Conflicts

A conflict arises whenever the schedule does not satisfy a realistic requirement. For example, if the same person is scheduled to be in two different locations at the same time, the program reports a conflict because that person cannot physically be in two places simultaneously.

In this chapter, we describe the various types of conflicts that the program monitors and explain what happens when they are detected.

Types of Conflicts

The program monitors a variety of potential conflicts and warns you whenever one is detected. If a conflict occurs as a result of your most recent action, a Conflicts Warning Window will appear, showing the new conflicts and asking whether you want to cancel the operation or ignore the warnings and continue anyway. If you choose to continue, the conflicts will be logged in the Conflicts pane — which we will discuss later in this chapter.

First, let us review the different types of conflict scenarios that the program can detect and warn you about.

Double-Booked Person or Group

Naturally, people cannot usually be double-booked. This means that if two activities involving the same instructor, student or group are scheduled at the same time, the program considers this to be a conflict. For example, if you attempt to drag-and-drop an activity to a time when the instructor is already occupied by another activity, a warning will appear.

Double-Booked Room

A room is also not allowed to be double-booked by default (although this can be overridden for certain rooms, as explained below). If two activities are scheduled in the same room at the same time, a warning is displayed.

Room Capacity

When an activity with more students than a room can accommodate is scheduled in that room, this is considered a conflict, and a warning is displayed indicating that the room's capacity has been exceeded.

Room Distance

For any two rooms, buildings or campuses, it is possible to define a travel time — the time required to move from one location to another. Once this travel time is defined, the program tracks every pair of consecutive activities scheduled in different locations in a person's schedule, to ensure that the person has enough time to travel from one location to the next. For example, if a university has two buildings that are 10 minutes apart, scheduling two back-to-back activities of some instructor in those buildings without at least a 10-minute break between them is considered a conflict.

Unavailable Resource

As described in the Scheduling chapter, you can block out certain times in a resource's schedule due to unavailability. Such blocks can be placed in the schedule of any resource (including courses). If you attempt to schedule an activity involving a resource that is blocked at that time, a conflict warning will be displayed.

Overbooked Activity

Activities have a Quantity property which defines the planned number of hours or periods for that activity to be scheduled during the week. If you attempt to schedule an activity for more hours or periods than its total planned quantity, a warning is also displayed.

Conflicts Window

Whenever the program detects one or more new conflicts as a result of your last operation, it displays a window called the Conflicts Window, which lists all newly detected conflicts. This is the window shown in all the examples above. The Conflicts Window gives you three options:

1. The first is to cancel the last operation and return to the previous state — essentially undoing what you just did.
2. The second option is to ignore the conflicts, complete the operation, and resolve the conflicts later at your convenience (note that you can always view these conflicts in the Conflicts pane, as explained below).
3. The third option is to settle the conflicts immediately, directly in the Conflicts Window, by choosing which conflicting activities should remain scheduled and which should be deleted.

   Explanation: If you look at the Conflicts Window, you will see that conflicts involving two activities display those activities with a square check box to the left of each one. Clicking a check box tells the program that the corresponding activity should be deleted. A red "X" will appear in the check box, and the activity text will be shown struck through. If you click the "Continue" link at this point, all activities marked with a red "X" will be deleted.

Note: When working online and connected to a server, if one user is viewing the Conflicts Window, no other user can make changes until that user presses "Continue" or "Cancel". If another user attempts to perform an operation during that time, a message will be displayed asking them to wait until the first user finishes the operation.

Conflicts Pane

The Conflicts Pane summarizes all existing conflicts in the schedule. If you have ever clicked "Continue" in the Conflicts Window (without deleting the conflicting activities), the conflicts from that window will appear in the Conflicts Pane. The Conflicts Pane is located on the right-hand side of the workspace. To display it, click the "Conflicts" tab located next to the Activities tab.

Important: By default, the Conflicts Pane displays only the conflicts related to the resource currently selected in the navigation pane. For example, if you are viewing an instructor's schedule in the main schedule pane, the Conflicts Pane will display only the conflicts involving that instructor. To display conflicts for all resources, click the All tab at the top of the Conflicts Pane.

In the list of conflicts, each row represents a single conflict. If you double-click a row, the program will open the schedule of the resource involved in that conflict and select the relevant cell.

The last tab above the Conflicts Pane shows the day and time currently selected in the main schedule pane. When you click this tab, only the conflicts for that specific day and time are displayed, while all other conflicts are filtered out.

If you want to display only conflicts of a specific type (for example, only double bookings), you can use the filter button above the list — the one that by default is labeled All Types.

Allowing Conflicts

By default, the program tracks conflicts for every type of resource except for courses. Whenever an operation results in a resource being double-booked, a conflict warning is displayed with a summary of the affected resources.

In some cases, however, conflict tracking is unnecessary and only creates additional "noise". For example, when an instructor has not yet been assigned to several activities, a placeholder name such as TBD may be used. This is not a real instructor, but simply a temporary placeholder that will later be replaced with the actual instructors. In such cases, it is often preferable to disable conflict tracking for this placeholder, so that the schedule is not cluttered with irrelevant conflict warnings whenever activities are assigned to it.

Each resource has a Conflicts property that controls whether the program tracks conflicts for that resource. This property has two possible values: Not Allowed and Allowed. If you set this property to Allowed, the program will stop tracking conflicts for that resource and will no longer display warnings when it is double-booked.

The next chapter: Changes.