Frequently Asked Questions
General Questions
Planisy is the first true multi-resource, multi-purpose, multi-view, fully interactive resource allocation planner/scheduler, delivering an unprecedented level of usability. The software enhances and simplifies the task of dynamically assigning resources and makes easy the reviewing and solving of resource assignment conflicts. This results in an obvious gain in operational efficiency, asset optimization and end-user satisfaction.
Moreover, through its innovative architecture, Planisy easily adapts to any use case, set of customer resources and business rules. Consequently, Planisy dramatically decreases the set-up time and Total Cost of Ownership.
- Planning is the process performed to determine the resources required to fulfil the incoming demand of business operations. It pertains to the “what” and the “how” of any activity: what exactly needs to be achieved and how it will be accomplished.
- Scheduling pertains to establishing the assignment and timing of use of specific resources of an organization. Scheduling typically involves resources such as workers, equipment, materials, machines, but also tasks, jobs, and locations. It details the “who/which” and “when” of operations, by assigning the appropriate resources to get the job done.
It is through the effective combination of these two functions that an organization creates an optimized use of resources and increases its operational efficiency.
Planisy is by-design modular and naturally expandable. Its resources can be freely and interactively added, modified, or removed. New Types of resources can be defined, and new Attributes included, to dynamically search, select, and analyse resources and their assignments. Business rules can be adapted to any use case and modified when your business requirements evolve.
Getting started with Planisy is fast and straightforward. In its default configuration, Planisy does not require much adaptation to your use case, if any at all. In fact, reference templates are available for the most common use cases, which will likely satisfy most of your needs. Get familiar in a few minutes with its intuitive navigation features and interactive methods to search, select, assign, and schedule resources.
Planisy is a SaaS solution software and hence available as Cloud-based solution, through our native web browser application, supported by dizmo AG or our cloud partners, with best-in-class hosting SLA, security, and compliance. If you need on-premises distribution, Planisy can also be licensed to install on your own servers.
Planisy is fully based on time-proven and secure standards such as secure socket layer protocol (SSL) and database technology also used for e-banking and other large scale and sensitive web services.
All services of Planisy are running in isolated containers limiting a potential attacker’s ability to get access to the entire system even in a worst-case scenario. This is why Planisy also separates the databases of all customers into separate and independent containers for each company, department, or project. This makes it virtually impossible to access data across domains even in case of an attack against one of the companies using Planisy.
For highly sensitive environments like hospitals, banks, and others, Planisy can be deployed «on premise» allowing you to use your own datacenter to run the services of Planisy and therefore have full control over data security and privacy policies.
Yes, Planisy is available on mobile devices. The only obvious prerequisite is to have an internet connection or access point. Just go on your Planisy account from your mobile phone for example, and the scheduling information you need will be instantaneously available at your fingertips: what you need, whenever you need it and from anywhere. No more calls to the office or need of a laptop to check what your next assignment is, where the closest instrument you need is, or which options exist to solve an unexpected machine failure.
For an improved experience, the first time you access Planisy from your mobile, add Planisy to your home screen. If you are operating on a small screen, open the resource inventory of the target Type in Planisy and select the resource you are most of time interested in visualizing. Its status and planned allocations will be updated in real time and be always-on. You can also delete all other digital objects of the workspace, to optimize the usage of your screen digital real-estate.
Benefits
We can hardly think of any business which would not benefit from using Planisy. Here are a few dimensions of your operations to explore to fully appreciate those benefits for your business:
- Do you have multiple types of resources which need to be assigned and scheduled in a harmonized fashion? Would you benefit from a tool which provides you with a holistic view of all of them?
- Would you benefit from a tool which allows you to navigate easily and interactively through all resources, and all their assignments over time, and visualize what matters to you, anytime, from anywhere and on any device?
- Do internal or external factors often impact the availability of resources, requiring quick and precise planning adjustments and the ability to share them with anyone concerned?
- Would you benefit from a tool which provides immediate visual feedback on scheduling errors, conflicts, misallocations, and gives you interactive and dynamic tools to correct them?
- How important is for you to adjust resource allocation rules according to your needs and be able to do it for each type of resource?
We can think of a few industries where most of the above matter, although we will not be able to provide you with an exhaustive list. Of course, we would be glad to review with you your use case, if it is not listed here below:
- Construction
- Medical and pharmaceutical
- Logistics
- Events planning
- Manufacturing and industrial
- Video production
- Field maintenance and Quality Assurance
- And more…
Certainly yes. When managing resources there are many potential sources of time loss: time spent in gathering the information required to properly schedule tasks and resources, time spent in selecting the best resource and checking availability, time spent in communicating the plan, and time spent in adjusting the plan upon unforeseen events. When designing Planisy, we have looked at each and any of those steps and optimized them, making them easy and fast. Operational efficiency is what Planisy ultimately increases and that has a direct impact on cost and business health.
As one of its strongest and key capabilities, Planisy immediately highlights present and future misallocations and conflicts through messaging and visual feedback. Coloured resources, coloured allocations, and ability to explore details through multiple methods and patented techniques (multi-instance, dynamic filtering, interactive navigation, etc…) complete the set of features at your disposal to quickly resolve conflicts and avoid errors.
