This description is divided into the following sections:
An Activity in PSO can be split up into multiple visits. If the work requires that the resource needs to visit the location multiple times, due to for example the duration of the work, the Activity can be divided into the visits needed. The resource might for example start to work on an activity in the afternoon (the first visit) and need to come back the next day to complete the work (the second visit of the same Activity). The Activities that can be split into visits are Activities of the class 'CALL'. Each Visit will have a Visit Id. The Visit Id starts with Visit Id 1 for the first visit of the Activity and continues as a sequence number for the following visits. An Activity that is not split up into multiple visits will then have Visit Id = 1. In the Scheduling Schema the Visit Id is handled on the Entity <Activity_Status> as an Integer.
Note: The split of an Activity into multiple visits is for one specific resource. I.e the same resource must be allocated for all the visits of the same activity.
There are a couple of parameters that controls the visit handling in PSO Scheduling. The parameters are: Minimum Visit Duration, Cost of Split and Allow Multiple Visits. These Parameters can be defined on Activity Types in Service and Maintenance/Scheduling/Basic Data/Scheduling Basic Data and on the Work Tasks in Service and Maintenance/Work Task Management/Work Task. On the Activity Types in the basic data the option is there to mark which Activity Types that should be allowed to be split into visits. This is done by ticking the checkbox Allow Multiple Visits on the Activity Types. A Work Tasks that is created with a certain Activity Type marked with Allow Multiple Visits will then be set as Allow Multiple Visits and the Activity/Activities for this Work Task could be split up into a number of visits if necessary in PSO.
An Activity that is scheduled with visits is handled with some differences compared to an Activity that is not split up into multiple visits. For a split Activity that is within the schedule and allocated to a resource the resulting allocation suggestions sent back to IFS Applications will have a row for each visit in the <Activity_Status> Entity. In the Allocation tab in Work Task/Scheduling/Allocations the allocations suggestions will have the ID of each visit in the Visit Id field. If the Activity is not split the Visit Id is always 1 for such an Activity. If the Activity is split there will be one record for each Visit Id in the allocations-tab.
Two of the statuses in PSO are related to a splittable Activity. These statuses are: Follow On and Visit Complete. These would only be applied for Activities that are set as Allow Multiple Visits.
For Activities that are scheduled with multiple visits the tracking of the estimated remaining time of the work is an important aspect. To track this, and to update the duration of the full Activity accordingly to estimated remaining time, the Time To Completion should be stated when each visit is completed. Example is an Activity of 5 hour duration that is split into 2 visits for the work. Visit 1 is 4 hours. Visit 2 is 1 hour. When executing the work and changing the status of visit 1 to complete there will be an option to state the Time to Completion. The default option given in the Time to Completion dialog will be the Activity Duration deducted with actual hours spent on the job uptil that point. The actual hours is calculated from the precious visit work assignments start until set to completed (denoted on each Work Assignment as Actual Worked Hours). The value in the Time to Completion field can be edited. If it is increased by 1 hour the duration of the Activity will be increased by 1 hour, resulting in a 6 hour Activity in this example. This means that additional visits will be scheduled by PSO or Follow On visits will extend their duration accordingly (in this case Visit 2 could be scheduled as 2 hour duration). In the same way the duration of the Activity will decrease with the corresponding amount if the user edits the Time to Completion to a lower value.
When the Time to Completion is set to 0 hours, meaning that the job is finished, the remaining visits scheduled will be removed. This is because that all the work is seen as done when time to Completion is set as 0 hours and there will be no need t act on the next-coming visits for this job.
When a resource is not able to complete the work for a split Activity it is recommended to mark the work as Incomplete and add a new Activity/Work Task for the remaining work. This allows for more flexibility in setting the requirements for the re-visit rather than using split activities for the re-visits of such work. When incompleting the work assignment an Incomplete Cause must be defined. There is also the possibility to enter the expected remaining duration of the work when incompleting. The expected remaining duration enterred in the incomplete cause dialog will update the duration of the work task activity with the enttered value.