Recurring Job Templates

Purpose

This article is written to help you learn about Recurring Job Templates and how you can implement them within your DRS system.

Recurring Job Templates

Recurring Job Templates allow you to bulk create and auto schedule multiple jobs against a single order, where each job must be scheduled on a specific cycle, e.g. every week, fortnightly, monthly and so on.

An example use case is a communal lawn that must be cut every 2 weeks from March to November. A single order is created to cover all cuts, and jobs are then created in bulk and auto scheduled for each cut.


Create the Recurring Job Template

Navigate to the Order, scroll down to the Recurring Job Templates region and click Add.

Select the appropriate Job Template.

Scroll down to the worker request region and check the job duration. This will be the duration assigned to each job, i.e. each grass cut. If its incorrect you can change it.

Scroll up to the 'Periodical template time constraints settings' region and enter the appropriate settings.

The validity period sets the range of dates between which the jobs will be created.

The frequency sets which specific dates within the validity period jobs will be created.

The below example will create a grass cutting job for every second Wednesday, between 1st March 2025 and 1st November 2025.

Not all of the jobs will be created initially. There is a parameter called scheduling horizon that sets how far into the future the jobs are created. A service then runs each night to create further jobs. So taking the above grass cutting example; if the scheduling horizon is set to 60 days and today is Wednesday 22nd January 2025, the end of the scheduling horizon will be 23rd March 2025. Therefore today only 2 jobs will be created; for Wednesday 5th and 19th March. When the service runs each night from 22nd January to 4th February it will not create any further jobs. But when it runs on 5th February it will create an additional job for 2nd April. Every time the service runs it will only create a job if the next required job is within the scheduling horizon.

Frequency options

Daily Frequency

Daily. The below example will create a job for every 10th day: 1st March, 11th March, 21st March etc.

Weekly Frequency

Weekly. The below example will create a job for both Tuesday and Friday every 3rd week: 18th and 21st March 2025, followed by 8th and 11th April 2025 etc.

Monthly Frequency

Monthly using day numbers. The below example will create a job for the 5th of every second month: 5th March, 5th May, 5th July etc.

Monthly using day names. The below example will create a job for the 3rd Tuesday of the month every 3 months: 18th March, 17th June etc.

Yearly Frequency

For this to work over multiple years, you'll need to ensure the validity period covers multiple years.

Yearly using day numbers. The below example will create a job for the 15th of March, every year.

Yearly using day names. The below example will create a job for the last Friday of August, every year.

Appointment Hour

This section allows you to set the job's time constraints start and end times, along with a number of days tolerance (i.e. how many days either side or after the date specified in the frequency section, the job can be assigned).

The below example sets the time constraints to start at 9am and end at 1pm, with zero tolerance. If the frequency stipulates that the job should be created for 5th March, this would ensure the job is assigned between 9am and 1pm on the 5th March.

This example sets the time constraints to start at 9am and end at 5pm, with a tolerance of 2 days either side. If the frequency stipulates that the job should be created for 5th March, this will allow the job to be assigned between 9am on the 3rd March and 5pm on the 7th March.

This example sets the time constraints to start at 1pm and end at 5pm, with a tolerance of 4 days after. If the frequency stipulates that the job should be created for 5th March, this will allow the job to be assigned between 1pm on the 5th March and 3:30pm on the 9th March.

When you have finished entering the appropriate settings into the Periodical template time constraints settings region, click Save.

Generate Instances

The next step is to create and auto schedule the jobs.

The below example uses these settings, with a scheduling horizon of 60 days.

Click Generate Instances.

You will then see confirmation of how many jobs have been created and scheduled.

Scroll down to the Jobs sub view to see the jobs.

It is recommended that you create a shared sub view that allows you to see the job status and assignment start and end times, so you can sense check the results.

Jobs that couldn't auto schedule will have a status of New. This could be due to workers having insufficient capacity, not having matching skills and sectors, unavailability, quotas and so on.

Deleting jobs

Any Jobs that are still New or Planned can be deleted in bulk.

Click the Remove Instances button.

You will then see confirmation of how many jobs have been deleted.

Deleting Recurring Jobs

To delete a recurring Job, go back to the parent Order screen, select the Recurring Job and click Delete.

Click Yes to confirm.

This will even delete Recurring Jobs linked to Jobs that have passed Planned status (e.g. Despatched through to Completed), so use with caution.

Integration

Before implementing Recurring Job Templates in your live DRS environment, you must must check in your test environment that the recurring jobs and parent orders integrate correctly with your other systems (e.g. housing, handheld etc). Often these systems will need to be configured to handle multiple completed jobs per order.

Was this article useful?

Slot Templates

Configuring Text Messaging

Contact