Planisy is delivered as a SaaS solution and priced through a subscription fee. The total cost varies depending on the selected number of seats/users and depends on the chosen plan. The standard offer starts at 29$ per month per user. Premium and Enterprise plans also exist. Above a certain number of seats, we advise contacting us to tailor a perfect solution to your needs, as well as consulting services and training options to get you rapidly onboard. See our pricing and plans here. Last but not least, trying Planisy for free is the best option to get started. Try it now.
Checking availability of resources in Planisy is fast and easy. The Inventory dizmo provides you with all available resources, for each type of resource (workers, machines, rooms, etc…., for example). Dynamic filtering provides you with a very quick path to identify the ones that match your requirements. The Timeboard will show you their scheduling in time. If they appear allocated to other tasks, you can still allocate them and check which options exist to resolve the resulting conflicts. The interactive time-stretching and moving of resource allocations directly on the timeline section of the timeboard, the list of alternative options through the Allocation Panel section of the timeboard, a second Timeboard to further analyse the assignments of the target resource type, all help you check and apply the best option to fulfil your needs.
Resource Type and Resource Attribute are two key resources database parameters in Planisy. When mapping Planisy onto your use case, you will be interactively asked to choose the resource Types (type worker, type machine, type location, type task, etc..) which best match the composition of your resource set. Start with a simple list of Types; you can always add/modify them later.
Resource Type and Resource Attribute are two key resources database parameters in Planisy. When mapping Planisy onto your use case, you will be interactively asked to choose for each resource Type which attributes you wish to set (name, location, years of experience, specialization…, or name, category, brand, id number, weight, location…, for example). Attributes will then become the key parameters to search, select and assign resources, as well part of the variables used to analyse, monitor, and optimize resources usage.
Planisy lets you set allocation rules between each pair of resources through a resource editor tool. The editor allows you to decide for each pair of resource Types if allocations are possible, and if they are enabled, which allocation rules apply
- As a result, you could, for example, in a hospital setting define the rule which manages the allocation of instruments to rooms and then independently set the rule which manages allocations of instruments to nurses. You can also simply disable allocations between a pair of resource types.
When allocations between two Types of resources are enabled, they can be either “exclusive” or “shareable”. Exclusive means that concurrent allocations of a resource to multiple resources of another Type are not permitted, where “concurrent” means for a time period which partially or entirely overlaps between allocations, and “multiple” refers to any number of occurrences higher than 1. Shareable means instead that such concurrent allocations are allowed.
A default configuration exists where all allocations between each pair of resource types are enabled, and all allocations are set to Shareable, with no predefined limits to the number of concurrent allocations of a resource a user can make to multiple resources of another Type.
Once allocation rules have been set (see also “How are resources’ allocation rules defined within Planisy”), Planisy will manage allocations, error messages, visual feedback and any available analysis and review accordingly.
If the allocation between two resources is not possible, Planisy generates an error message over the Timeboard with information about the violation. If the allocation is not possible because the resource is “absent” (see also “How does Planisy manage downtime of resources?”) an error message will also be generated.
If the allocation is possible, Planisy provides color-based visual feedback based on 3 key colors, when allocating resource-A to resource-B:
- Green: the allocation has been successfully performed and generated no conflict
- Yellow: the allocation has been performed and generated a conflict. Check the other allocations of resource-A to analyze and resolve the conflict.
- Red: the allocation has been performed and generated a conflict. Check the other allocations of resources to resource-B to analyze and resolve the conflict.
Consistently with how assignments of resources are managed, Planisy provides an extra and special Type of resource, called “Absent” to manage any category of downtime of resources.
The resources of the Type “Absent” are user definable to account for all different categories of events which can cause resources to become unavailable: maintenance, repair, sick leave, holidays, etc…. Allocating a resource of any type to one of the resources of Absent makes the resources unavailable for any other allocation during that time. This category of unavailability being treated as a special case of “assignment”, the full capabilities of Planisy can be used to search, visualize, update, and analyse it.
Planisy offers multiple ways to adapt to your requirements and process. You decide how to distribute resources across Types (doctors, nurses, rooms, instruments, machines, tasks, etc…) and freely decide which and how many categories of Attributes to assign for each type (name, location, roles, skills, years of experience, hourly cost, etc…). You can then decide which business rules to apply for allocations between each pair of resources. Of course, you can also conveniently use the pre-defined business rules to start with and maybe change them later.
Others
Calendar tools are essentially people-to-task schedulers. They are simply not capable of properly handling other types of resources, or not all in most cases. Nor are they good for the purpose of dynamic assignment and reassignment or understanding the inter-dependencies of all resource types. Alternatively, Planisy can handle all these intricacies and more.
Excel tends to be a common jump point to Planisy. Excel is one of the greatest business tooling “inventions” since it was first introduced in 1985. It created the conditions for teams to efficiently manage business and operations and boost productivity. However, ~40 years later our expectations for productivity have quite drastically changed.
Users cite “Management Load”, “User Fatigue”, and excel being “Meeting-Heavy” when trying to reconcile the resource puzzle along the team. Half a day is invested and then a plan is set for the week – it becomes a hardcoded entity. But then things dynamically change on a daily or even hourly basis – change is constant. Resource dependencies (blockages) are not detected. Either the plan is burdensome to update or is not adhered to at all when using an excel strategy. This is when Planisy comes in, with self-service biz rules, which then understand the constrains and inter-dependencies between resources; colour-coding visualises misallocations, and an unprecedented level of interactivity makes analysis and adjustments easy and fast. Moreover, Planisy facilitates a smooth path to integrating IoT data, or modularly inputting data from a 3rd party system.