14.1 Setting up Promise Sets

ServicePower consultants will normally set up Promise Sets during Business Mapping, according to the user’s requirements.

The basic requirement for any single Promise Set is that it should specify sufficient Time Bands to cover the whole working day. As many Promise Sets as needed can be created.

Care must be taken when setting up Promise Sets. Large or complex Promise Sets can cause confusion and will affect performance. It is better to have a few simple Promise Sets rather than a single large complex one.

The following examples illustrate how to set up the database:

Information about Time Band types, Time Bands and Promise Sets is entered into the Tables sp258_band_types, sp259_time_bands and sp257_band_lists, respectively. Note that any promise set entries in sp257_band_lists must use a list_name defined in sp256_promise_set_descriptions.

Example 1

sp258_band_types

 This example defines three band types – ‘Whole Day’, ‘Part Day’ and ‘2hr Timeband’. These types can then be used when defining specific time bands, as in the next example.

Example 2

sp259_time_bands

 This example specifies three distinct time bands named ‘8’, ‘9’ and ‘10’ which cover the time periods 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. (noon). All three bands are specified to be of band_type ‘3’ (described in sp258_band_types as ‘2hr Timeband’).

Example 3

sp257_band_lists

 This example adds the three time bands created in Example 2 to the promise set named ‘NW’. The sequence column is not used.

Example 4

sp257_band_lists

This example shows the promise sets that might be set up for use in direct appointment booking. The requirement that this example meets is that there must be a promise set for each band type (sp258) which can be offered.. Each of those promise sets should contain the timebands (sp259) which are to be offered for batch jobs. The name of each promise set must be “$” followed by the name of the band type.

In this example, it’s assumed that there are the three band types set up in example 1 (above): “1”, “2” and “3”. Since all of these bands are to be used for batch jobs, three corresponding promise set should be set up: “$1”, “$2” and “$3”.  “$1” will probably contain just the one type 1 (all day) band – assumed to be called “AD” in this example. “$2” will contain all of the type 2 (part day) bands – assumed to be called “AM” and “PM”. “$3” will contain all of the type 3 (2hr) bands, though in this example it’s assumed that overlapping timebands won’t be offered for batch jobs, so only those starting on even hour boundaries are included.