CNI Scheduling Change

The CNI continues to experience unprecedented demand for scan time.  After consulting users regarding our proposed scheduling change we have decided to make the following adjustments that we hope will work better for most people.  We expect there will be ongoing iteration of the scheduling policy, and we ask for patience from users as we refine it in response to unforeseen issues.

This scheduling policy will go into effect this Tuesday, April 23 at 9:00am and will incur a 2-3 hour disruption to access to the CNI scheduler.  Schedule access will also be changed to use Calpendo, a system currently in use by the Lucas Center.  All existing reservations, grants and user accounts will be transferred into Calpendo.

The key features of the new scheduling policy are as follows:

• Calendar access will open for booking in 3 tranches (see Fig. 1)
  • Certain days/times will be made available for long-term access opening 16 weeks in advance
  • Certain days/times will be made available for medium-term access opening 8 weeks in advance
  • Certain days/times will be made available for short-term access opening 2 weeks in advance
• Scan time quotas will be applied on a per-project basis, and per-PI basis
• There will be two types of quotas
  • Daily:  The maximum amount of time that can be booked on a business day (6am-6pm)
  • Weekly:  The maximum amount of time booked in a given week
  • Quotas will not apply to time during weekends, holidays or outside of 6am-6pm
• Quota limits will vary depending on the access time.  Per-project limits are:
  • 8 – 16 weeks out: daily – 3h / weekly – 7h
  • 2 – 8 weeks out: daily – 6h / weekly – 10h
  • 0 – 2 weeks out: no quota limits
• Quota limits across all projects for a PI are 1.5x the per-project limits
• Time slots open for booking at 9am the respective period in advance — e.g on a Wednesday at 9am, the entire day on Wednesday 8 weeks in the future will open for booking.  Similarly, the short-term slots on Tuesday and Friday will open at 9am on the Tuesday and Friday 2 weeks in advance.
• In the first week of using the Calpendo system, long-term access will only be open 9 weeks in advance. On Monday, April 29, at 9am, we will extend the long-term access to the full 16 weeks. This will give users some time to get used to the new Calpendo system.

Other features of the CNI scheduling policy will remain unchanged.  This includes the requirement that schedulers must have specific subjects in mind when booking slots, the restrictions on protocol development time, and the cancellation fee rules.

Very rare exceptions to this scheduling policy will be considered on request but are not guaranteed to be granted.

The Calpendo scheduling system provides substantially more features that will be of use to our community.  The system is very intuitive, but users will find it helpful to consult the linked Calpendo Quick Start PDF that describes it in more detail.