Prestige Scheduler Version 5 On-Line Documentation (preliminary)

ELECTRONIC PLANNING BOARD

INITIAL VIEW

The Electronoic Planning Board (EPB) is the first screen you see when you log in to an instance of Prestige Scheduler's client program.

Here is a typical view of the Design Board:

If you are a user who has been nominated as a “Designer”, you will be placed into design mode when you login to a client session; otherwise you will start off in the interactive “Monitor” mode. “Active” users are able to enter design mode, but they are unable to publish a design. Active users can, however, save a design to a disk file for later recall.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

The EPB is designed to resemble a manual planning board. The Board Resources you define are represented by rows starting with a button containing the label for the resource. Along the top of the EPB's graphical view you will see a time line. The graphical view is divided into 10 equal segments. The time that is represented between each time line is dependent on the selected scale. You can change the scale to any reasonable value with a minimum of 1 hour. You can enter a scale value directly into the scale text box; or you can use the scroll buttons to increase or decrease the scale by 3-hour increments. The scale can also be adjusted in three hour increments by holding down the SHIFT key and pressing either PAGE UP or PAGE DN.

You can also customise the thickness of the process bars (and the resource buttons) as well as the distance between the rows on the EPB. This customization allows you to better adjust the number of rows that can be viewed within the graphical screen without the need to scroll. Many users will find, particularly with modern high resolution screens, that they will be able to adjust these paramaters so that all board resource rows are visible without the need to scroll vertically at all.

The EPB has a conventional Windows menu bar and a button toolbar:

The availability of menu options and toolbar buttons will be dependent on the Mode you are in as well as whether or not you have selected a particular process bar on the graphical board. Available menu options will also be dependent on your user status. For example, the menu option or toolbar option to publish the design board will only be enabled if you are a “Designer” and you are in Design Mode.

The “Design Options” menu is only visible in Design Mode.

The “Board” menu is only visible when you have a job selected within the EPB.

Although the “Maintenance” menu will be visible for all users either in Design or Active Mode, most menu options within the Maintenance Menu will be disabled unless you are an active user.

Each toolbar button has a menu equivalent; and many of the menu options have keyboard shortcuts. For example, to open the Job Browser screen, you can select the option from the Maintenance menu:

OR you can select the toolbar button:

OR you can press the [F4] function key (the nominated shortcut key for this menu option).

Available options from the “Board” menu, the “Design” menu and the “Display” menu are available in a context menu that can be popped-up by right-clicking within the graphical section of the EPB.

Processes that you need to schedule against the board resources are represented by coloured bars, whose length represents the time that has been estimated for the process. Because the defined resources are generally finite capacity, only one process can be run at a time. Hence processes must be queued one after the other on the resource row. This is referred to as the queue or row constraint.

The colour or colours attached to a bar are dependent on the current highlight mode.

The Buttons representing the resource rows, when pressed, display the grid-list view of the current queue for that resource. Right-clicking a button will bring up its context menu.

LOGGING IN

To start a Prestige Scheduler client instance, you must be registered as a valid user. You will be required to enter your allocated user name:

When you log in for the first time, your password will be empty. You should select the option to [Change password], and enter a password that will not easily be guessed by others.

You then nominate the board you want to login to. As of version 5.0, this is restricted to the single board called “MAIN”. In a future release of Prestige Scheduler v5, multiple boards will be supported.

DESIGN MODE

The Design mode provides an off-line version of an EPB and is completely independent from the live board. The purpose of the Design view is to allow the planning person to experiment with “what-if” scenarios and to prepare a new plan for publication, including introducing new jobs to the plan. Only when the designer has completed the design phase and is happy with his plan will he “publish” the current design. Users viewing the Active Board will not see any of the changes made by the designer in design mode until the design has been published.

The planning person, in Design Mode, can take a snap shot of the active board at any time to become the basis of a new design session; and indeed this is the normal course of action at the start of any design session. During the course of “designing” the planning person can undo up-to 20 movements made to the current design. Additionally, the planner can elect at any time to save a version of the current design to a disk file. This is useful if a planner has a possible solution but wants to test other possibilities. Saving the Design will allow the designer to revert to that design at any time.

Because part of the design phase is to add new jobs to the board, Prestige Scheduler is designed to synchronise positioning and movements between the EPB and the Job Browser. It is very useful, for this reason, if power-users of Prestige Scheduler, particularly designers, have two display monitors. This allows both the EPB and the Job Browser to be completely visible at the same time. When synchronised, processes selected in the EPB are automatically located and selected in the Job Browser (if you have it in view) and vice versa. Just as importantly, as you raise new jobs to the board from within the browser, the EPB is immediately recalculated and updated to include the new job.

