Equipment Scheduling is now live in Omnant: a weekly board where you plan which drill rig or subcontractor goes to which project, then send that plan straight to your crews.

It ties rig planning to the projects, work orders and field reports already in Omnant. A dispatch you drag onto the board becomes work orders on your crews' schedules, and the drillers file a drilling field report against the same project when they're done.

Watch the 6-minute walkthrough: Equipment Scheduling Workflow. The sections below follow the same order as the video.

Before you start: three quick setup steps

Scheduling works off equipment you already track in Omnant. An administrator needs to do three things once.

1. Mark an equipment type as scheduled. Under the gear icon, open Equipment Types, then create or edit a type (for example, Drill Rig). Set its category and name, and check Scheduled.
2. Add equipment under that type. Go to Equipment > Search and create each rig as usual. When you pick a scheduled type, a Schedulable Data box appears. Use it to list the rig's preferred workers and pick a default color for the board.
3. Grant the Scheduling permission. In Users > User Groups, open a group, go to Permissions and find the Equipment section. Check Scheduling for anyone who builds or manages the schedule. Once it's on, Scheduling shows up under the Equipment menu.

Step 2: a rig set to a scheduled type gets preferred workers and a default board color.

The scheduling board

Open Equipment > Scheduling to see the week at a glance. Each row is a rig or a subcontractor, grouped by location, and each colored bar is a project dispatch spanning the days the rig is booked.

The weekly board. Hatched days are days a rig is toggled off; unscheduled work waits on the right.

The board is built for rearranging by hand:

• Drag a bar sideways to change its start date, stretch it to change the number of days, or drop it on another rig to reassign the job.
• Toggle individual days off when a rig won't be on site; those days show as hatched on the bar.
• Manage subcontractors from the subcontractor icon, and assign work to them exactly as you would to your own rigs.

New work starts in the Unscheduled Dispatches panel on the right. You can add dispatches there, drag them by the handle to set their priority, and drop them on the board when you're ready to book a rig.

Each dispatch holds what the drillers need: client, project, scope, number of days and drilling instructions. You can also track permits and tickets with expiration reminders, list drilling locations, and attach notes and files. A dispatch takes its rig's default color unless you set a color override.

Editing a dispatch: scope, drilling instructions, color override, permits and locations.

Getting the schedule to your crews

A booked dispatch turns into work orders with one click. Click the calendar icon on a bar: it's outlined until work orders exist, and fills in once they do.

The Work Orders for Equipment Dispatch window lists every day of the dispatch. For each day, set the start time, location details, crew members and any remarks for the drillers. Use Copy To to apply one day's details to the others, then save.

One work order per day of the dispatch, with Copy To for repeating details.

Saved work orders appear in three places:

• Scheduling > View By Day, alongside your other field work, filterable by project.
• My Schedule for each person assigned.
• The project itself, where technicians can open the work order from anywhere they normally see the project.

In the field: drilling field reports

Drillers report on a dispatch with a field report built for drilling work, not the standard field report form. It records times leaving the shop, arriving on site and leaving the job, and asks whether the work is environmental or geotechnical. It has a drilling summary per boring (starting, ending and total depth, number of samples, drilling method and sample types), personnel hours, and on-the-job time by task.

The drilling field report: times, drilling type and a summary row per boring.

The finished report produces its own PDF, the Drilling Daily Field Report, laid out to match the fields the crew filled in rather than your usual cover sheet.

The Drilling Daily Field Report PDF (preliminary copy).

The report fields and the PDF layout can both be customized. If your team needs different fields or a different layout, or you'd like a live walkthrough of everything Equipment Scheduling can do, get in touch and we'll set up a call.