How do I schedule activities?
This article is quite detailed and covers a lot of different topics regarding adding an activity. If you're looking for a specific piece of information, you may wish to search by a keyword using CTRL + F on your keyboard (Command + F on Mac)
Below the Category section is the Schedule section, where you enter the days and times on which an activity occurs.
Let’s try a very simple example; lets say you wanted to add an activity that’s scheduled to occur weekly on Tuesdays from 09:00-17:00.
To set this in the schedule, click to change the default start and end time of 08:00 and 12:00 and change these to 09:00 and 17:00
On the next two rows, keep the default of Repeats: Weekly & Every: 1 week on.
Next, click the Tuesday from the list of the weekdays.
Click the green Create button to the bottom right corner of this pop-up box, and this will be saved to your timetable.
There’s every chance your job plan isn’t as simple as that, though, so we’ll talk you through some other options for adding more complex scheduling as well below.
In the event that you undertake an activity every other week, that’s easily entered; as it’s a schedule based on a two-week pattern, you leave the activity repeating as Weekly but change the number of weeks it occurs on from Every 1 week to Every 2 weeks. Once that has been saved, you have an activity that alternates in a two week pattern, and this will also be reflected in your Hours & PAs.
In addition to this, it might be the case that you undertake a different activity on that alternate week; if so, add first activity as above, and select this to take place on Week 1. Click Create and that’s saved for you. Then, when you add the other activity, this time you highlight this to take place on Week 2. Once you've created that activity, an alternating pattern will have been set up.
(NB: Week 1 will be highlighted by default when adding an activity which doesn't occur weekly, so click this again to deselect it in order to set up that alternating pattern).
You could have an activity on a three, four, seven, or even 49 week schedule and the above process will work for each one of them. If you were to work an activity 4 weeks of the year, weeks 1, 9, 24 and 42 of a 52 week schedule, this would be just as simple to add; simply add the activity in question, categorise as needed, click the day on which this occurs and then highlight Weeks 1, 9, 24 and 42 of the schedule before clicking Create.
In other circumstances, you might have an activity that occurs on a monthly rotation, rather than weekly.
If it’s a one month cycle (e.g. you undertake an activity on the 2nd and 4th Monday and Thursday of the month, every month) that’s added in a similar fashion to adding weekly activity activities. The first difference is changing the Repeats field from Weekly to Monthly.
After that you’ll be given two options, it will repeat either On the or Each.
If you leave the default On the selected, you’ll then be able to choose which weeks of the month they occur on in the first box (i.e on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th week of the month) and which days.
So, if you undertake an activity that happens on the 2nd and 4th week of a month on Mondays and Thursdays, select 2nd and 4th in the first row, and then tick Monday and Thursday in the subsequent row. Then, as with any activity creation, scroll down and press create.
The Each option would be used for any date specific activities; for example, if you have a regular meeting each month on the 10th, select Each and this will allow you to select the day/s on which this occurs.
If you have a flexible activity on your schedule, (i.e a responsibility as part of your Job Plan with an associated PA equivalent, but not set to occur at a particular/regular time), this should be marked as such.
To add this to your Timetable, add the activity in the usual manner and then scroll down to the Schedule section. The first row of this section will give options for Scheduled or Flexible; as the default would be Scheduled, you should instead highlight the circle next to Flexible, and the content of this section will change slightly.
At this point, it’s as simple as entering the Hours and PAs this activity would be equivalent to as a weekly average.
If the activity is a responsibility for which you know the PA equivalence, but do not know the Hours, you can leave the hours blank and just enter the PA total. If you know the amount of time worked on a weekly average, you can enter this and select whether this is Premium or Non-Premium Time, and this will be automatically calculated for you.
Your Job Plan is, as a standard, based on working occurrences happening over a 42 week year. This takes into account the 52 weeks of the year, with 10 weeks captured in Annual Leave and Study Leave allowances, as well as Bank Holidays leaving you with 42 weeks.
NB. This may be slightly different for your organisation, based on local policy and their current setup with SARD
By default, a weekly 4-hour activity would mean 1 PA allocated to that activity; the system will then extrapolate this to occur once every week and therefore 42 times a year.
However, particular activities in your Job Plan may include Prospective Cover; which essentially means the activity is worked around your normal schedule to mean that one PA per week actually gets carried out 52 times a year, rather than 42 expected as a standard
If this is the case (and it has been agreed by your organisation that this should be reflected in your Job Plan), there is a button at the bottom right of your activity pop-up box marked Prospective cover over 52 weeks. If you click this, the system will automatically calculate the additional PAs and Hours allocated to this activity as a result.
