Reverse Planning and Easy Time Sheet Allocation
The concept of the Plug in is to allow the Project Manager to schedule resources within Assistance PSO and to pass that schedule to the users Outlook Calendar with an XML file. The user can then make changes within Outlook based around his availability and other commitments and to firm the schedule up with the clients. Once this schedule has been firmed up in Outlook the new schedule is sent back to Assistance PSO. Assistance PSO and Outlook are both synchronised with the same scheduled appointments.
The process flow is therefore:
- Within PSO a new project is added with all relevant commercial details
- Project estimation is entered based on the expectations of the client and the PSO organisation.
- The estimation is transferred to planning which defines the expected schedule of activities.
- The Planning data is transferred to Outlook via invites.
- Within Outlook the user changes and modifies the appointments in line with the users availability and commitments.
- The revised scheduled is transferred back to planning (item 3 above).
- Finally when the schedule has been agreed etc the Time Sheet is integrated with Outlook and completed task / appointments are returned to PSO as completed time etc