A repeatable planning run captures experience and manual work
The business serves several chimney-sweeping districts. KAMIN Futura records each property’s activities: 13 route types, from sweeping K1 to K4 through emissions measurements and fireplace inspections to ventilation checks, together with intervals, time windows and work values. Turning these into daily plans required experience and substantial manual work, repeated for each district every week.
The planning layer reads KAMIN databases without changing them. Notes, caretakers and acceptance inspections are linked to the district. A five-step run turns outstanding activities into appointments: select a period, check capacity, review notes, plan a preview and finalise. Appointments then appear in Outlook, cards are ready and contact tasks identify customers who still need a call.
The starting point: many rules and a new database every year
KAMIN Futura creates a separate database for each district every year, alongside an address database for owners, managers and operators. Planning depends on both the work due and who is qualified to perform it: trained staff, master chimney sweeps or authorised district chimney sweeps, with ventilation as a separate discipline. Property-specific requirements add preferred times, excluded weekdays, caretaker-held keys and long ladders.
The turning point: a planning layer above the specialist system
Connected master data
KAMIN databases are synchronised read-only every two hours by district and year, covering properties, activities, fees and dwelling units. Contacts follow overnight. Credentials are encrypted. Thirteen data quality rules flag gaps such as missing chimney heights or duplicate customer numbers before they disrupt a plan.
Linked knowledge to the district
Twenty structured supplementary-note types cover preferred times, excluded staff, access and ladders, alongside caretakers, acceptance inspections, first visits and additional notifications. Everything is linked to the district rather than the annual database, so it survives the yearly change.
Developed the planning run
The run schedules requested appointments first, then fills capacity from trained staff through master chimney sweeps to authorised district chimney sweeps. It reads Outlook availability, calculates visit durations using 16 configurable formulas and records one of 16 reasons for every property it cannot schedule. In early runs with requested appointments, we found that backward scheduling placed a lunch break before any appointment existed. We now place it immediately before the last scheduled appointment. A requested slot may move the break but cannot eliminate it.
Connected Outlook and appointment cards
Preview appointments are tentative; confirmed appointments are booked. Calendar changes are read back overnight. Appointment cards are generated in the browser, and contact tasks combine confirmed appointments with additional notifications. Staff speaking to a customer can reschedule an appointment or individual activities in the rescheduling module, with an audit trail.
The client is a master chimney-sweeping business in Saxony. An authorised district chimney sweep is responsible for the statutory duties in each district.
The team plans sweeping, measurement, fireplace-inspection and ventilation routes, sends appointment cards and works with KAMIN Futura and Microsoft 365.
