Calendar

portatour® provides you with a calendar, in which you can enter all appointments - e.g. agreed customer calls, company meetings, car repair shops, scheduled phone calls. These appointments are automatically considered as the highest priority in the schedule calculation.

Have the schedule, your fixed appointments and your call reports displayed clearly in a daily, weekly or monthly view. There are three ways to reach the calendar:

• Main menu item Calendar
• Main menu item Schedule > More > Calendar
• On the customer detail page, in the section Upcoming appointments, click the button Find suitable day

Future calendar entries are colored differently:

• Dark blue: appointments at an already fixed time
• Medium blue: appointments flexible on the day
• Light blue: customer calls at customers with a reservation
• White: customer call suggestions by portatour® based on the customer's call interval
• Gray: Overnight stay suggestions (at the home location or overnight stay on the way)

In general, the darker the color, the more precisely the leeway for this customer call has already been set. While a white suggested call is just a possible recommendation for the day and time that can still be moved, a dark blue appointment must occur at the exact time.

Further colors in the calendar:

• Gray-framed entries with gray font represent call reports.
• The current day is highlighted in light yellow.
• The orange coloration in the header shows those days for which a schedule currently exists.
• Collisions are indicated by red and yellow warning stripes at appointments (see Create appointments).

In the daily and weekly views, trips are represented by grey roads and lunch breaks with a fork-and-knife symbol. A white surface can be seen instead of the roads for times that have not been allocated – e.g. waiting times before fixed appointments.

Clicking the date display on top opens a 'Jump to' window to quickly change to another date:

In the header of the calendar the map and the presence of tasks are shown by icons. The small arrow pointing downwards visualizes that a menu opens when clicked. This menu contains links to the schedule of the day and the map display, as well as functions for task management and appointment creation (see Tasks). In addition, you can also edit the day here (see Move or swap day).

If you save your call reports only with date but without time (definable under Options > Reporting > Call times), they will be listed one below the other:

Create appointments

You create new appointments by clicking the button New appointment or the desired date and time in the calendar. The menu for New appointment appears, where you can select the desired type of appointment (see also Create appointment).

As soon as you have saved an appointment, portatour® checks if it collides with other appointments. By doing so, it also takes into account the necessary driving times between the appointments. As a user you recognize colliding appointments by the preceding red flash symbol everywhere in portatour® where appointments are displayed. Appointments which are automatically shortened by portatour® in the schedule due to a collision are earmarked yellow in the calendar.

New or edited appointments are displayed with a red line in the calendar until they have been correctly included in the schedule. In case portatour® recognizes that the schedule is out-of-date because you have created or edited appointments for the schedule period, the portatour® logo in the menu bar will be converted into a red Update schedule symbol. Click this symbol and the schedule will be updated, taking the new appointments into account.

Appointment list

Clicking on the icon will take you to the appointment list (see Appointment list).

Calendar options

By clicking the cogwheel symbol in the top right corner of the calendar you open the calendar view options.

Here you define which Period (day, week, month) shall be displayed.

If your visits are often shorter than 30 minutes and you like to work with the calendar’s day or week view, it’s a good idea to change the calendar’s time scale from 30 to 15 minutes. The appointments are displayed twice as tall in the calendar and thus contain more text.

Choose the kind of View:

• Plan: You will only see the schedule and fixed appointments.
• Reports: You only see call reports.
• Combined: Appointments, call suggestions and call reports are shown together. An appointment or call suggestion for a customer will only be shown in the calendar until you enter a call report for that customer on that day – i.e. the customer was actually visited. Subsequently, the view will only show the call report for clarity reasons.

The Label section allows you to choose the labelling of individual appointments, call suggestions and call reports in the calendar. Choose between Subject first, Location first and Only location. “Subject” also contains the customer’s name.

Calendar sharing

Use Calendar sharing in the Options to also see your appointments, the schedule or your call reports in other programs (e.g. Google Calendar or Outlook) or to make them available to other persons (see details under Calendar sharing).