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This overview will take several months to write; it is work in progress. I am starting with the Delivered IBM Ideas, 8 so far but there are several more to understand and document. I will more than likely add the functionality for qualifications before adding the three dashboards Scheduling, Dispatching and Planning which will require data and so will take more time to prepare.
Topics
Good morning, I’m Andrew Jeffery and I’m pleased to be introducing the enhancements made to Maximo Scheduler since 7.6.1.2 (Scheduler 7.6.8) which was released in July 2020. This review was made in fall 2025, and the version was MAS 9.1.2.
We’ll start by looking at the three Scheduler Dashboards, Scheduling, Dispatching and with MAS 9.1 the Planning Dashboard
We’ll then look at some of the enhancements added to Maximo Scheduler from delivered IBM Ideas.
In the final section we’ll look at some enhancements made to work management which have (or will have) an impact on Maximo Scheduler.
So, let’s get started.
Start Week Day
The Idea SCHEDULE-I-70 was to be able to define the start of the week, the default is Monday, previously it was a Sunday.
The Start Week Day field was added to both Graphical Resource View (GRV) and Graphical Work Week (GWW) applications. In the Graphical Resource View which always shows a month at a time the change is very subtle, it is the positioning of the vertical lines in the date ribbon. The 6th and 13th October 2025 are Mondays, the start of the week.
In Graphical Work Week which shows a week at a time, the change is more obvious because the date ribbon shows the days of the week. The grey areas are non-working time. The change means that for a 5-day week, Monday to Friday the grey area for Saturday and Sunday appears at the right-hand end. Previously with the week starting on a Sunday the week started with non-working time – a thick grey band.
GWW Additional Resources
The Idea SCHEDULE-I-80 was merged with Schedule-I-51 and was to include additional resources to the Graphical Work Week application, so that you could assign work to others based on their secondary craft and so that you could include all persons who worked at the same work location.
Without using Additional Resources, Graphical Work Week includes the crafts that are required by the work orders in the schedule, those work orders added by the work queries. If your primary aim is to schedule the work orders for electricians, then only labor with the default craft of ELECT would be included, but there could be some other labor who can perform some work carried out by electricians. In the other use case, you may want to schedule work orders using a consistent set of labor resources, perhaps those that work from a work location. You do not want this changing, depending on which set of work order are included. A similar use case would also apply to crews perhaps using a crew work group.
The data sources for the Additional Resources table are CRAFT and AMCREWT (Crew Type). Neither of these objects have attributes that you would want to use to base the query, perhaps except for Work Zone Type, therefore the query is likely to list the craft or crew types as the screen shows. This means that you might be including craft or crew types where there are several labor or crews which you do not want to assign work to, for example Electricians, Mechanics or Pipe Fitters who work at other work locationsA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More that you do not schedule or assign work for.
You could filter the resources in the Resources table, but it would be better to add a query to Restrict Resource Availability where the query is based on the Labor or AMCREW (Crew) objects. This allows a query to be used on attributes of Labor or Crew, for example Work Location or Crew Work Group or by using a subquery to the Supervisor on the Person object.
There are three tables on the Schedule tab of the Graphical Work Week application:
- Work Queries – a query for the work orders to include
- Restrict Resource Availability – a query to restrict the labor or crew shown in the Resources table
- Additional Resources – Includes other crafts or crew types that are not on the work orders you included in the work queries
It is best to create these queries in the applications like Work Order Tracking, Labor, Crews, Craft or Crew Type and then use the Copy Query buttons.
GWW Delete Multiple Enhancements
The Idea SCHEDULE-I-75 was to allow you to select multiple assignments to delete. The Delete Assignment action existed on the right click menu of a bar and this allowed you to delete a single work assignment. This may be needed when you make an assignment, and Maximo automatically splits the assignment to fit into the remaining hours of a shift, you then decide you don’t want the split assignment, perhaps the labor or crew can do extra time instead.
The process is to first select the assignments you want to delete, right-click on one of the assignments you wish to delete and then use the Delete Assignment action. Unfortunately, there is a defect, it isn’t working in MAS 9.1.2.
