Using Suggestion mode
To move into Suggestion mode, click on the toolbar at the top of the Gantt and select Suggest in the drop-down menu.
The Gantt moves in Suggest mode, shown by the floating navigator. This should show there are no pending suggestions and this can be confirmed if you hover over it:
Click the booking(s) or unavailability/unavailabilities for which you would like to suggest a schedule change and the sidebar is displayed with the ‘Suggest a schedule change’ button:
Drag the booking/unavailability to a new position or available resource row, including using the handles or effort/duration fields in the Gantt sidebar. Repeat as necessary then click Save to save the suggestions.
Suggestions can be easily seen as they are coloured identically in the same teal colour.
As can be seen in the example below, suggestions are identified with a small dot and a larger dot indicates the parent booking (the dot containing the number of 'child' suggestions).
The floating navigator allows a reviewer to step between suggestions in Approval Mode and Accept/Reject/Delete as necessary:
Creating new bookings and unavailabilities as suggestions
You can create new bookings and unavailabilities as suggestions in Dayshape without first creating a new booking/unavailability. Similarly, using the enhanced clone functionality (with the modal form) you can clone to suggest creating a new booking (or unavailability) that is a copy of an existing one.
Double-clicking in the Gantt when in suggestion mode displays the create modal for bookings and unavailabilities just as it does in schedule mode.
Creating a new booking as a suggestion
Creating a new unavailability as a suggestion
Some systems may be configured to capture a comment when the new booking (or unavailability) is being created. In this case, you cannot save until a comment has been entered:
When a Resource Manager is in the Review Suggestions mode, not only do they see the original suggestion and comment, but when making a scheduling decision they can also leave a comment.
The newly-created suggestion (highlighted below) has no parent booking and the suggest schedule change in the sidebar is disabled:
From this point, accepting the new suggestion is still managed through the same Approve process, i.e. accepting them creates the new booking/unavailability that is fully visible.
Out-of-date suggestions
If a suggestion is out-of-date, there is a visual flag in both the Create and View Suggestion modes.
The exclamation mark is shown above the scheduling information to indicate that attention is needed, and the tooltip shown when you hover over the exclamation mark will describe the detail.
A suggestion is flagged if its parent booking/unavailability is edited in any way.
To further help the approver of the suggestions, out-of-date Suggestions are sorted to the bottom of the suggestion list.
Cleaning up out-of-date suggestions
When suggestions are made on bookings/unavailabilities and those suggestions are not resolved by the time the original booking/unavailability is due to start (by manually Accepting or Rejecting the Suggestion), we consider those suggestions to be out-of-date (also known as 'stale).
As the suggestion is out-of-date and can no longer be accepted (as the source booking/unavailability should have started), Dayshape automatically deletes the suggestion. This is done by a regular job that runs every 15 minutes.
Jumping between bookings/unavailabilities and suggestions
As bookings/unavailabilities, and the suggestions created for those bookings/unavailabilities could potentially be far away from each other on the Gantt you can quickly and easily navigate between the two.
On the Gantt sidebar, click on a suggestion to select it and bring it into focus on the Gantt.
Click on the scheduling information of the bookings/unavailability and the focus will be back on the main bookings/unavailability.