Autoscheduling should be used when you have a lot of locations to shop, and you want to let shoppers apply, and have a scheduler select from among those shoppers.
The first thing to do in Autoscheduling is create a scheduling profile. If you already have a profile you want to use, you can skip to Creating the Session.
1. From the main admin page, select the client and survey and click on the Scheduler link
2. Click on Create Session. There are a lot of options here, and many ways to get where we want to go, but for now let's start with this one.
3. This is where you will see your existing Profiles, if you have them. For now, we are going to create a new one, so click Create New Profile
4. Select the client and survey from the list and click Create.
5. Give your profile a descriptive name. Profiles are reused over and over in scheduling, so make it descriptive enough for you and other schedulers to identify it later.
6. an important setting in scheduling profiles is the lockout. You can make sure that the same shopper cannot visit the same location more than once in X days--fill in the number of days, and choose whether that only applies to this survey, or to any shops on any survey on the whole client.
7. On the profile, you can limit who can apply for the shops by certain demographic categories (if you are collecting those identifying categories from your shoppers). Be cautious: limiting too much will make it hard to find enough shoppers to complete your shops. Only limit by a category if it is definitely required for the client's program.
8. click Save Profile Changes. Now you have a profile to schedule from, and you can proceed to Creating the Session!