The blue i icon on the right hand side of that button will provide further information on Prospective Cover, when this would be used, and how this is calculated on the site.
These are very easily marked on job plans; when adding an activity, in the last row before the Schedule section you’ll see a button for On Call, and by default this will be marked as No. If this does need to be marked as an On Call activity, instead select Yes. The activity will then be set as Flexible On Call by default, but you can change this to Scheduled On Call if needed using the same method as explained above.
Advanced options have been added to better reflect the unique nature of specific Job Plan activities. To gain access to these functions, simply click the Advanced button to the bottom left of the pop-up activity box.
Within the Advanced options, the first row is to override the total occurrences of an activity. This will be automatically calculated based on the activity information, once this has been created, so if you're just adding a new activity and this shows as zero, this would just need to be saved.
If this number should be changed, click the box to override the total occurrences and add the new number in the textbox to replace the calculated figure currently showing.
SARD’s job plans will automatically calculate the hours and PA’s of activities added into it. Occasionally an organisation would prefer a lower or higher number of hours or PA’s (or both) to be allocated to an activity. If this is the case, click “Yes” next to “Over-ride hours or PA’s” and you’ll be given the option to manually add the hours and PA’s that should be allocated to an activity.
Once the total occurrences figure or the Hours & PAs have been changed, this will override any calculations made by the site, so the information in the schedule section will no longer dictate the calculated total. To revert to the calculated figure, these tickboxes would each need to be unticked.
You may have an activity that starts or ends partway through the Job plan year, or even an activity that is only part of your Job Plan for a matter of weeks or months. If any of these are the case, you can amend the Start or End Date, or both if needed.
By default, the start and end dates for an activity would match the Effective dates of the Job Plan (set in Section 2, General Info) and would therefore be applicable across the entire Job Plan. If you were to manually enter Start and End Dates, the calculation would take this into account, your occurrences would appear lower and the PA/Hours total would similarly be affected.
Scheduling
Below the Category section is the Schedule section, where you enter the days and times on which an activity occurs.
Let’s try a very simple example; lets say you wanted to add an activity that’s scheduled to occur weekly on Tuesdays from 09:00-17:00.
To set this in the schedule, click to change the default start and end time of 08:00 and 12:00 and change these to 09:00 and 17:00
On the next two rows, keep the default of Repeats: Weekly & Every: 1 week on.
Next, click the Tuesday from the list of the weekdays.
Click the green Create button to the bottom right corner of this pop-up box, and this will be saved to your timetable.
There’s every chance your job plan isn’t as simple as that, though, so we’ll talk you through some other options for adding more complex scheduling as well below.
Complex Scheduling - Rotational Activities
In the event that you undertake an activity every other week, that’s easily entered; as it’s a schedule based on a two-week pattern, you leave the activity repeating as Weekly but change the number of weeks it occurs on from Every 1 week to Every 2 weeks. Once that has been saved, you have an activity that alternates in a two week pattern, and this will also be reflected in your Hours & PAs.
In addition to this, it might be the case that you undertake a different activity on that alternate week; if so, add first activity as above, and select this to take place on Week 1. Click Create and that’s saved for you. Then, when you add the other activity, this time you highlight this to take place on Week 2. Once you've created that activity, an alternating pattern will have been set up.
(NB: Week 1 will be highlighted by default when adding an activity which doesn't occur weekly, so click this again to deselect it in order to set up that alternating pattern).
You could have an activity on a three, four, seven, or even 49 week schedule and the above process will work for each one of them. If you were to work an activity 4 weeks of the year, weeks 1, 9, 24 and 42 of a 52 week schedule, this would be just as simple to add; simply add the activity in question, categorise as needed, click the day on which this occurs and then highlight Weeks 1, 9, 24 and 42 of the schedule before clicking Create.
In other circumstances, you might have an activity that occurs on a monthly rotation, rather than weekly.
If it’s a one month cycle (e.g. you undertake an activity on the 2nd and 4th Monday and Thursday of the month, every month) that’s added in a similar fashion to adding weekly activity activities. The first difference is changing the Repeats field from Weekly to Monthly.
After that you’ll be given two options, it will repeat either On the or Each.
