Availability Board

The Availability Board is a read-only timeline of your whole rental fleet on a date axis. In one screen you can see which units are out on hire, which are pencilled in against a quote, and which are in or due for maintenance, so you can answer "have I got one free that week?" at a glance. The page is called Rental Availability Calendar.

What the board is for

The board lays your fleet down the left-hand side and time across the top. Each unit gets its own row, and coloured bars on that row show where it is committed and where it is free. It is the quickest way to spot a gap before you promise a customer a machine, and to see at a glance which units are tied up and why.

The board is a view only. It does not create or change anything. You still make and change bookings through the normal rental quote and order documents, and you plan maintenance through the maintenance order and the Maintenance Schedule board. Think of the Availability Board as the picture, and the documents as the controls.

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The Maintenance Schedule board is the editable companion for planning maintenance work; see the Maintenance Scheduling guide.

Opening the board

You can open the Availability Board from several places, and where you open it from decides how much of the fleet you see.

From the Role Centre: shows the whole fleet.
From the Rental Items list: pre-scopes the board to the units you were looking at.
From the Rental Item Types list: pre-scopes the board to the units in those types.
From the Rental Item Groups list: pre-scopes the board to the units in those groups.

Opening it from one of those lists pre-scopes the board to the rows you were looking at, which is handy when you only care about one part of the yard. Opening it from the Role Centre shows everything. Whichever way you open it, you can still expand and collapse the left tree to widen or narrow what is on screen.

The left tree

Down the left of the board is a drill-down tree that follows your fleet structure: Item Group, then Item Type, then the individual Unit. Expand a group to see its types, expand a type to see its units. Each unit (rental item) is its own row, and its bars sit on that row.

Collapse the branches you are not interested in to focus on part of the fleet, and expand the branch you care about to see every unit in it. This is the main way to control how busy the board looks when you have a large fleet.

What the bars mean

Each row can carry several kinds of bar and marker. The colour and style tell you what the commitment is, and most bars are clickable so you can jump straight to the document behind them.

What the bars mean

On hire

A firm booking from a rental order, shown in solid teal. This is committed time: the unit is promised to a customer. Click the bar to open the rental order behind it.

Quote

A provisional hold from a rental quote, shown in a paler dashed teal because it is not yet firm. It marks time that might be taken but has not been committed. Click the bar to open the quote.

Handling

The faded band on either side of an on-hire bar. It covers the preparation time before the hire goes out and the turnaround time after it comes back, so a unit does not look free right up to the moment of a booking. Treat it as time the unit is spoken for even though it is not on a customer site.

Maintenance (in progress)

A maintenance order that is being worked, shown in amber. The unit is off the road while this is open. Click the bar to open the maintenance order.

Maintenance (open)

A maintenance order that is scheduled but has not started yet (status Open with a scheduled window), shown in a paler amber. It marks work that is booked in but not under way. Click the bar to open it.

Expected maintenance

A small diamond marker on the date where a maintenance rule predicts the next service falls due. There is no document behind it yet; it is a forecast, so it gives you advance warning rather than a job to open.

Moving around the board

The board is built to be panned and zoomed so you can move between "this week" and "next quarter" quickly.

Pan: drag the board left or right to move backwards and forwards in time.
Zoom: use the plus and minus buttons on the toolbar, or hold Ctrl and roll the mouse wheel, to zoom in for day-level detail or out for the wider picture.
Fit: frames everything currently in view so nothing is off the edge.
Today: jumps to the current date, which is marked by a vertical line with a "Today" tag so you can always find where you are.

The board opens on roughly a four-week day-by-day view, and holds about three months of history and six months ahead, which is enough to look back at recent hires and plan the season in front of you. Hover any bar for a details card with more about that booking or job. When a fleet has more rows than fit the screen, the board scrolls vertically so you can work down through the tree.

Making changes

Because the board is read-only, you make and change bookings the usual way. To put a unit on hire or amend a hire, work through the rental order; to pencil something in, raise a rental quote. To plan or carry out maintenance, use the maintenance order and the Maintenance Schedule board. Once you have made the change in the document, it appears on the board the next time the board is opened or refreshed.

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Use the board to find the gap, then the documents to fill it. Spot a free window on the board, then open a quote or order to commit it; the new bar shows up against that unit's row.