AutoPlanner — a full week in a few clicks

Why

Laying out a week by hand for several therapists and rooms takes hours. AutoPlanner takes your practice’s goals and finds free windows itself — but only when the data in the system is consistent.

Before you run it — data that makes sense

1. Admin → Specializations — your team’s competencies (e.g. SI, speech therapy, sensory integration). Without this the engine doesn’t know who can even run a given session type.
2. Admin → Session types — every type has a required specialization. That’s a hard rule: AutoPlanner will only propose therapists with a matching competency.
3. Therapist profile → Working hours — a therapist won’t get sessions outside their availability window. A therapist working fewer hours simply has less capacity for goals in their specialization — e.g. a speech therapist working two days a week has fewer speech- therapy slots than someone full-time.
4. Rooms — even when a therapist is free, a room might be booked. That’s the second hard limit AutoPlanner respects.

Click path — new plan

1. Admin → Weekly AutoPlanner → New plan — pick a location, a period (e.g. a whole month), and the gap between a therapist’s sessions.
2. Add goals: session type, number of slots per week, priority.
   • Check Required — the goal must be fulfilled in full, everything else gives way when capacity runs short (the weight then jumps to the highest value automatically).
   • Goals without Required checked (soft goals) — the engine fills them as much as it can; they may end up partially unmet if the team doesn’t have the hours.
3. Create — a draft plan with goals is created.
4. Generate proposal — Planote calculates three modes at once:
   • Fast — a greedy engine, the quickest, usually more gaps between the same therapist’s sessions.
   • Balanced — fewer empty gaps, more even workload across the team.
   • Smart placement — a full solver, the slowest (up to ~2-3 minutes on large ranges), usually the cleanest layout across many rooms and people.
5. Compare the modes in the week view, pick one, and click Approve week — Planote creates recurring sessions in the calendar automatically, taking working hours, specializations and rooms into account.

Tutaj pojawi się film: AutoPlanner in Planote — a full week's schedule in a few clicks

Nagranie w przygotowaniu — wraca w tym miejscu.

Refining the proposal after generation

A generated proposal isn’t yet the final schedule — you can adjust it before approving the week:

1. Move a slot — drag it in the week view to a different day or time if you’d rather have it somewhere else.
2. Assign a child / group — for an individual slot, pick a specific child (Child); for a group slot, attach an existing group (Group) or leave the ad-hoc list of children, which creates a new group on approval.
3. Visible on booking — mark a single slot, or use Mark all as visible for online booking in bulk (and Unmark all to undo). Once approved, those slots land on the public booking page.
4. Approve week — only now does Planote create real, recurring sessions in the calendar.

Tutaj pojawi się film: AutoPlanner after generation — online booking, moving slots and assigning children

Nagranie w przygotowaniu — wraca w tym miejscu.

Shortcut: generate from working hours

If therapists’ working hours already have a room and session type assigned, you don’t need to go through the goal wizard — AutoPlanner will build the week straight from those windows.

1. Therapist profile → Working hours — pick a room and session type for each availability window. Add window if a therapist has different sessions in the morning and afternoon of the same day — one window is one recurring pattern.
2. Admin → Weekly AutoPlanner → Generate from working hours — pick a location and date range, with no goals or weights to set.
3. The week’s proposal is built straight from the windows — from there you refine it the same way as a regular plan (moving, assignments, booking visibility) and approve it.

Note

Goals, weights, and the three generation modes are still there — reach for them when you want to deliberately control capacity (e.g. “30 SI sessions this week, the rest can wait”). The working- hours shortcut works well when the schedule should simply mirror what therapists already have in their availability.

Tutaj pojawi się film: AutoPlanner from working hours — no goal setup, straight to a week

Nagranie w przygotowaniu — wraca w tym miejscu.

FAQ

Why didn’t AutoPlanner fit all my goals? Check whether the goal has the Required priority — soft goals give way first when the team doesn’t have enough hours. Increase therapist availability or lower the slot count on the goal.

Which generation mode should I pick to start? Balanced is a good default. Reach for Fast when generation time matters, and Smart placement when you have lots of rooms and people and want the cleanest layout — at the cost of a longer wait.

Will approving the plan overwrite sessions I already scheduled manually? No — AutoPlanner lays out the proposal in free windows only; existing sessions stay unchanged.

When should I use “Generate from working hours” versus the full goal wizard? The shortcut works well when the schedule should simply mirror what therapists have set in their working hours (room + session type). Use the goal wizard when you want to control how many sessions of a given type happen per week, or prioritize some goals over others.