The “Design Menu” in the EPB contains all the options associated with the design mode, including (of course) moving process bars either within its current row or to another row (referred to as a reassignment). The ART of designing in design mode is covered in another part of this documentation.

FILE MENU

Open New Board:

If your database server has several different Prestige Scheduler databases set up, use this option to attach to another Scheduler instance.

Import New Jobs:

Use this option to import new jobs from your mainstream system. This option will only work if you have correctly configured an interface to your external system, and have mapped appropriate operations via Scheduler's Resource Maintenance.

Exit:

Use this option to completely exit the currently running client. This is the only way to elegantly stop the current instance.

BOARD MENU

The Board Menu is only visible when one or more process bars are in a selected state on the EPB.

Start Movement:

Allow the selected process or processes (the subject) to be moved. The shortcut is [Alt]+[1]. You can also invoke this option on a selected process by clicking the process again. When you start a movement, the cursor changes to a drag hand. Once a movement is started, you can do the following with the subject:

Press the [Esc] key to cancel the movement.

Drop the subject onto another process on the board (the target). Usually a target process capable of accepting the drop will change to the target colour when your drag hand is positioned over it. If the target process is on the same row as the subject, the movement will cause the subject jobs to take on the priority of the job to which the target process is attached. The priority of the target job and all jobs in between will have their priorities displaced. There are some exceptions to this however:

The target process is a member of a group. In this case you are asked if you want to add the subject to the group. If you answer YES, the subject processes are added to the group but there is no change to the underlying priorities. If you answer NO, the subject takes on the priority of the BEST process in the group (the process in the group with the best priority).

The subject and the target are all members of the same group and the group is pinned. In this case, the subject processes are moved in front of the target and the target and all succeeding processes in the group are displaced. No change in job priority occurs in this case.

If the target process is on a different row from the subject, then the movement is treated as a re-assignment, with priority change. A reassignment is valid only if the row containing the subject and the row containing the target are in a common assignment group. If the reassignment is valid, the process is moved to the new resource. The priority of the subject takes on the priority of the target and all jobs with priorities in between are adjusted.

Right-click the button of another resource row. To complete a valid movement using this option, the resource row must be a member of an assignment group that is common with the resource of the subject. Given that the destination is a valid row, the movement is treated as a reassignment but no priority change takes place.

Left-click the button of a resource row. The grid list view is displayed for the row whose button was clicked. If the row selected is the subject's row, or a reassignment would be valid, you can continue with the movement by clicking on a grid row. The result will be the same as if you had clicked the same process bar on the EPB.

Starting a movement is only available in design mode.

Process Details ..:

Select and display the selected process in the job browser, bringing the job-browser into view if necessary. The job browser becomes the active form.

Set Process Status >:

This opion has a sub-menu containing a list of statuses that a process can take on. An active user or a designer can make status changes. Some status changes may not persist. For example, if you attempt to set the status of a process to "ready" and the process has a predecessor or a milestone, the status change will not persist.

Drop Job:

Drop the underlying job to the bin (or in tray). This option is only available in design mode.

Group selected processes:

This option is only enabled if you have selected more than on e process as your subject. The option is only available in design mode. Use this option to form a new group from two or more processes selected on the same row. The group formed is pinned by default. A pinned group does not allow any changes to the relative ordering of processes within the group when the board is re-calculated. Conversely a group that is not pinned may have the relative ordering changed during calculation, but the members will always be contiguous.

Remove from Group:

This option is enabled only in design mode and only when the subject is a member of a group. Removes the subject from the group. The group will survive provided that the group continues to host at least two processes OR the group has the "Active" attribute set.

Group Pinned:

This is a toggle attribute. It is enabled only in design mode and only if the subject is a member of a group. The group's pinned attribute is toggled by clicking this option. A pinned group is identified with a red underline. An unpinned grtoup is underlined in blue.

Group Active:

This is a toggle attribute. It is enabled only in design mode. One and only one group can be toggled as the active group on any one resource row. An active group is promoted to the beginning of the row queue. There is only one exception that will prevent an active group from occupying the front of the queue, and that is when another process, which is not itself a member of the active group, is in a running state. Running state implies here that the process is making ready, running or washing up. BUT this will only cause a displacement of the active group if the active group itself does not contain a process that is also in a running state. In general, this isn't too much of an issue because finite-capacity resources can generally only be working on one process at a time - so expectantly no more than one process on the row will be in a running state at any particular time. But it can happen :)

Split process ..:

Allows the selected process to be split into two or more processes. Options allow the designer to decide whether or not to duplicate any make-ready and or Wash-up. The run time can be split based on either run quantity or run time.

