Schedule work in Planner

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Overview

Planner is the scheduling board in Thread Inbox. Every member you show gets their own column, with their own Todo list and a shared Triage panel at the bottom of the screen. You assign work by dragging a ticket to a person, and schedule it by dragging it onto a time or a day. Plans you make in Planner become schedule entries in your PSA, and schedule entries made in your PSA show up in Planner.

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Plan your first ticket

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What’s different from the previous Planner

The previous Planner showed each member as a column of day boxes (Overdue, Assigned, then one box per day). The new Planner adds:

• An hour-by-hour calendar. In Day view, each member’s column is a time grid in half-hour slots, with a red line marking the current time.
• Todo instead of the Assigned box. Tickets a member owns but hasn’t scheduled sit in their Todo, directly under their calendar.
• Triage at the bottom, as a full ticket list. You can search it, filter it, sort it, and switch it to a saved view.
• A choice of who you see. Switch between All members, My schedule, and any of your teams.
• Day, Week and Columns views, resizable panels, and a compact layout. Columns keeps the classic layout: one lane per member with their To do list and the days of the week.
• Cards that open the ticket in place, so you can work it without leaving Planner.

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Triage, Todo and the calendar

Every ticket on the board is in one of three places: Todo is there so nothing waits on your calendar. Claim a ticket into your Todo the moment it comes in, so everyone can see you own it, then drag it onto the calendar when you’re ready to put it on the clock.

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Choose whose schedule you see

The Planner side panel lists:

• All members: any members you pick from your workspace.
• My schedule: only your own calendar.
• Teams: each of your teams, in the same order as Inbox.

On All members or a team, use Manage members in the toolbar to choose which members get a column. On a team, the picker lists only that team’s members and shows the whole team until you narrow it. In My schedule it’s locked to you. If no members are selected, Planner shows No members selected. Select Select members to pick some. Hover a member’s name to see whether they’re Available for dispatch, Unavailable for dispatch, or Excluded from auto-dispatch, and which work schedule they follow.

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Switch between Day, Week and Columns

Use the Day / Week / Columns toggle in the toolbar:

• Day shows one column per member on a 24-hour time grid, in 30-minute slots. A red line marks the current time when you’re looking at today.
• Week with a single member (for example, My schedule) shows Monday through Sunday as columns on the same time grid.
• Week with several members shows one column per member and one row per day, Monday through Sunday. Each cell lists that member’s plans for the day. Select +N more to see the rest of a busy day.
• Columns gives each member a lane with their To do list at the top and the days of the week below it. See The Columns view.

Use the arrows beside the date to move back or forward a day (in Day view) or a week (in Week and Columns). Today brings you back to the current day or week.

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The Columns view

Columns shows the week as a list of cards rather than a time grid, so you can see each member’s open work and upcoming plans at a glance. With several members, each member gets a lane:

• To do at the top lists the member’s tickets that have no upcoming plan. The header shows how many there are, and a red tag such as 2 overdue when some are overdue. Overdue tickets come first.
• Below it, one section per day lists that day’s plans and Outlook events, plans without a time first. In the current week, the lane starts at today and runs to Friday, and weekend days appear only when today is a Saturday or Sunday. Other weeks show Monday to Friday.

With a single member (for example, My schedule), To do and Monday through Sunday sit side by side. Past days of the current week start folded into a narrow strip; select one to expand it. Select the arrow on a day or on To do to collapse or expand it. Days with no cards start collapsed, and you can still drop tickets onto a collapsed section.

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Use Todo and Triage

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The Todo strip

The Todo strip sits under the calendar in Day and Week views. In Columns, the same list is each lane’s To do section. Each member’s cell holds:

• Plans for the day you’re viewing that have no start time (Day view only). These show their day as a label, which turns red once the day has passed.
• Tickets the member owns that have no plan for today or later, most recently updated first. A ticket whose plans have all ended without being completed shows a red Overdue tag. Select Show more to load more.

