Set up Adjustable Capacity Planning (ACP)

Overview

Adjustable Capacity Planning (ACP) facilitates optimal job booking with live capacity data. To use ACP, you should actively use Technician Shifts. We also recommend you enable Arrival Windows.

Things to know

• Use this ACP setup checklist to get started with Adjustable Capacity Planning (ACP). The checklist covers setup for:

  • Assigned technicians and their shifts

  • Business Unit (BU) group setup

  • Capacity configuration

  • Availability

  • Employee permissions for editing business hours and capacity

  • Job types

    Note: If a job type duration exceeds your technicians' shift length, you won't be able to schedule that job using ACP.

• When ACP is enabled, the Capacity Planning Board and the Business Unit Groups table are automatically populated with your existing business units.

• If you have arrival windows enabled, make sure that each business unit you want to add to the same business unit group has the same arrival windows.

• If you book a job using a business unit that is not in a business unit group, that job will be booked outside of capacity.

Create a business unit group

You can combine multiple business units (BUs) into a business unit group to make it easier to apply changes across multiple BUs at once. When you add BUs to a business unit group, adjustments made to the base capacity of the business unit group apply to all BUs within the group.

For example, plumbing companies often group their service and maintenance departments together, since their technicians can work both service and maintenance jobs.

Note: A BU can only belong to one business unit group. If a BU is currently assigned to a business unit group and you want to use it in a different group, remove it from the current group first.

To group BUs into a business unit group:

1. Go to the top toolbar and click Settings.

2. In the side panel, go to Operations > Business Unit Groups.

3. Click Add a Group.

4. On the Add a Business Unit group screen that opens:    

   1. Enter a Name for the business unit group.

   2. Enter the Base Capacity number.

      Note: The Base Capacity field adds a set number of technician hours to every time slot for that business unit group, and can be positive or negative. For example, if there are 40 technician hours available for a given arrival window, and base capacity is -10, the final capacity will be 30 technician hours.

   3. Click the Business Unit dropdown and select the BUs you want to add to the business unit group.

5. When finished, click Save.

Deactivate and reactivate capacity for a business unit group

The Activate and Deactivate buttons on the Business Unit Groups screen control whether ACP is enabled or disabled for that business unit (BU) group.

When you Deactivate Capacity for a BU group, if a CSR clicks Get Availability for a job using a BU in that group they'll see a message stating that ACP isn't enabled for that BU.

Deactivating capacity for a BU group does not deactivate the BUs in that group, it just removes them from:

• The Get Availability window on the Call Booking screen

• The Capacity Planning tab on the Schedule screen

• The Business Unit Groups screen in settings

Deactivate Capacity

1. On the Business Unit Groups screen click Filter.

2. From the filter dropdown, select Is true then click Filter.

3. Select the BU group or groups you want to deactivate ACP for, then click Deactivate Capacity.

Activate Capacity

After you deactivate capacity for a BU group, it's removed from the Business Unit Groups screen. If you want to reactivate it:

1. On the Business Unit Groups screen click Filter.

2. From the filter dropdown, select Is false then click Filter.

3. Select the BU group or groups you want to reactivate ACP for, then click Activate Capacity.

Manage capacity configuration

When you enable ACP, you don't need to take further steps to make it useful to your business. ACP automatically populates the Capacity Planning Board with all of your BUs and uses business hours as time slots, or custom arrival windows if enabled.

To change the capacity configuration:

1. Go to the top toolbar and click Settings.

2. In the side panel, go to Capacity Planning > Configuration. The Capacity Configuration screen opens.        

   Tip: You can turn on the Real Time Availability toggle to send ACP to all online scheduling services.

3. In the Capacity View Options field, select how you want to view capacity.

   Note: The Custom arrival windows view is a default Capacity view option. If you change Capacity View Options, it changes both the Capacity Planning Board and the Get Availability Window. Also, all manual adjustments you made to time slots are removed, so we recommend to change only the optional fields if necessary.

4. In the Capacity Enhancements field, select the option you want:

   • If you select Manual adjustment, it triggers calculations that include any manual adjustments you have made.

   • If you select Skills, all manual adjustments are discarded and calculations are based on the skills capacity of available technicians.

5. In the Additional configuration field, enter the number of minutes you want to serve as a viable working time for a technician.

   Note: If the Availability Threshold is 30 minutes and a technician has only 20 minutes in between two jobs, then the free 20 minutes are not accounted for available capacity.

            

   Tip: You can turn on the toggle to apply the availability threshold within arrival window boundaries. You can also choose whether or not to include non-managed technicians in capacity calculations.

6. When finished, click Save.

After you set up ACP, give the appropriate employees permission to manually adjust capacity. For more, see Set permissions for an individual employee or technician.

Want to learn more?

• Visit ServiceTitan Academy and enroll in Introduction to Adjustable Capacity Planning (ACP)

• See Adjustable Capacity Planning (ACP) overview

• See Manually adjust Capacity Planning (ACP)

• See Manage job booking with Adjustable Capacity Planning (ACP)