Visibility. It's the goal and the solution to scheduling downtime, handling maintenance windows, alerting employees for tech bar hours and availability and so much more. Organizations that suffer from lack of visibility for scheduling events now have a solution available.
Kinetic Data's recent enhancement to our Calendar capability includes the option to apply layered filters to a central calendar of events. These layered filters allow users to see the unfiltered events visually on a calendar display. Additionally, creating multiple schedules depending on who will be viewing the calendar or how the calendar will be used is a simple, yet overlooked benefit to a fast moving team looking to tame the chaos.
The calendar visually is best suited to display events within a day, week, month timeframe where there is a relationship between two or more events. If the relationships between the events are complex enough to make finding overlap difficult, the calendar can be used to solve that problem clearly for all to see.
Once you choose the view, you will be able to adjust and change the filters to get the information you need. In this example, a client is using the calendar to track maintenance, upgrades and downtimes for their servers. This will help employees understand when systems may be down or running slow. It will also allow the IT staff schedule different outages and upgrades to reduce overlap. Most importantly, it reduces the number of inbound questions on status and timing in a self-service manner.
Employees can also submit tickets to report an outage and this can be tracked on the calendar as well. This is a quick way to convey and visualize outages that can then be revisited, tracked and subject to RCAs even. Employees can also reserve time directly on the calendar as long as they have the proper permissions to do so.
By filtering through the different servers, an IT manager can quickly find the maintenance schedule for different servers that may have specific impact to customers, stakeholders teams or departments. Reducing potential conflicts is now fast, easy and accurate.
Different time perspectives quickly allow the viewer to assess big picture and drill down data.
Example of a week view:
Example of a day view:
This is a great way to visualize overlaps as well and instantly see potential issues, before they occur. Whether its visibility, conflict avoidance, or the dissemination of information to multiple parties, Calendar is one of the many use cases built by our customers. The Kinetic Calendar is also a great way to track Tech Bar employee availability or track room availability at offices or buildings.
Let's Get More Technical: How the Calendar Works
Kinetic Calendar leverages the Platform Bridge Models to create a uniform data fetching mechanism. Source data can exist in any system that contains event records that can be retrieved by a start and end date query. An event record is any record that has a start and end date, time and details. Details can be just about anything, like approving manager, facility/room, or item status. The Platform can also be the source of event records, thereby keeping the calendar contained entirely within your Kinetic environment.
If Calendar functionality is missing from your organization, let's talk! Our platform supports dozens of use cases, built to your needs and for your organization.