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.

There is an additional setting for your user that allows you to be notified when a lab sample is moved to tested. You can control this by editing your account and using the  setting shown below. This will send you a notification for any project that you manage.

On the combined reports - both standalone and as part of the lab reports - you can now add in the specification envelope for any of the included forms. This will then include the envelope on the final report. First, during the selection process, you will notice a new column that allows you to select the form you want to use the specification envelope from:

Using the radio buttons, this will indicate to the system which form to use. The final report will then result in something like the following:

We have added the ability to set how often a calibration / maintenance reminder is sent to you. Prior to this, all reminders when out every day once the event came back up. The reminder will go out on the day it comes up and then again based on this new configuration. All existing reminders are set up to go out every day currently, but you can change this if needed.

To do this, navigate to the Equipment Types and locate the one you would like to work with. Click on the name for the type to go to the edit page, and find the calibration/maintenance schedule that you would like to work with. Click on the description for the event, and it will bring up the the edit window for this event. Below is highlighted the field that will control how often this reminder is sent out.

When distributing a report, you can also see if it has been previously sent out from the system. This will list inline with the report's details and show you:

• When the report was sent out
• Who sent the report out
• Who received the report

This way you can quickly see if it was recently distributed and make sure you are not duplicating sending it. Below you will see this information displayed in the "blue" information bar.

You can have a LOT of breaks each day but all you want to see is a quick summary of what is going on that day. We have added a new feature that will allow you to see just that. In the upper right corner of the listing of the daily breaks, you will see a new button labeled "View Summary". This button will look at the breaks for the currently selected date and lab, and produce a summary window. This summary window will break down by material type how many total specimen are for each. 

Here is an example of what this summary window will display:

You now have more granular control over which of your client distribution sees what reports. This change will affect both the distribution windows when approving reports as well what reports are accessible to the user when they log into the report portal. You can control this for the following types of distributions:

• Field Reports
• Lab Reports
• Break Reports
• Scheduling

Simply by clicking on "No Restrictions" - as highlighted below - you will be presented with configuration on what types of job tasks, test methods, etc that you want that client distribution to receive / have access to. Each of the different types listed above have their own configurations available. This configuration is also set by the project and the same user can have different access for each project that they are part of. 

For your lab sample test methods, you can have the system default the due date to save you some clicking when creating the samples. Each test method is configurable to have different options based on your workflow. To work with this, click on the gear menu in the upper right corner. Select the option for "Lab Sample Configuration". On the next page, click on the "Manage" button under the "Manage Tests/Methods" section.

Once on the grid page, find the test you would like to work with and click on the name. This will navigate you to the edit page for this test. Locate the method in the grid on this page that you would like to work with. Clicking on the name for this method, will bring up a edit window. Locate the field for the "Due Date Default" - this will allow you to select from some preset options on how far out from the received date for the sample to schedule the "Due Date". Also you will see a checkbox labeled - "Due Date Skip Weekends". This checkbox will tell the system to only schedule Due Dates from Monday to Friday.

Once updated, this will automatically calculate a Due Date for any test. This happens automatically as you are creating new samples and tests. Note: you can still adjust the Due Date if the calculated date needs to be updated for any reason.

This exciting change puts your documents at your tech's fingertips. Whether it is seeing the ASTM/AASHTO standards or getting to that worksheet, these can be made readily available to the users that need these the most. Any of your current lab sample test methods can be configured to have this available. To do this, start with adding the documents to the system.

1. Adding Documents

Start by navigating in the left hand menu to "Document Storage" and then to "Search". This will then list all of the document current documents that exist within your system. If the files you need are already uploaded, feel free to skip to the next step. Otherwise, we will want to create a new document by either dragging/dropping on to this listing or using the "Create New" under the gear icon (top right of the grid).

Enter the other information to have the documents added to Omnant. Once you have these documents added, you will see them listed in the grid. Note: You can also create folders/subfolders to organize your documents. 

2. Update the lab test methods

Now it is time to associated these documents to the lab methods. To get to this, use the gear menu in the top right corner and select "Lab Sample Configuration". On the next screen, click the "Manage" button under the "Manage Tests/Methods" section. This will take you to a listing of all the test types and methods you have currently within Omnant. You can use the filters at the top or scroll to find the "Required Test" you would like to work with and click on the name.

Now from the edit page for the test, locate the "Test Method" that you would like to work with. Clicking on the name for the method, you will see the following window shown. This window has new options at the bottom to select the "Associated Standard" and "Worksheet". Use the "search" button for each to locate the file you need for each option.

3. Accessing the documents 

Now that we have the documents associated, we will start to see them in other parts of Omnant. If you head to the lab sample status board or the edit page for a lab sample, we will walk through how to access these documents. Once there, open up the edit window for the test entry screen. In the upper right corner of the window, you will see a new button for "Resources". This will allow you and your techs to access these standards and worksheets without going anywhere else. Clicking on either of these options will open up the document in the viewer for the user.

Get all your favorite pages at Omnant at your fingertips. You are now able to bookmark any page within Omnant to allow you quicker access and remove some clicks from your day. Your bookmarks will be listed at the top of navigation, so there is no need to go hunting around for different pages. You have two ways to add pages to the bookmark section:

1. Use the bookmark icons for the navigation

When you hover over any of the links in the navigation - you will see a "bookmark" icon shown. You can toggle this bookmark on / off to add these pages to the bookmark section. 

2. Use the "Bookmark current page" link

For any page, you can also quickly bookmark it by expanding the "Bookmarks" and clicking on "Bookmark current page". This will allow you to rename the bookmark if you want to adjust it from what the system defaults to. 

Adjust order / naming

Once you have your pages bookmarked, you can also adjust the ordering or naming of any of these bookmarks. When you hover over the "Bookmarks" navigation item - you will see a pencil icon shown that will allow you to edit both the order and the name. Once you click on this pencil icon, a window will be shown that allows for this maintanence.