Notes from the webinar:
How CrewCal thinks:
PART 1 – CrewCal is not a calendar. It’s a calendar reader and understander.
CrewCal is an intelligent scheduling assistant
– Before you turn on CrewCal look at your connections and see what calendars you have given ResponsiBid access to
– ResponsiBid (not CrewCal) writes to these.
– Depending on the calendar, ResponsiBid could write a simple event (Google Calendar) or entire work order (Jobber/ Customer Factor)
– The main thing is that ResponsiBid is writing to your calendar whether you are using CrewCal or not. CrewCal reads the calendar and then finds the best spot to place jobs based on what you teach it about how your crews work and who is on each crews and on which days. When CrewCal reads the calendar it intelligently makes suggestions based on that information.
– Sometimes people ask “Where can I look at the CrewCal Calendar? I can’t find where to look at it.” This question is a trick question because you look at your calendar wherever your calendar is (Google Calendar, your CRM, etc) – CrewCal’s function is to look at your calendar and find the right date and time for a specific job for a specific customer.
Think of it this way. CrewCal works like a person on the phone who does scheduling. Without 4 ingredients, the scheduler can’t really do much. And CrewCal can’t either.
If we don’t have all the ingredients then we don’t have CrewCal.:
1. A calendar to read from that is associated with each crew.
2. CrewCal needs to be taught which crews can do the different types of work, and how fast they work.
3. Who works on each crew each day.
4. A Customer who we know where they live and what work they want done.
But the person isn’t the calendar, just like CrewCal isn’t the calendar.
Once all of these principles make sense then CrewCal will be much easier to setup and manage
– CrewCal, at it’s core, considers everything you teach it to help YOU to schedule.
– Then if you turn on the customer see-scheduling feature it will only offer the most optimal spots to your customer.
– In your CrewCal settings you can
1. Turn on CrewCal for YOU
2. Turn on CrewCal for YOUR CUSTOMERS
3. Setup Each Crew’s capabilities
4. Setup your shifts
5. Assign people to crews
6. Setup a setting for if customers try to schedule but can’t.
PART 2 – Setting up a crew
– You will be able to attach a CrewCal read to any of your calendars that ResponsiBid is already connected to
– You need to think of each crew as a “resource” like a truck, or the group of people that would visit job sites together. You can call it whatever you want, but that won’t change where it’s reading from, or ResponsiBid is writing to.
– You can direct traffic, but be sure to get it right.
— write to is the link area
— read from is the “ical file” if you’re using a crm connection that will automatically be entered probably. If not, you need to grab it.
– You then can teach CrewCal all the settings it needs to know.
— Allow scheduling to happen
— Starting location
— time zone
— preferred and max driving distances (for a job to qualify as preferred, it has to be less time AND distance).
— How soon can customers schedule themselves
— First appointment of the day rules
— Services and rates
— Assign shifts (talk about that next)
You can watch these videos to see how to connect the following calendars:
- Connect CrewCal to your Jobber calendars
- Connect CrewCal to your Customer Factor calendars
- Connect your CrewCal to Google calendars
- Connect CrewCal to your Service Monster calendars
- Connect CrewCal to read-only calendars – HCP
Part 3 – Setting up shifts, people, and final settings
– The shift controls the windows of time that CrewCal will look in to find availability on a generic level
– You can have as many shifts as you want and if they overlap CrewCal is ok with that, but at the end of the day, it’s what creates the canvas for jobs to be scheduled in.
– People can be assigned to a shift, but by default, CrewCal always assumes that 1 person will be on a shift at all times.
– Once you have multiple people on a shift CrewCal can work it’s magic to figure out all sorts speed variations.
– Other settings allow you to send a message to a customer who can’t schedule themselves (no preferred recommendations)
– And how far out they can schedule themselves
PART 4 – How to see what CrewCal is thinking
– When you schedule as the admin you can see what CrewCal is thinking and you will be able see all the recommendations.
– If CrewCal is not making recommendations it could be:
— The job is just too big for one day for one crew. You’ll want to consult your calendar to schedule this one out yourself.
— No crews are able to do some of the work in the job. You’ll need to go into the CrewCal settings and teach it that someone can do it. Remember that bid type matters.
— The address is weird and Google is telling CrewCal that it’s unreasonably far.
– If you want to schedule time off, be sure to do that in your calendar. CrewCal respects time that is busy, but if you put an address in the event, CrewCal will be able to use that to schedule around the time off if it doesn’t take up the whole day.
Understanding the pins: Green is good! Yellow is further than preferred, and red is beyond your max distance.
Understanding the capacity: Green is good! You will still have more than 20% of the working day available. Yellow is almost full between 80-100% full for the day, and red means that overtime would be required.
– You can schedule outside of the recommendations!
– When you get back to ResponsiBid you’ll see the opportunity to see what ResponsiBid is going to write. All CrewCal did was bring back your selection.
– Once you save it and schedule ResponsiBid pushes the information to the calendar and it writes it all down.
– That’s it.
PART 5 – Customer self-scheduling
– If it’s green/green, they can pick it.
— if no options are available to the customer that means there were no green/green options. You can verify it yourself too.
– You can edit a job in your calendar and CrewCal reads next time it will know that you made it bigger or that the time is available/moved, etc.
That’s it.
It’s the most intelligent scheduling software of it’s kind and as such there is a bit to know and to teach it… but it makes it possible for someone who doesn’t know your area, your crews, or even your business to give bids and schedule like a veteran scheduler. We hope you love this functionality and if you ever have questions don’t hesitate to chat with us!
Happy ResponsiBidding!