An Admin Portal user is able to assign specific technicians to any appointments where they need a certain technician, which Sera calls "pinning". Pinning a call can happen when the appointment is being created in the Admin Portal or when the call is already created and is visible on the dispatch board.
How can I tell that an appointment has been pinned?
From the Dispatch Board, you will see a lock to the left of the customer's name in their appointment pill.
If you view the job, you will see "(Pinned)" next to the technician's name on the appointment.
How do I pin a technician to an appointment when I am creating the appointment?
When the user is scheduling an appointment, if a specific technician is selected from the Technician dropdown, they will be considered pinned to that appointment and no other technician's schedules/availability will be considered by the scheduler.
How do I pin a technician to an appointment after the appointment is created?
From the Dispatch Board, click the pill for the appointment and select Edit Appointment. The bottom section will contain the technician information. Click the pencil icon to edit, select the desired technician from the dropdown, and save.
From the job, select Options and Edit Appointment. The bottom section will contain the technician information. Click the pencil icon to edit, select the desired technician from the dropdown, and save.
Note: When pinning an appointment, an optional reason for pinning box is displayed. The text from that box will be displayed as a note along with the timestamp and user who pinned the appointment for audit purposes.
How can I un-pin a technician from an appointment?
If you would like to remove the pinned technician from the job and allow the scheduler to select the best available technician, click the pill for the appointment and select Edit Appointment. The bottom section will contain the technician information. Click the pencil icon to edit, select Auto Assign, and save.
What are the drawbacks to pinning appointments?
Pinned calls are the highest priority available in the system, so the predictive scheduler will not move or make any decisions regarding this appointment. When you have too many pinned appointments the schedule board will become gridlocked and the predictive scheduler is unable to make the best decisions regarding the day, as it will have fewer options to consider. This results in unhelpful gaps in the technician's schedule and can prevent any new appointments from being scheduled for that date, even if there is potentially enough room on the schedule for another appointment.