GWW Manually Split Assignments
The Idea SCHEDULE-I-55 was to allow the user to manually split an assignment instead of accepting the automatic split if the duration of the assignment did not fit the work hours of a shift. In the example, I have a 10-hour assignment and there is an 8-hour shift, Maximo will automatically split the assignments with the first split period being the remaining hours of the shift where you make the assignment. 8 hours occurs on 29th Sept 2025, and 2 hours occurs on 30th Sept. You cannot choose the durations of the split or when they should occur. You might prefer two 5-hour assignments instead starting at the beginning of each day. When you make an assignment the Assign Labor dialog opens showing you where the assignments will be made, but this dialog is read-only, you cannot make the adjustments in the dialog.
Note, you should try to assign your long duration assignments first and work from the start of the week towards the end, otherwise you might find that the assignments are not on adjacent days.
To Manually Split, decide who you will make the assignments to and on which dates, use the View Assigned Work on the Resource record to understand what assignments have been made on those dates and the time left in each shift. When you make an assignment Maximo will assign to the first available time in the work period. Use Create Assignment, this duplicates the assignment at the same date and time. Use inline editing to change the Finish Date/Time of each assignment so that the hours will fit in the available hours on the work period where you will make the assignment, if you don’t do this then Maximo will auto-split that assignment. Make the assignments to the required resource.
GWW Additional Resource Columns
The Idea SCHEDULE-I-39 was to add Work Location, Work Zone and Supervisor to the Resource Columns of Graphical Work Week. Work Location and Work Zone have been delivered, the Labor’s Supervisor has not, a new enhancement idea has been created – https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASSCHDULR-I-186. The business logic behind this is that the availability of resource may be handled by the Supervisor of the resource, which may not be the person making the assignments.
Multiple Shift Breaks
The Idea SCHEDULE-I-40 was to allow multiple breaks to be added to a shift, previously it was only one. A 12-hour shift is likely to have at least two breaks.
In the Calendars application the Define/Apply Shift action and dialog is used. You will need to add the shift breaks for each shift pattern day. I used the Break Type of NON-WORK. This is the same synonym domain RSNCODE that is used for modified availability, so you might add a synonym of NON-WORK called BREAK.
The example calendar is a 12-hour day, 6 days/week. Each workday has two 1-hour shifts starting at 11:00AM and 3:00PM. The total hours of availability for each workday are reduced to 10 hours.
The Graphical Resource View application considers the breaks and shows the total hours of availability which for a single shift will be a multiple of the available hours. There is only one labor with this calendar/shift, hence the available hours show as 10.
The Graphical Work Week application will also reflect the availability accounting for the breaks, but only for future work periods. This has been reported to IBM Support as a defect in MAS 9.1.2 as it interferes with the calculation of Allocation %. The non-working periods of the breaks are not shown in the Gantt chart of the Graphical View.
The Graphical Assignment (GA) and Assignment View tab is the only place where the breaks will be shown as non-working time. The resource bars and the resource name are coloured yellow when the assignment bar overlaps a break or a period of non-working time. The assignment bar is also coloured yellow on the Work View tab.
GWW Assign but don’t split
The Idea MASSCHEDULR-I-140 was to not automatically split assignments at the end of the shift if there are not enough available hours.
In effect, I understand this will make an assignment and ignore availability. For example, you have an assignment where the work hours are a little more than the remaining hours on the day, the labor or crew will work extra hours, but you needn’t extend their availability.
In the screenshot we have a 10-hour work assignment, but the shift hours are 8 hours. To make an assignment you select the Assignment in the top table, and normally you would double-click the cell in the Resource table where you wish to make the assignment. Maximo will automatically split the assignment into two, with in this case, the first assignment being 8 hours, and the second assignment starting on the following day and would be 2 hours in duration.
The new alternative, which unfortunately creates an error message in MAS 9.1.2, the user would double-click the Resource Name, and the assignment would be made on the Start Date and Time without splitting the assignment, availability being ignored.
Use Shift Work Hours
Thank you
Thank you for listening.