scheduling and capacity planning within XPM. 

Our process involves using the report builder and the job task allocation reports to drive workflow. Your practice manger would schedule out all of the work at the start of each financial year.  They will assign tasks to staff members with a due date and time budget which then populates the staff members workflow schedules.  The workflow schedule reports are a way for staff to login and view exactly what tasks they have been assigned to and what the expectations are around task timeframes.  Upon tasks completion, the staff member simply checks off the task which will remove the completed task from their workflow schedule.  

An overview of workflow scheduling within XPM can be found here.

How to Resolve

There are 3 reports required to roll out scheduling within your practise:

1. Scheduling Report
2. Monthly Capacity Report
3. Staff Work Schedule Report

The scheduling report contains all the jobs rolled over within the organisation. The report lists all the tasks to be completed for the year sorted by the client name. We use this report to click into each job and schedule the work out.  Scheduling the work populates the monthly capacity and staff work schedule reports.

The monthly capacity report shows you how much work you have scheduled for a month across your organisation.  We define the month and the report will list all of your staff with how much work they have booked out for that month. This report is useful for practise managers to see where there are capacity holes or who is overbooked for the month.  From here they can look at re-scheduling the work if required.

The staff work schedule reports lists all the tasks a staff member is to complete for each month with the estimated time they have to complete the work.  We can define the staff in the report criteria to create custom work schedule reports for each staff member.  This gives our staff the ability to login and view their own work schedule report.  This report provides visibility of the work staff have on as well acting as a tool for practise managers to assist staff who are falling behind in their workflow.

The videos below will take you through how to build and use these reports.

1. Scheduling Report
2. Monthly Capacity Report
3. Staff Work Schedule Report

It is important to note that your task estimated times must be entered and up to date as this is what drives the capacity reporting.

Steps to Resolve

• Build the reports above using the report builder in XPM.
• Use the Scheduling report to click through to jobs that require scheduling.
• Click the pencil icon next to each task name to edit the task.
• Tick the Scheduled Task checkbox.  It is very important that the Scheduled Task box is checked. If this checkbox is left un-checked then the scheduling dates will not be saved.
• Enter start and due dates, assign staff and allocate time.
• Hit Save.
• Repeat for all tasks within that job and all jobs on the scheduling list.
• Review the capacity report.  From here you may need to re-schedule tasks to adjust capacity.
• Create individual workflow schedule reports for staff members.
• Ask staff members to save their workflow schedule report as a report favourite for easy reference.

Timeframes

For a small practise we would recommend setting aside 3- 4 full days to build the reports, schedule the work, review the organisations capacity and review staff work schedules. It takes less than 5 minutes to schedule tasks within a job.   Planning the staff allocation is the most time consuming task. The bulk of the scheduling work is completed at the start of the financial year so only monthly maintenance is required to review the schedule and schedule any new jobs that pop up throughout the year.