Requires Powercode build 26.10.05 or later.
Suggest Tech answers the question "who should take this job?" For one unscheduled job on one day, it looks at every technician who could do it, works out when each one is actually free and how far they would have to drive, and lists them best first. You pick one and click Assign.
It is a suggestion, not an autopilot. It never assigns anything on its own, and it can only see what Powercode knows: technician schedules, jobs already booked, and addresses. It does not know where a technician is right now. Read How technicians are ranked and Limitations before relying on it for a busy day.
Suggest Tech is available in two places.
Schedule Live View. Open the menu on a job in the workbench (the unscheduled jobs along the bottom of the page) and choose Suggest Tech. A job that is only in the Stand By list has to be added to the workbench first. The suggestions are always for the day the Live View is currently showing. See Install - Schedule Live View for the workbench and stand by list.
A customer's Jobs tab. Click Create Job, fill in the job as usual, and set Schedule on (optional) to the day you want. After the job is created, the suggestions open for that day. Leave the date empty and job creation behaves exactly as it always has.
All of these are under Calendar → Installation:
| Permission | Why it is needed |
|---|---|
| Access Schedule Live View | To ask for suggestions at all. |
| View All Schedule | The suggestions show other technicians' availability, which the Live View only shows to holders of this permission. |
| Scheduling Ability | To assign. Suggest Tech is offered under the same permissions that show the Save Changes button. |
Without all three, the Suggest Tech menu entry and the Schedule on field are simply not shown.
A technician is only considered if all of these are true:
Technicians who fail these checks are not listed anywhere, including under Other technicians.
Technicians are listed by shortest drive first. When two drives are equal, the technician with less of their day already booked comes first, then alphabetically by name.
If Google Maps cannot be reached, technicians are still listed, ordered by how booked they are, and the dialog says that drive time is unavailable.
Below the suggestions, Show N other technicians lists everyone who passed the checks under Who is considered but was not suggested, with the reason. When nobody at all can take the job, this section opens on its own.
| Reason shown | What it means | Can you assign? |
|---|---|---|
| (no reason; listed like a suggestion) | Free and able to take the job, just ranked below the top 10. | Yes — shown with a start time and an Assign button, like any suggestion. |
| Not scheduled to work that day | No working hours on their schedule for that day. | No |
| Fully booked that day | Scheduled, but every minute is already taken. | No |
| Longest opening is X min; the job needs Y min | They have gaps, but none long enough. | No |
| Their openings today have already passed | Their free time today is over. | No |
| Not enough time once the X min drive is added (Y min short) | An opening is long enough for the job but not for the drive as well. | No |
| Not enough time left in their remaining openings today (Y min short) | Today, the time left in their openings is too short. | No |
The numbers are there so you can decide what to do. A technician who is ten minutes short may be worth moving another job for; one who is not working that day is not.
| Symptom | Likely cause |
|---|---|
| Suggest Tech is not in the job's menu | The job is not in the workbench, or you are missing View All Schedule or Scheduling Ability. See Permissions. |
| Schedule on is missing from Create Job | You are missing one of the three permissions in Permissions. |
| No technician can take this job on … | Nobody has a suitable opening. Open Other technicians — it opens on its own in this case — to see why for each one. |
| A technician you expected is not listed at all, even under Other technicians | They are not allowed by the job's template, not in your technician group, inactive, or have no technician schedule. |
| Drive time is unavailable, so technicians are ranked by workload only. | Powercode could not get drive times from Google Maps. Check the Google Maps API key and its usage limits. |
| Wrong day when clicking Assign | The suggestion is for a different day than the Live View is showing. Switch the Live View to that day. |
| Cannot save yet: Fetching Drive Times... | Drive times are still being worked out on the Live View. Wait a moment, then save. |
| Cannot save yet: Jobs Positioned Incorrectly | A job on the Live View overlaps another job or falls outside a technician's free time. Fix its position, then save. |
| Drive times are still being calculated. Try again in a moment. | Suggest Tech was opened while the Live View was still working out drive times. Wait, then try again. |
| You don't have permission to suggest a technician for this job. | You are missing View All Schedule, or the job belongs to a different technician group than yours (for example, someone moved it after you opened the page). |
| First job of the day has an unexpectedly long drive | The technician has no address on their user record, or it is wrong. |