Course Planning

Caution Caution

The following applies to time-dependent courses .

End of the caution.

Use

When setting up your course catalog, you can plan multiple course at one go in the dynamic planning menu based on the demand that exists for them.

Note Note

There are important differences between the functions Plan and Create. When you plan courses, you can plan a number of courses simultaneously. With the Create function, you can only create courses one at a time.

In both cases, the courses automatically appear in your course catalog.

The special feature of the planning function is that it includes an automatic demand determination function. The number of courses planned by the system depends on the demand that there is for them in the planning period, taking various constraints which you define into consideration.

End of the note.

Features

  • Demand Determination

In the Planning menu, you can determine what demand there is for the course you want to plan. Demand can be derived from the bookings for the previous year, from the demand the previous year, or from the number of prebookings for the course type so far.

See also: Demand Determination

  • Generate date proposals automatically

You can automatically generate date proposals when you plan courses for a specific time period and taking certain constraints into consideration.

You can specify a number of other constraints such as:

  • The course location. No entry is interpreted as all locations. (If you make no entry, you must specify the locations for which you want courses planned before the planning operation is executed.)

  • The course language. No entry is interpreted as all languages. (If you make no entry, you must specify the languages for which you want courses planned before the planning operation is executed.)

  • Calendar-specific conditions such as days off (in other words, the system only proposes course dates that do not include days off or public holidays).

  • Selection: Resource Types/Resources lets you make more detailed specifications for the resources required in this planning operation. You do so in the dialog box that appears (similar to the one that appears for resource selection when you create individual course dates).

If a resource type is only required for this specific planning operation, you assign it temporarily by choosing .

You can create the permanent relationship requires resource type with the course type by choosing .

  • The option Cover resource requirements lets you specify that the system should only propose dates on which all of the resources flagged as required are available.

  • Course dates should be evenly spaced over a specific period or should be spaced at specific intervals from one another.

Where possible, the system proposes a number of dates based on the conditions you set. It may however occur that there are no dates to satisfy the conditions. In this case, you can remove or change some of your constraints and restart the planning process.

  • Output a planning chart (in graphic or list form)

The proposed dates are displayed on a graphical planning chart. You can move, copy, delete, or change the dates. You can display the resource list and time schedule of individual course dates, and you can change resource reservations for courses. You can display planned course dates in list format.

  • Display demand using traffic light icon beside course type

When you have determined demand for a particular course type, a traffic light icon is displayed beside it indicating the following statuses:

  • A red light indicates that no course dates have been planned for the course type so far.

  • A yellow light indicates that some course dates have been planned but the demand is not yet fulfilled.

  • A green light indicates that a sufficient number of dates have been planned to fulfill the demand.

  • Display resource reservation for courses using traffic light icon beside course date

A traffic light icon appears beside the date proposals and course dates indicating the status of resource reservations as follows:

  • Red indicates that no resources have been reserved so far.

  • Yellow indicates that resource requirements are not fully covered.

  • Green indicates that the planned courses have sufficient resources reserved.

  • Change data manually from the Planning Menu structure

The dynamic Planning menu presents data in a clear structure. You can manually change data in the structure. For example, if you discover that the resources assigned to the course do not cover resource requirements, you can remedy this on the planning menu screen.

  • Repeat planning process

You can start the planning as often as you want by changing the course demand.

See also:

Courses

Planning a Course