Managing Breaks
- Jason Andrew
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- The functionality offered by ServiceOptimizer for breaks is described in FS332.
ServiceOptimizer allows a break pattern to be defined for each day within a shift pattern. There can be up to 5 breaks within each day and each break will be scheduled within a defined break window and have a specified duration. Breaks will be dispatched by the dispatch interfaces, alongside the jobs.
This section presents some guidelines on the effects of breaks on the schedule, and some advice on how best to ensure breaks and jobs are sensibly managed within the schedule.
Initial break set up
In order to add any breaks for operatives it will be necessary to create Shift Specifications, with the required break patterns. These Shift Specifications will then be available to assign to operatives.
Upgrading from pre-8.1 version?
The upgrade to V8.1 will automatically move any existing lunches into the new format so the system will start to work with the new model, but just a single break per day where lunch was previously set.
System restart is required between creation of Shift Specifications and assignment to Operatives.
Scheduling breaks – what to expect
Any breaks that are include in a shift will be scheduled such that they lie within their break window. They will always be scheduled at the start of their break window if there are no other influences. Breaks will lie between jobs and/or standard activities if at all possible
Where it is not possible to place breaks outside of jobs (in order to meet job access hours or appointment times) then breaks will be placed within a job and the job travel time or job duration will be extended as appropriate.
The behaviour with respect to overlaps with Standard activities is defined by a mandatory system parameter, sa_overlap_breaks_enabled with values:
Value | Description |
|---|---|
True | No special consideration will be given by the scheduling process to avoid placing Breaks within Standard Activities, rather than in free periods or in Jobs |
| False | The system will make special effort to try to place Breaks in other entities than Standard Activities wherever possible, but will still place them within a Standard Activity if no other valid possibility exists. |
In all cases where a Break is placed within a Standard Activity, whether or not that Standard Activity is automatically resized to take account of the Break depends on whether that Standard Activity includes travel. If the Standard Activity has no travel, it is not resized to reflect any embedded Break; if the Standard Activity has travel, then the Standard Activity will be resized to reflect the duration and positioning of any embedded Breaks.
Possible Performance Issue
Because the breaks are being ‘scheduled’ alongside the jobs it is important to remember that this means there are up to 5 extra entities being scheduled for every operative and every day. Therefore break patterns should be configured with only those breaks that are necessary to the business to reduce any unnecessary performance overheads.
Dispatching & updating breaks
The breaks are dispatched alongside the jobs and standard activities. It should be recognised, therefore, that even where an operative has no jobs for a given day, each of their breaks will still be dispatched.
An interface has been provided to allow the operatives to update the system when they have either taken a break, or where they know they will take it at a different time than it has been originally planned.
Legislation on Breaks
If there are legal implications to the allocation and taking of breaks then it is important that the system is kept up to date with the current status of the schedule with respect to both jobs and breaks so that it can respond and reallocate breaks appropriately should the situation change. In these circumstances it becomes more important that full use should be made of the various interfaces allowing update of job status, start, end and travel times and break times and duration.