Conflicting Activities - Standard activities with standard activity

Modified on Fri, 26 Jul, 2024 at 1:06 PM

Standard with standard activities

Creating a job plan with activities that happen over multiple cycles can result in complex patterns and calculations. These complex patterns may cause conflicts or clashes in activities that will have to be resolved in order for a job plan to be signed off.

Conflicts occur when 2 or more activities happen at the same time and you will see the message below displayed in your job plan.

A common clash occurs when an activity starts before another has ended and these conflicts can be seen in all views – they will be easy to spot as they will be highlighted. You will need to click on the red exclamation mark beside the activity to highlight the activities and weeks that are conflicting.

Timeline

Description automatically generated

Altering the day/time of the activities to eliminate overlaps. To do this you would select one of the conflicting activities using the Edit button. This is the most common type of overlap and is simple to resolve.
Changing the activity schedules to Annualised. This is an ideal resolution when an activity overlaps with multiple other activities which often happens when there are many different cycles, especially monthly and weekly. Changing the start and/or end times of lots of activities can be time consuming so the recommended action would be to use annualised activities. To do this you would count how many occurrences of the activity occur over the Attending/working weeks. You would add this activity in the same way as weekly, but you would select Annualised as the schedule type but, you would still define the day/s and start/end times of the activity.
Changing the activity schedules to Non-scheduled. Where the conflicts/overlaps are complicated and not simple to resolve by adjusting the start/end times or by annualising, then you would add them as Non-scheduled activities. This is a fairly easy way to resolve the issue and involves defining the most flexible type of activity schedule. To do this, you would state the number of occurrences and the length of time that it happens. As there is no schedule there are no conflicts/overlaps but, you would need to consider whether there should be adjustments to reduce other activities if this does affect them. An example would be when a consultant needs to achieve a certain amount of SPA per week, but it is difficult to say when this would occur due to the Direct Clinical Care taking precedence in most situations.
At times, conflicts or overlaps arise when two activities occur simultaneously. This can be prevented by marking them as a Parallel Activity.
Here's how:
Add the Parallel Activity: When creating the overlapping activity, find Schedule and choose the Parallel Activity option (as shown below.)
Match Schedules: If the new activity matches an existing one's timing exactly, choose Identical schedule. Select the matching activity from the list, and the system will copy its schedule.
Different Schedule? If the parallel activity has its own schedule, just choose Different schedule.
This way, you can manage overlapping tasks without inflating your workload or messing up your job plan

When the activities conflict/overlap but one of the activities occurs instead of the other, you would need to label this as a Replacement activity. This means that you will not double count time or PAs, but you recognise that you do not know which activity will be replaced. This could occur when you have a quarterly meeting that takes you away from your standard activity when it occurs, but it does not replace the same activity each time.

NOTE: Sometimes conflicts occur due to clashes between Priority Templates and an individual’s routine planned activity. In these circumstances, you may have to link in with your Administrator to resolve these clashes. Administrators may wish to refer to part two of this guidance – Conflicting/Overlapping Activities – Priority templates with standard activities.