Set an appointment schedule

Setting the right parameters for your schedule enables your facility to run more efficiently. Creating the proper slots and reservations allow your schedulers to book appointments according to your customized parameters. Prior to setting up your appointment schedule,

you first need to configure your tenant for appointment scheduling and your location scheduling settings. For more information on configuring your tenant for appointment scheduling and configuring location schedule settings, see the following articles:

• How to configure appointment scheduling settings in the Admin console
• Managing appointment schedule details

Note: Only Turvo users with the role Owner or higher can set up appointment schedules.

Consider the following factors when setting up your capacity:

• What is the largest number of appointments your facility can manage at once?
• What is the average time taken to load/unload for a given appointment?
• What customers or carriers do you need to ensure have capacity?
• If you still aren’t sure how to begin, reach out to your Turvo representative to discuss the best way to maximize your schedule.

If you utilize public scheduling, your carriers will be able to schedule appointments based on the orders they are picking up, or by their organization having predetermined capacity with your facility. This eliminates guesswork and allows you to run a leaner scheduling operation.

Set up an appointment schedule

Step 1:

Navigate to a location, either by hovering over the left navigation bar and clicking Locations to see all of your locations, or by searching for the location in the global search bar.  

Step 2:

Select the location that you want to set a schedule for.

Step 3:

On the location summary page, select the Schedule tab.

Step 4: Open and close slots

Now it’s time to organize your facility’s schedule by opening or closing capacity throughout the week. You want to create an open slot where you will have the capacity for appointments and close slots where your resources are tied up.

• To create an open slot, hover over a closed slot and click Open slot, and then click YES.

• To create a closed slot, hover over an open slot and click the x on the top right corner. You will get a notification stating that the “slot closed successfully”.

Capacity has now been set up at your facility. Now anyone who has access to your facility’s schedule, whether they are internal or external, can only book appointments for the open time slots.

Step 5: Create Reservations

Customize how your capacity is being used by specifying reservations. Click on an open slot to bring up the appointment card. Then, click on the Reserve box pictured below.

Select which type of reservation you would like to create by selecting from the available options.

• Reserve for: Click the dropdown menu to choose Customer or Carrier.
  
  • Customer: Reservation can only be utilized for that customer’s orders.
  • Carrier: Reservation can only be utilized by that carrier.
• Then select Individual customer, Other or Public by clicking the corresponding radio button.
  
  • Individual Customer: Reserve a slot for a larger customer that you want to ensure capacity for.
  • Other: Reserve a slot for any customer.
  • Public: Reserve a slot for a specific type of directional move: inbound or outbound. Remember, all customers and carriers can book this type of slot.

Note: If you have appointments that involve different customer’s orders, they are able to be booked on any customer slot that has an order on that appointment. Learn more about mixed loads in the section below.

• Direction: Select the direction of the appointment from the dropdown menu. Choose from Inbound and Outbound.
• *Type: Select the load type for the reservation. Choose from Drop, Live, or Either.
  • Note: The field auto-populates with Either.
• *Unload entire trailer?: Designate whether the entire trailer should be unloaded during the appointment. This field only populates for Inbound appointments with a Live load type. Select Yes or No.
• *Special services: Designate whether this reservation is for special or standard services. By checking the box, you can only book special services in this reservation. Leaving the box unchecked will only allow standard services for the reservation.

*Note: Special services, Unload entire trailer, and load type reservation must be enabled for the location in order to use this feature. For information on configuring special services and load type reservation for each location, see our Managing appointment schedule details article.

Final Step:

Click RESERVE on the bottom right corner of the appointment card to finish creating the reservation.

Once you have established a repeatable capacity for a week, you are able to duplicate that capacity through the schedule upload feature. This allows you to upload the schedule for up to two months into the future. This functionality can also be used to generate a new schedule from scratch and bulk upload reservations using a CSV template.

Your schedule is set! Now your schedulers and/or carriers can access these slots to begin booking appointments.  

Note: If an appointment is created with a Drop or Live load type, you cannot edit the load type after creation. To change the load type, delete the reservation and create a new one.

Additional reservation scenarios

Mixed loads

When setting up your location’s capacity, keep in mind that you are able to book different customer’s orders onto a single appointment.

For example, let’s say you have two different orders from different customers, both customers have dedicated reservations on your schedule, and a carrier is coming to pick up a load that includes both of the below orders:

• Customer = Acme Inc Order #12345
• Customer = Shopping Inc Order #98765

You can book an appointment with those orders on either customer’s reservation on your schedule. But, you cannot book a Shopping Inc order alone on an Acme Inc reservation.

Parent-child company relationships

You can also configure your schedule so that you are able to book to accommodate parent-child companies. On your schedule, you will assign the parent company name as the specific reservation. On that reservation, you will be able to book appointments for orders for that parent company and any child companies that are related.

If you have a need for your schedule to be configured this way, speak with your Turvo representative.