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New ALS Scheduler Tool to Access Beamline Schedules

by Sue Bailey, User Services Office

As part of the ongoing effort to develop the ALS User Portal and provide users and staff improved tools to track their proposals, safety, and beam time, the ALS has rolled out the ALS Scheduler. For cycle 2017-1 and future cycles, ALS beamline schedules will be displayed through this new software tool designed to provide centralized access to all beamline schedules. We hope this will aid communication between beamline staff, users, and safety staff. Beamline staff will update the schedule to reflect changes throughout the cycle. It will also help us complete annual beamline usage reports for DOE.

Beamline schedules are viewable once they have been “published” by staff. Users may access the schedules in two ways:

  1. As a logged-in ALSHub user (preferred). Log in to ALSHub and click on the link to “View Beamline Schedule” (see below).
  2. As an anonymous user. Follow links to the beamline schedule provided by email. The details available about each experiment are restricted.

als-sch-image-1

The ALS Scheduler is set up to flexibly show calendars by cycle or by month, week, and day. Users will find the cycle view is most familiar, but may prefer the level of detail available in other views. A PDF of the cycle view may be generated by clicking on a print icon. The image below shows the cycle view of a beamline calendar.

als-sch-image-2
Cycle view of Beamline 1.4 schedule for an anonymous user. Logged-in users will also see the list of proposals with PI names.

The master ALS operating schedule can also be viewed through the ALS Scheduler, and will also continue to be posted as a PDF on the ALS website.

I invite you to log in to ALSHub, take a look at the ALS Scheduler, and I encourage you to email me with any feedback.