This activity is used to register resource preferences against Equipment/Service Objects. When a Work Task is to be carried out on an object, there can be resources that are preferred or not preferred. Those resources can be registered per object, and the application criteria can be further refined using the additional attributes Work Type/Activity Type and Priority. Once the registration of resource preferences is done, the preferred resources will be inherited to Work Tasks which are created against the object.
The preference will instruct the scheduling engine how to consider the
specified resource. Any value between 0 and 1 is valid.
Setting a
value of 0 means that jobs will not be scheduled to this resource.
Setting a value of 1 is a hard constraint and means that only the
resource(s) with this preference will be considered for scheduling,
regardless of any other preferences defined.
Setting a value greater than
0 and less than 1 will act as a sliding scale of preference, where a value
closer to 0 will make it less likely that the resource will be scheduled and
a value closer to 1 will make it more likely that the resource will be
scheduled.
The preference will be used to calculate the value of allocating the job to the specified resources. Let's assume a job has a base value of 1000, then the preferences would be applied as follows:
In addition to specifying a resource and a preference value, a Work Type/Activity Type and a Priority can be specified to ensure that the resource preference is only applied if the Work Type/Activity Type and/or Priority matches the values on the Work Task. If these two fields are left blank, then the preferred resource is valid, regardless Work Type and/or Priority.
The preferences entered on a parent object of a structure, can also be the preferences of lower level objects. By using the command "Set Preference to Structure", the lower level objects in the structure will inherit the parent preferences. When a preference is inherited, the details of the parent can be found in Parent Preference Object ID and Parent Preference Site.
As a result of this activity, a resource preference line will be registered against an equipment/service object.