Replicating Activities
Once an Activity has been created, this can be replicated for a recurring period as required. For example, if a particular Activity is run every Thursday, then this can be replicated to occur every Thursday for the required time frame. Replicating an Activity creates a 'set' of Activities.
Once a replicated set of Activities has been created, the 'Replication Management Settings' reflect how this set of Activities should be updated if any changes are made. From the last Activity in the set, when 'Replicate Activity' is selected, the Activity Set can be extended or a separate set can be created, for example, to recommence after the end of year holidays.
It is important to note that Staff Members require the privileges to manage Activities in order to replicate an Activity and create an Activity Set. This article provides detailed information regarding this process.
Privileges: In order to replicate an Activity the privileges required to manage Activities is required. Please see the article of this name linked below for reference.
Audience: Team Leaders, and anyone with the privileges required to manage Activities
Summary
The following list summarises the content within this article. Click on the links below to take you to the relevant sections:
How to replicate an Activity
Once an Activity has been created, this can be replicated by selecting 'Replicate Activity' from the Replication section of the record:
This opens up the 'Replicate Activity' window where the relevant settings can be selected:
When a Replication End Date and other data is selected, the Activity Replications count and list populates to the right-hand side of the window providing a preview of the Activities that will be created once 'Replicate Activity' is selected.
Repeats
By default, the recurrence pattern is set to 'Weekly'. However, the options available to select from are Monthly, Weekly or Daily:
N.B. Fortnightly is not an available option, but this can be achieved by selecting 'Weekly' and then '2' for the 'Repeats Every' option, as outlined below.
Recurrence limits
Each recurrence pattern option has a limited timeframe in which a single set of Activities can be created:
- Monthly - 12 months
- Weekly - 6 months
- Daily - 3 months
When choosing a Replication End Date, if you reach the end of this limit, the available dates to select from will be greyed out:
Creating Activity Sets greater than this would take much longer to complete.
Creating an Activity Set beyond the recurrence limits
However, should you wish to replicate beyond these limits, then this is possible by creating the initial set up to the date limit e.g. 15th of October, 2021:
Then navigating to the last recurrence in the set
And repeat the process to replicate a new set of Activities again from here:
Monthly Activities that commence at the end of the month
When a Monthly Activity Replication is being created and the Activity Start Date is toward the end of the month e.g. 31st, given not all months have 31 days, an Activity will be created for the closest date to that in the subsequent months and a validation message will appear to explain this:
Repeats Every
This setting is used to determine the frequency of the recurrence pattern. If we would like this Activity to be repeated every Friday, then having this set to 'Repeats Every: 1 Week' will achieve this:
However, if this Activity was delivered fortnightly, for example, we could set this to 'Repeat Every: 2 Weeks':
Repeats On Days (only relevant for Weekly)
When a Weekly recurrence pattern is selected, then the relevant days of the week can be selected. If the Activity only occurs on the same day each week as the initial Activity e.g. Friday, then this will be preselected, however, if you would like to replicate this Activity for multiple days in the week, these too can be selected here e.g. Wednesday, as well as Friday:
Replication Start Date
The Replication Start Date defaults to the same day as the current Activity you are choosing to replicate:
However, this can be changed as required to determine the start date of the Activity Set.
This is relevant when Replicating Activities from an existing set. For example, from the last Activity in the set on the 15th of December and can be useful to create a new Activity Set following a holiday period e.g. recommending at the beginning of the new year on the 12th of January:
In such a case, you will be prompted to create a new set which can be achieved by selecting 'Create a Separate Set'. More on this has been outlined below.
Replication End Date
Replication End Date is a required field, denoted by the red asterisk:
Until this is selected, a proposed Activity Replication Set has not been selected and therefore the Activity Replication preview to the right-hand side of the window is empty and 'Replicate Activity' cannot be selected.
As soon as a Replicate End Date is selected, this will appear:
As mentioned above, when choosing a Replication End Date, if you reach the end of this limit, the available dates to select from will be greyed out. However, should you wish to replicate beyond these limits, then this is possible by following the steps outlined above in the Creating an Activity Set beyond the recurrence limits section of this article.
Activity Replication Set
By default, the Activity Replication Set option is set to 'Extend Current Set', this means that the Activities created will be in addition to the initial Activity and will all form part of the same Activity Set:
Generally speaking, if an Activity is being replicated for the first time (as per the example above), 'Extend Current Set' would be left selected here.
However, if you wish to create a new set, separate to the initial Activity (and set, if it is part of an existing set), then 'Create a Separate Set' can be selected:
Noting that in this example, an additional Activity will be created for the same date as the Replication Start Date as we are choosing to create a separate set from this date.
This option is relevant when you are choosing to replicate Activities from an existing set, for example, from the last Activity in the set e.g. 15th of December, and can be useful to create a new Activity Set following a holiday period e.g. recommending at the beginning of the new year e.g. 12th of January:
Staff
By default, 'Replicate selected Staff' is selected here, meaning that any Staff Members that have been added to shifts in the Activity will also be added to each of the Activity Replications:
However, the option to 'Replicate as TO BE FILLED' is also available:
In the case where you would like each of the Activity Replications to have the Staff Member set as 'TO BE FILLED' in each shift. This is only advisable if you do not know who will be rostered into the Activity Replications as yet.
Replicate Activity
To replicate the Activity select the Replicate Activity button
Depending on the number of Activities being created, this may take a little while to complete e.g. 52, in the example above.
Related Activities
Once the Activity has been successfully replicated, you will be navigated to the 'Related Activities' tab of the Activity. Each of the related Activities in the set is viewable here, listed by furthest in advance at the top:
Down to the initial Activity which is highlighted in green:
This indicates the 'Current Activity' record that we are in. The Activities highlighted in blue indicate that they're upcoming or 'scheduled', whereas once they are completed, these will be displayed in grey.
At present, there is no facility to register public holidays in SupportAbility. Due to this, we recommend that if your organisation does not deliver this Activity on a public holiday, any Activities that fall on a public holiday are deleted from this list once the set has been created by following the instructions outlined in the Deleting Activities article (linked below).
If you wish to view or edit the details of any of these Activities, simply select the target icon to navigate to it:
And this will open the 'Activity Details' tab of the selected Activity.