If you leave the default On the selected, you’ll then be able to choose which weeks of the month they occur on in the first box (i.e on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th week of the month) and which days.
So, if you undertake an activity that happens on the 2nd and 4th week of a month on Mondays and Thursdays, select 2nd and 4th in the first row, and then tick Monday and Thursday in the subsequent row. Then, as with any activity creation, scroll down and press create.
The Each option would be used for any date specific activities; for example, if you have a regular meeting each month on the 10th, select Each and this will allow you to select the day/s on which this occurs.
Complex Scheduling - Flexible Activities
If you have a flexible activity on your schedule, (i.e a responsibility as part of your Job Plan with an associated PA equivalent, but not set to occur at a particular/regular time), this should be marked as such.
To add this to your Timetable, add the activity in the usual manner and then scroll down to the Schedule section. The first row of this section will give options for Scheduled or Flexible; as the default would be Scheduled, you should instead highlight the circle next to Flexible, and the content of this section will change slightly.
At this point, it’s as simple as entering the Hours and PAs this activity would be equivalent to as a weekly average.
If the activity is a responsibility for which you know the PA equivalence, but do not know the Hours, you can leave the hours blank and just enter the PA total. If you know the amount of time worked on a weekly average, you can enter this and select whether this is Premium or Non-Premium Time, and this will be automatically calculated for you.
Complex Scheduling - Prospective Cover
Your Job Plan is, as a standard, based on working occurrences happening over a 42 week year. This takes into account the 52 weeks of the year, with 10 weeks captured in Annual Leave and Study Leave allowances, as well as Bank Holidays leaving you with 42 weeks.
NB. This may be slightly different for your organisation, based on local policy and their current setup with SARD
By default, a weekly 4-hour activity would mean 1 PA allocated to that activity; the system will then extrapolate this to occur once every week and therefore 42 times a year.
However, particular activities in your Job Plan may include Prospective Cover; which essentially means the activity is worked around your normal schedule to mean that one PA per week actually gets carried out 52 times a year, rather than 42 expected as a standard
If this is the case (and it has been agreed by your organisation that this should be reflected in your Job Plan), there is a button at the bottom right of your activity pop-up box marked Prospective cover over 52 weeks. If you click this, the system will automatically calculate the additional PAs and Hours allocated to this activity as a result.
The blue i icon on the right hand side of that button will provide further information on Prospective Cover, when this would be used, and how this is calculated on the site.
Complex Scheduling - On Call activities
These are very easily marked on job plans; when adding an activity, in the last row before the Schedule section you’ll see a button for On Call, and by default this will be marked as No. If this does need to be marked as an On Call activity, instead select Yes. The activity will then be set as Flexible On Call by default, but you can change this to Scheduled On Call if needed using the same method as explained above.
Advanced Section
Advanced options have been added to better reflect the unique nature of specific Job Plan activities. To gain access to these functions, simply click the Advanced button to the bottom left of the pop-up activity box.
Advanced Section - Overriding Occurrences
Within the Advanced options, the first row is to override the total occurrences of an activity. This will be automatically calculated based on the activity information, once this has been created, so if you're just adding a new activity and this shows as zero, this would just need to be saved.
If this number should be changed, click the box to override the total occurrences and add the new number in the textbox to replace the calculated figure currently showing.
Advanced Section - Overriding Hours & PAs
SARD’s job plans will automatically calculate the hours and PA’s of activities added into it. Occasionally an organisation would prefer a lower or higher number of hours or PA’s (or both) to be allocated to an activity. If this is the case, click “Yes” next to “Over-ride hours or PA’s” and you’ll be given the option to manually add the hours and PA’s that should be allocated to an activity.
Once the total occurrences figure or the Hours & PAs have been changed, this will override any calculations made by the site, so the information in the schedule section will no longer dictate the calculated total. To revert to the calculated figure, these tickboxes would each need to be unticked.
Advanced Section - Start and End Dates
You may have an activity that starts or ends partway through the Job plan year, or even an activity that is only part of your Job Plan for a matter of weeks or months. If any of these are the case, you can amend the Start or End Date, or both if needed.
By default, the start and end dates for an activity would match the Effective dates of the Job Plan (set in Section 2, General Info) and would therefore be applicable across the entire Job Plan. If you were to manually enter Start and End Dates, the calculation would take this into account, your occurrences would appear lower and the PA/Hours total would similarly be affected.
Updated on: 21/08/2024
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