Overview

Circuit scheduling is feature of the Autoscheduler which allows multiple jobs on different locations, to be scheduled as one. 

Circuit scheduling helps in the following situations:

  •  When there are some locations that no one wants to do. These less desirable locations can be placed in the same circuit as the very desirable ones so that way the shoppers would have to apply and accept all if they want to do the shops and get paid.
  •  When the shoppers would rather do a bunch of far away shops rather than just drive the distance for one.
  •  When some locations have special needs. Say you need to get past airport security and it would just be easier to schedule an entire circuit of these locations and assign them to one person.

Creation

To create circuit sets (each containing a number of circuits) and circuits (each containing a number of locations) for scheduling go to the Manage/Unlimited Location Groups page. Main Admin --> CLIENTS --> Manage --> Unlimited Location Groups.


This page provides an interface to add/edit/delete unlimited location groups and circuits, which are similar in structure. Unlimited Location Groups are used for reporting whereas circuits are used for scheduling. The other difference between groups and circuits is that circuits do not allow any location to appear more than once in the circuit.


Once you have your circuits created for the given client we can schedule by them by going through the normal Session Creation process. Regular, self assign, or Qualified Self Assign profiles can be used with circuits. At step 2 in the Autoscheduler process where you select the locations to schedule, pick a circuit set from the drop down then choose the circuits to schedule.


The circuit pay is simply a sum of the pay for each location in the circuit. The circuit bonus pay is a sum of the bonus pay for each location in the circuit. For the purposes of circuits the shopper never sees the individual location pay as they are required to complete all shops to get paid.


Shopper Side

Shoppers can apply for circuits the same way as they do for regular shops - on the Job Board, or the link from the posting email. To indicate which shops are part of a circuit a little "C" symbol displays next to the shop and clicking it bring up a popup that says how many shops are actually in this circuit. Once in the Shopper Application page, the display groups all locations for the circuit, shows the circuit pay and any circuit bonuses. The shopper has to apply/self assign all shops from the circuit.


To remove applications for a circuits, the shopper can go to the same place as regular shops i.e. My Apps and can click "Delete all applications for this circuit" (all the locations that belong to a circuit are grouped).


If the MSP has the confirmation module, the shopper would have to confirm each shop from the circuit individually.

When a shopper gets assigned a circuit it will show up in their Shopper Log with all the locations for that circuit grouped.


Scheduler Admin

To assign circuits, the scheduler can go to Process Apps from View Sessions or Process Single from the Scheduler Log. The difference here is that once a location is selected all locations that belong to that same circuit are connected, so that the scheduler can assign the whole circuit to the shopper. All the functionality of regular shop processing like search for shopper, reassign, cancel are here as well for the circuit. To manipulate single locations from this circuit, the Circuit Manager page is used.


The Circuit Manager page can be accessed from Process Apps/Single or from Edit Shops. 


The Circuit Manager page has 2 views based on weather a shopper is assigned to the selected circuit or not. The following operations can be performed for any of the locations that belong to this circuit:

With no shopper assigned:

  •  Keep with this circuit - Nothing is changed here
  •  Split to New circuit - Splits the location from the circuit and creates another circuit with it. All the locations that get split to New Circuit are grouped into one new circuit.
  •  Remove from circuit  - Removes the shop from the circuit, but does not create a second circuit
  •  Delete shop altogether - Deletes the shop completely

With a shopper assigned

  •  Keep Shopper- Gives you a link to Edit Shops in case you wish to change the shop's dates or pay.
  •  Remove Shopper (only NEW shops)- Removes this one shop from the Shopper's log and separates the shop from the circuit
  •  Reassign to other shopper (only NEW shops) - Removes the shop from the circuit and reassigns the shop to another shopper (gives you a link to Process Single to do the actual reassignment).
  •  Delete shop altogether - Cancels shopper for this location only and deletes the shop completely

Upon submission of the modifications to the circuit with a shopper assigned the shopper is sent an email with the changes to their circuit.