Occasionally I come across an error like this:
Please pick a date between 01-27-14 and 01-31-14 (m-d-y) except 01-27-2014, 01-28-2014, 01-29-2014, 01-30-2014, 01-31-2014


Does anyone know why it does this? The MSC in question does not have a rating for me, but 2/3 of the assignments I have done are graded 9s. No citations are listed either, though ive had to cancel a few assignments in the past. The scheduler never responds when I ask about it and its always the same client. I know from time this happens with other companies but this one in particular is consistent about it. Other schedulers generally will help me out if there are any locations available by the time they get the email.

My guess is shop is not open, already assigned to another.

Several yrs. ago, I received the following:

This assignment may be completed on any day other than Sat., Sun., Mon., Tues., Weds., or Thurs. and open hrs. except A.M. or after 01:00 P.M. I accepted, as it was for lunch, provided $30 and included a $10 fee. I never knew, though, why the MSC chose such an unusual manner of describing the shop window.

So it was too hard to say Friday at noon?

Hi! I suppose this is a great time to introduce myself. My name is Daniel Price and I'm a scheduler with Customer Impact.

This is unfortunately a bit of an issue with SASSIE that we as schedulers have had to deal with in regards to how we post shops and how to use self-assign.

The issue is 2-fold. On one end, we have clients who want a certain amount of days in between shops at a specific location, therefore in our shop settings for that we keep a buffer of however many days(let's say 4 days for this example).

However, if we shop that location multiple times in a period, and someone self-assigns for the 26th, and we still have to shop that location once more in the month, it will list the available dates in the self-assign like normal as per your example, but will block out all of them due to the "buffer" that they system is trying to keep in between shops at the same location.

The reality is that due to re-schedules and cancels, sometimes the shops won't always be in a perfect scenario of days apart, but the system will still have the desired buffer in there unless it is changed or removed for that specific shop or client setting.

What I have learned to do with some of my clients that I schedule for is set up the self-assign feature for the first few weeks when posting shops for a new period, then go in and turn it off to allow people to apply the old fashion way on SASSIE after a large portion of the shops for that client have been assigned. That way I know who is attempting to apply for shops and even if they initially apply with a desired date that doesn't work, I can get in contact with them to find a date that does satisfy the client requirements of days in between shops at the same location. Many shoppers see that we still have the shop available on the job board, but when they see the dates all blocked out they just get frustrated and move on. That's what I try to avoid at all costs. The reality is we can(and need to) shop them, we'll just do some moving around to get it to work.

I hope this better explains where the issue comes up. It's an unfortunate side effect of the benefits that self-assign has on that system. If you ever see that every single day within a date range is blocked out with any shops on our job board, please immediately email the scheduler and we will be more than happy to get it fixed and get you assigned the shop, because the shop is still available.

Let me know if any of that doesn't make sense!

Daniel Price
Customer Impact, LLC
3091 University Dr. E. Bldg. 330
Bryan, TX 77802
800.677.2260 ext. 154
www.customerimpactinfo.com