In Graphical Scheduling, Graphical Assignment and Graphical Appointment Book an alert symbol can be shown when a weather alert is received. This would allow the planner, dispatcher, or supervisor to determine whether the weather peril would require a reschedule of the work order or appointment, the technician can also receive an email or SMS when there is an imminent weather peril and seek shelter.

The Weather Company (TWC) sells weather peril product codes with a lifespan and provides you with a Weather Server URL, Client ID, and Client Secret. For example, “High wind forecast >= 31.2928 m/s in the next 72 hours”. The Configure Weather Alerts application is built using the Work Center technology. The Configure action is mostly a one-time setup and allows you to configure the services, selecting up to 22 weather perils that you have subscribed to from a master list of 300+ and download the results to a CSV. The connection details are entered and the endpoint to the TWC weather alerts is registered.

The second part of the application allows you to add and register weather zones based on a radius centered around a point defined by a latitude and longitude. If you use the Service Address application, there is a field “Weather Alert Zone” which when checked and used in creating the weather zones will pull the latitude and longitude values onto the weather zone record. You will need to register the weather zones to start the process of receiving the weather alerts. Each weather zone will listen for all of the subscribed weather perils. Registering the weather zone will submit the zone name and latitude and longitude to TWC.

A Cron Task is used to find, and flag weather alert impacted work orders. Another Cron Task is used to remove inactive alerts from the work orders. An icon will appear beside the work order activity bar on Graphical Scheduling and Graphical Assignment applications and the tool tip (Alt-Click) shows the details of the weather peril. The work order’s schedule dates and its derived service address (which provides the latitude and longitude) are used to determine whether it will be impacted by the weather peril. The Communication Template WOWEATHERALERT is used for the alert notification, this sends an email to the work order’s supervisor, lead, any assigned labor and all labor in the assigned crew. This uses the role and relationship called NOTIFYPERSON. On the Dispatch Tab of the Graphical Assignment application a circle is displayed on the map around the position of the weather peril when the Show Alerts action button is used.

There are two key tables:

• WEATHERALERTIMPACT – Records impacted by a weather alert
• WOWEATHERALERT – Weather alert impacted on the work order

Weather forecasts were introduced in Scheduler 7.6.4. Weather alerts was introduced in Scheduler 7.6.5.