Note:

This is a real-world option. A split cannot be effectively reversed with the Undo. This is because new records have to be physically created to efffect a split. To reverse a split, go to the job browser. Edit the original process so that the run quantity and run times are set back to their original values then for each newly created process, choose the option to delete that process.

Transactions ..:

Bring up a list containing details of all movement transactions recorded for the underlying job.

DESIGN MENU

The Design Menu is only visible when in Design Mode.

Set Now Line:

Set the position of the "Now Line". The Now Line is represented by a vertical blue line on the EPB and is the point from which processes are queued against resource rows on the EPB.

This option can only be used in Design mode. On the active board, the Now Line is always positioned at the current date and time, based on the computer's clock.

Undo Last Operation:

Most design-time movements undertaken in design mode can be undone with this option. You can use this option to undo up-to twenty prior movements. There is an equivalent toolbar item to exercise the undo option. The shortcut key is [F12].

Calculate Board:

Force PS to recalculate the board even though you have not made a design change. PS recalculates the board automatically whenever the designer makes a design change. Because some aspects of the recalculation are re-iterative, recalculating the board with this option may improve the final positioning of processes on the EPB. This would only be very occasional.

Validate Board:

Whilst you are designing in design mode, your active board continues to be subject to real-world changes, which can emanate from Shop-Floor systems or from other instances of Prestige Scheduler. Such changes may result in some processes being completed. This option allows the designer to catch the current design up with any such changes. Any processes that have been removed from the live board since the design was snapped are also removed from the current design and the design-board recalculated. If the results are undesirable, you can use the Undo.

Note: on boards having a large number of processes, this option may take several seconds to process.

Destroy all Groups:

If you have one or more groups created on your current design, this option will destroy all those groups and revert to treating any processes involved as if they were no longer part of a group. Although you should invoke this option with care, if you have many groups, you can use the Undo option to reverse this.

Reprioritize:

Foward-scheduled jobs are placed on the board in priority order, regardless of their nominated delivery date. The designer can explicitly set the relative priority of any job using the job browser. This option provides the ability to set the priority of jobs based on either the nominated delivery date, or the current "slack time" (also referred to as the lee-way). "Slack time" is defined as the difference between the currently scheduled delivery date and the nominated delivery date. If a job is running late, it has a negative slack time (shown in various places in red).

reprioritizing forward-scheduled jobs by slack time is probably the more scientifically correct method. Jobs with a high positive slack time will have their priorities reduced whereas jobs that currently have a high negative slack time will have their priorities increased. Naturally, when these jobs have their priority changed, their slack times will change too, so this option can be performed more than once to fine-up on the average slack time. The Undo can be used to go back a step.

Publish Current Design:

This option replaces the active board with the current design. This cannot be undone, so the designer needs to be confident with his design before exercising this option.

Note:

The current design is automatically validated before it replaces the active board. This may cause unanticipated changes. If the designer has had his design off-line for any length of time and the active board could have had completions in the meantime, it may be prudent to perform a manual [Validate Board] (see above) on the current design before exercising the Publish option.

Only a user nominated as a Designer has access to this option.

Restore from Active:

Use this option to take a snap-shot of the active board into the design area. This option will replace the design currently on display. You can Undo.

During the day-to-day operation, the main design person will start off the design cycle with this option. Then new jobs get raised and any issues get resolved. The result is then Published, preceded by a manual Validation if the design phase has taken some time.

Save Current Design:

Any user in design mode can save the currently displayed design for later recall. This option is particularly useful if the designer is about to embark on a bold what-if venture and wants to be able to get back to an intermediate design if things don't work out. It is also useful for a user who does not have publishing rights.

Load a saved Design:

Reload a saved design. This will overwrite the currently displayed design. You can use Undo.

Re-create board from database:

This is an important option that is generally only exercised if the Task Manager has caused some malfunction with the active board. For speed and performance, the Task Manager saves board objects as binary blobs in the database just prior to each re-calculation. However, after every fifth such recalculation, the Task Manager takes some extra time (but in a background thread) to write information to the database tables.

This menu option uses the information in the database tables to reconstruct your current design board, rather than requesting a blob image from the Task Manager. You can use Undo to revert to your previous design.