Generate Needs From a Plan – Nepton

Also check our guidance page for Assigning people to needs automatically

Introduction

If you are looking for an automated tool to generate needs for you based on tasks, this article is for you. We know that adding needs for large amount of locations is a tedious job. We have a better and easy way of generating needs in bulk through planning tools.

Table1 : important terms

Term	Definition
Need	In planning view, a reserved time slot that is not yet assigned to any person
Shift	In planning view, a reserved time slot that is assigned to a person
Task	An action that needs to be performed by a person as part of his work. A task can be measured in hours or in pieces.
Task Group	A logical combination of tasks. Task Group is simply a wrapper and used for convenience only.
Competency	Skill or ability needed to perform a task. Competencies are used in automated shift generation tool to assign tasks to relevant persons. You can set competencies for a task and for a person. This relationship is used to find a suitable person for a task.
Plan	A combination of tasks to achieve. There could be multiple plans at the same time. Target/Offered/Agreed values are set for each location per plan. The purpose of a plan is to generate needs in bulk automatically.
Man Day (HTP)	This is used for calculating the tasks' cost. Its length is normally a person working day e.g. 7 hours and 30 min.
Target	This term is used in planning tools. It refers to the the desired amount of man days (HTP) for a task. If a task is measured in pieces then it is the amount of pieces.
Offered	This term is used in planning tools. It refers to the the amount a manager thinks is achievable.
Agreed	This term is used in planning tools. It refers to the amount a manager finally agrees upon with planner or administrator. This value is used by automatic needs & shifts generation tools to generate needs and shifts.

What are planning tools

Planning tools contains Rough planning, Target planning and Resource planning views. Planning tools are used to generate needs and shifts automatically from a plan. Planning tools facilitate to set the target values for tasks to achieve in certain period of time.

Planning tools can be configured in CMP by turning on the following features:

NeedGeneratingTools
RoughPlanningTools
Competencies

I you don't have access to the CMP, ask your administrator.

Rough planning

As the name suggests, this planning view is used for setting up rough estimates for tasks for each location. This planning view is available under Planning > Plans > Rough planning page.

Target planning

This planning view provides a better view to fine tune the targets for each location.

This planning view is available under Planning > Plans > Target planning page

Resource planning

In this planning view targets are set directly for persons. The values set in Agreed fields in this planning view is used by automated shift generation tool. This planning view is available under Planning > Plans > Resource planning page

How to auto generate needs from a plan

The following steps are required for generating needs automatically.

Create some tasks. Tasks can be created by going to Planning > Task
Create a plan
Set Targets/Offered/Agreed values using Rough planning or Target planning tool
Goto Planning > Planning view
Click Generate needs from a plan

A new pop window will appear where you can generate needs. Generate needs is a two phase process.
- Phase 1:"Calculate Needs" button will calculate the needs only as per selection.
- Phase 2: The "Generate Needs" button will generate needs (insert data into database).

Needs are generated for each location where Agreed values are set in a plan. The length of a need is set as per the length of a Man Day (HTP) task. It is normally 7 hours and 30 minutes, but could be set to a any value as needed in Planning > Task page.

Form inputs

Plan: Select a plan for which we need to generate needs
Plan Period: The period for which you want to generate needs. e.g if a plan period is 20 days, you can generate needs for 20 days or less (by selecting planning period).
Location: Select location for which you want to generate needs. If a parent level location is selected then needs will be generated for all its child locations
Tasks: Select task(s) to generate needs for
Generate Needs On Weekends: if checked, needs will be generated on weekends
Generate Needs On Public Holidays: if checked, needs will be generated on public holidays
Replace Existing Needs: if checked, will delete old needs for the selected locations and then generate new ones

Cancellation window: a value to set whether a user can cancel his shift or not. There are three possible value

a. Number Greater than zero (e.g 10): A person may cancel their shift reservation up to the entered number of days before it's start.

b. Zero (0): Entering zero means the shift can be cancelled right up until the day it starts. e.g. 0

c. Leaving the field empty means the shift cannot be cancelled.

How needs are calculated

Note: The Need Generating Tool uses the location's default start and end time 
when creating needs

The logic used to generate needs automatically is as following.

For example we have a plan "Plan A" of 20 days long and we want to generate needs for plan period of 10 days only (for simplicity I exclude dates here and talking about days only). The agreed amount for some "Location A" is 700 for some "Task A". The "Task A" needs 30 minute to complete. The htp value is 7 hours and 30 minutes (total 450 minutes) and lunch duration is 60 minutes. So, the calculation logic for "Location A" is as following: Total "Task A" htp = (Agreed Amount * Task Cost) / (htp in minutes + lunch duration) Total "Task A" htp = (700 * 30) / (450 + 60) = 41,17 and it is rounded to 41 htp One day needs = (Total "Task A" htp / total days in "Plan A") One day needs = (41 / 20) = 2 Total Needs generated for Selected plan time period = (number of days in plan time period * One day needs) Total Needs generated for Selected plan time period = (10 * 2) = 20