The top of each cell shows how many tickets it holds, for example 12 tickets, or No tickets. In the single-member Week view, the strip has one cell per day, holding that day’s plans with no start time. Drag the strip’s top edge to resize it, or select Todo to collapse it.

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The Triage panel

The Triage panel at the bottom of the page lists tickets you can plan. Choose what it shows from its view menu:

• All tickets: active tickets with no assignee.
• Assigned to me: your own tickets.
• When a team is selected, that team’s saved views.

Use the filter bar to narrow the list by ticket attributes such as board, company or priority, Search Triage to find a ticket, and Display settings to change sorting and grouping. Filters apply to the Triage panel only, not to the calendar. Use Hide and Show to collapse the panel. Select a ticket to open it.

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Assign and schedule by drag and drop

Drag any ticket card to a new place. The drop target lights up and names what will happen, for example Drop to assign with the member’s name.

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The three everyday moves

1. Triage to Todo: drag a new ticket onto a member’s Todo. They become the ticket owner, in Thread and in your PSA. No plan is created.
2. Todo to the calendar: drag it onto a time slot. Planner creates a 30-minute plan at that time and writes it to your PSA as a schedule entry.
3. Triage straight to the calendar: drag it onto someone’s time slot to assign and schedule it in one move.

To plan a ticket for a day without a time, drop it on a day in the multi-member Week view or in Columns. Once a ticket is on the calendar, move it by dragging it to another time, day or member. It keeps its length, and a plan moved to another day keeps its time. A plan that would run past midnight is cut off at midnight. Every change shows a message at the bottom of the page with Undo, which also reverses the change in your PSA. If a save fails, the card goes back to where it was and the message says why.

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Who owns the ticket after a drop

A ticket’s owner is its assignee. A secondary resource is a member who has a plan on a ticket they don’t own, for example a second technician on a ConnectWise or Autotask schedule entry. Secondary resources show as their own cards in their own column. Two cases to keep in mind:

• A card from someone else’s Todo goes to whoever you drop it on. Drag a ticket from one member’s Todo onto another member’s calendar, and the second member becomes the owner.
• Dropping on Triage always removes the owner, even when you drag a secondary resource’s plan.

Planner asks you to confirm before it removes a plan or an owner (Yes, move to Triage or Yes, move to Backlog). Cancel puts the card back. Outlook events, completed plans, and cards that are still saving can’t be dragged.

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Change a plan’s time

• Resize: in Day view or the single-member Week view, drag the top or bottom edge of a ticket card. Times snap to 15 minutes.
• Set an exact time: hover a card and select Set a time. Choose the member, start and end day, and start and end time, in 15-minute steps, then select Save.

Saving a plan from Set a time makes the member you chose the ticket owner, including when you edit a secondary resource’s plan.

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Read the cards

Each plan appears as a card in its member’s column. In Day and Week views, timed cards are sized to their start and end time, and plans that overlap appear side by side.

• Ticket plans show the company, contact and ticket summary, and on larger cards the status and ticket number.
• Outlook calendar events appear in blue with the Outlook icon and the event title. See Show Outlook events in Planner.
• Completed plans stay on the calendar, greyed out, so past days show the work that was done. Hover the icon to see Marked as done or Ticket closed.

A ticket card’s color comes from the ticket’s XLA timer, so you can spot work at risk before you plan around it: The icon at the top left of a ticket card shows the XLA timer; hover it to see the time left. The small colored square before the status shows the ticket’s priority. If your workspace uses Auto-dispatch and a member has a work schedule, the hours outside that member’s working time are shaded in Day view and the single-member Week view. Shading is a visual guide only: you can still plan into those hours. To set working hours, see Create and manage work schedules.

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Set up the layout

• Drag the dividers above Todo and above Triage to give either one more room, or collapse them.
• Layout: select Display in the toolbar and choose Comfortable (default, taller hours and roomier cards) or Compact (more of the day and more cards on screen). In Columns, cards always show full detail, so the layout only changes the text size.
• Per view: All members, My schedule and each team keep their own members, Day, Week or Columns choice, Triage view, and filters. A view you haven’t switched yet opens in the mode you used last. Todo and Triage height, what’s collapsed, and the layout apply to every view.

