Feature - EP-3780 Planning meeting booking - working days

This work was loaded live in release 5.10.0 - Jun 20, 2023

Overview

We have incorporated working days/non-working days into the planning meeting booking screen availability calculations. These working days can be set via the “Business Hours” menu item on the “System Management” menu section.

It is worth noting that capacity is still determined by the EPA / Booking availability, and that working days just relates to days that capacity can be visible on.

As part of this work, Business Hours have been re-homed on this new menu item.

When calculating availability, the capacity will now process your defined business days, when determining the earliest and latest possible booking dates (as full days) taking into account the booking notice period and the gateway processing period as shown below on the Availability tab of the Configuration screen, highlighted in yellow.

Configuration screen

Non-working days are also included in this calculation.

Although the method to calculate the Booking Period Maximum (in orange on the screen above) has changed, the functionality of this setting has not. It still defines the maximum period for the booking window

Example

Example configuration set up

What are the values in this example?

Setting or value	Info

Setting or value	Info
Apprentices Submitted Gateway Date	Friday Jun 9, 2023
Estimated Gateway Processing period	2 days
Booking Max Period	10 days

The Estimated Gateway Processing Period would include the 9th June, as it was the GW Submitted date.

So we would count from the 9th of June as the Gateway Submitted date in this instance, the 10th and 11th are non working days, so we won't count these. Therefore the 22nd would be the 10th day of the booking max period.

However in this example below the provider is only seeing available slots from the 14th of June → 22nd.

This is because there is no capacity for the 13th of June, based on the availability of the User Groups Planning Meeting booking team.

AO users can confirm this by checking, first where the Standard shows the availability is calculated from;

and then in the Manage Planning Capacity screen, as you can see Tuesday is fully booked here.

Slots that the Provider sees in this example

The Gateway Processing Period is subtracted from the Booking Period Maximum, so if you have a fixed Booking Period maximum you want to achieve, then you will need to set this to be higher by an amount equal to the Gateway Processing Period.

Hence if you wanted to allow a provider a Booking Period Max of 10 days and your Estimated Gateway Processing Period is 2 days, in order to show the 10 days, you would need to uplift the Booking Period Maximum by 2 days, to be 12 days, on the configuration screen

These working day/excluded days will apply to full days only. It does not take into account partial days and thus times.

Some examples can be seen if you click on the expand section below

Outcome for AO:
An AO using the booking screen should have full future availability, including any time slots left on the day of booking

Gateway Status	Booking period maximum calculation date

Gateway Status	Booking period maximum calculation date
Pre-submission	EPA Date (Expected Date Ready for EPA )
Pre-approval	Gateway Submitted Date
Post gateway	Audit Submitted Date

For this table, “today’s date” is 12/05/2023

Note for the calendar images, the new month of June is shown in a lighter grey, unavailable days are in a much paler grey.

	Gateway Status	Booking Notice Period	Booking Period Maximum	Booking period calculated date	Estimated Gateway Processing Period	Working Days	User group days	Outcome Provider

	Gateway Status	Booking Notice Period	Booking Period Maximum	Booking period calculated date	Estimated Gateway Processing Period	Working Days	User group days	Outcome Provider
1	Pre-submission Pre-approval Post GW	7	-	-	-	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
2	Pre-sub Pre-app Post	7	-	-	-	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F
3	Pre-sub Pre-app Post	7	-	-	-	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	Taking the settings for this test into account (booking notice period of 7 days from 12/05) the first available date that a provider can book is the 23rd May as 22nd was a Bank Holiday, the dates of the 27th/28th are visible as someone in the User Group has availability on those days, there is also no Booking period max when the provider can book up to, so June is also available.
4	Pre-sub Pre-app Post	7	-	-	-	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F
5	Pre-sub Pre-app Post	-	7	08/05/2023	-	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
6	Pre-sub Pre-app Post	--	7	08/05/2023	-	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F
7	Pre-sub Pre-app Post	-	7	08/05/2023	-	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
8	Pre-sub Pre-app Post	-	7	08/05/2023	-	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F
9	Pre-sub Pre-app	-	-	-	7	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
10	Post	-	-	-	7	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
11	Pre-sub Pre-app	-	-	-	7	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F
12	Post	-	-	-	7	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F
13	Pre-sub Pre-app	-	-	-	7	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
14	Post	-	-	-	7	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
15	Pre-sub Pre-app	-	-	-	7	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F
16	Post	-	-	-	7	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F
17	Pre-sub Pre-app Post	5	14	08/05/2023		M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
18	Pre-sub Pre-app Post	5	14	08/05/2023		M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F
19	Pre-sub Pre-app Post	5	14	08/05/2023		M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
20	Pre-sub Pre-app Post	5	14	08/05/2023		M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F
21	Pre-sub Pre-app	5	-		5	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
22	Post	5	-		5	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
23	Pre-sub Pre-app	5	-		5	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F
24	Post	5	-		5	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F
25	Pre-sub Pre-app	5	-		5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
26	Post	5	-		5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
27	Pre-sub Pre-app	5	-		5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F
28	Post	5	-		5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F
29	Pre-sub Pre-app	-	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
30	Post	-	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
31	Pre-sub Pre-app	-	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F
32	Post	-	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F
33	Pre-sub Pre-app	-	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
34	Post	-	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
35	Pre-sub Pre-app	-	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F
36	Post	-	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F
37	Pre-sub Pre-app	5	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
38	Post	5	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
39	Pre-sub Pre-app	5	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F
40	Post	5	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su	M/T/W/Th/F
41	Pre-sub Pre-app	5	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
42	Post	5	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F/S/Su
43	Pre-sub Pre-app	5	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F
44	Post	5	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F
45	Post	5	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F
46	Post	5	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F With business excluded days Monday 22nd and Tuesday 23rd	M/T/W/Th/F
47	Post	5	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F With user group user excluded day Monday 22rd	Here the 22nd is excluded but the booking range is not extended
48	Post	5	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F With business excluded day Monday 22rd	M/T/W/Th/F With user group user excluded day Monday 22rd	Here the 22nd is excluded and the booking range is also extended by one day
49	Pre-sub Pre-app	-	14	08/05/2023	5	M/T/W/Th/F	M/T/W/Th/F All members of the user group, and the EPA, is at full capacity on the19th	Here the 19th is greyed out as there is no capacity that day