Your Planner setup is saved to your Thread account, so it’s the same on any browser or device you sign in from.

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Keep Planner up to date

Planner updates on its own. When a plan is added, moved, completed or removed, the calendar, Todo and Triage change without reloading the page, including when a teammate made the change. Changes made directly in your PSA reach Planner once Thread next syncs with it. To sync now instead of waiting, select Refresh in the toolbar. For how often each PSA syncs, see How Planner syncs with your PSA.

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Open a ticket from Planner

Click any ticket card to open the ticket on top of Planner. Reply, add a note, change the status or priority, log time, or run an action, then close it to land back where you were. Use Full view to open the whole ticket. Every plan for the ticket is listed in the Planner card of its Control Panel. From there you can mark a plan done, edit or delete it, or add another with +. Done plans are hidden until you click Show done. A ticket that’s only in someone’s Todo has no plan, so its Planner card shows “No planned events” and its owner appears under Members.

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Show Outlook events in Planner

Planner has no setting of its own for Outlook events. They appear for every member once an admin connects Outlook Calendar for your workspace: in Admin → Integrations, open the Microsoft integration (for example Microsoft 365, Teams and Outlook Calendar) and connect the Outlook Calendar card. You can also go straight to the Microsoft integrations page in Admin. Events can take up to an hour to appear after you connect. The connection covers the whole workspace, so members don’t connect their own calendars. For the steps and the permissions it needs, see Planner and Outlook calendar integration. Once Outlook is connected:

• Each member’s default Outlook calendar shows in their column, so you can see meetings and time off before you plan work.
• To keep a member’s event titles private, an admin opens Manage calendars on the Outlook Calendar card and turns on Hide event titles for that member. Planner then shows Busy in place of the title.
• Outlook events are read-only in Planner. You can’t drag, resize or open them. Changes made in Outlook reach Planner on the next sync.

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Dispatch with Super Magic

Super Magic opens next to Planner and can read the same schedule. Ask it, for example, who on your Help Desk team can take a ticket this afternoon. It checks the planner and, when auto-dispatch is set up, who’s available for dispatch, then schedules the ticket, and the plan appears on the calendar. Super Magic can also reschedule a plan, hand it to someone else, mark it done, delete it, or pull the next ticket from a technician’s auto-dispatch queue. Scheduling requires that Super Magic is allowed to make changes for you. See the Super Magic tool reference for the full list.

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How Planner syncs with your PSA

Planner keeps schedule entries in step with your PSA in both directions. When you create, move, retime, complete, or delete a plan in Thread, that change is pushed to the PSA immediately. Changes made in the PSA flow back into Planner as described below. Only ticket-based plans sync to the PSA. Outlook meetings stay in Planner and are not written to the PSA. Because Autotask and HaloPSA reject overlaps, planning a ticket over an existing plan for the same member at the same time fails with “A schedule already exists for this member at this date and time.” and the card goes back. Autotask service calls require a start and end time. When you plan a ticket for a day without a time, Thread sends Autotask a default start of 12:00 am (and a one-hour default window) for that day, so the plan still lands on the schedule. Planner also works for workspaces without a PSA. Plans are stored in Thread.

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TimeZest integration

If you have a TimeZest account, you can book appointments directly from Thread with bidirectional syncing to your PSA. In Admin → Integrations, open TimeZest to add the integration. Once configured, trigger TimeZest from the Actions tab in the composer or with the /timezest slash command; answer a few prompts, and a booking link is generated to send to your customer. When the customer picks a time, the appointment appears in both Thread Inbox and your PSA. Super Magic can use the same TimeZest connection. Ask it to send a contact a booking link, and it picks the TimeZest appointment type and resource, sends the scheduling request, and can check which requests are still waiting on the customer. This works once TimeZest is connected and its tools are turned on for Super Magic. See the TimeZest tools in the Super Magic tool reference. For setup details, see Integrating TimeZest with Thread.

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Frequently asked questions