Schedules Section: Building a Schedule

Modified on Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 2:35 PM

How Does This Functionality Help You?

The Schedule is your staffing plans by week. It defines when and where employees are assigned to work.
Schedule cost can be viewed if pay rates are entered into the system.
Schedules can be built quickly from headcounts, templates, tours, previous schedules, or by manually adding shifts.

Schedules Section: Building a Schedule

Building Schedules

Building a Schedule consists of three steps, and each step is explained in the following paragraphs. The three steps are:

Creating a Schedule
Filling a Schedule
Assigning a Schedule

Note: Before building your first schedule, be sure you have selected the correct 1st day of the week for the location. This is under the Location Section > Week Days. See Location Section: Week Days for more information.

Step 1: Creating a Schedule

Select Add Schedule.
- Starting: Populated by the 1st day of the week from Location Section.
- Start Date: Auto defaults to the week after the previous schedule is built.
Remember: If this is the first schedule, you must enter the correct start date.
- Name: Optional. If left blank the start date is displayed as the name.
- Published: No selected by default, and should remain No while the schedule is being built. Return to this window and set to Yes when completed so the schedule displays in the Employee portal
Select Save. To edit in the future, select the Settings tab in the top menu bar.

Video: How to Add and Delete Schedules

Step 2: Filling a Schedule

Select the Shifts tab on the top menu bar.
Select the Add in the shifts menu bar.
Shifts can be added to the schedule in several ways:
- By day – manually add a number of shifts and shift hours. See Adding Shifts by Day.
- Lines– if using the Tours & Tour Bidding module, select a tour.
- Templates – By adding shifts from one or more templates, select a template. See Adding Shifts from Templates.
- Existing Schedules – By copying a previous schedule. See Adding Shifts from an Existing Schedule.

Video: How to Add Shifts to Your Schedule

Adding Shifts by Day:

Go to Add > Shift.
Choose the date, time, and station for the shift.
Optionally fill out the number of copies, break times, shift group, employee assigned to the shift, and note.
Select Add.
Repeat this process for each different shift time you need to enter.

Adding Shifts from Templates:

Go to Add > Templates.
Choose the template.
Choose a week from your schedule.
Select the Week(s) you want to fill with shifts.
Select Options: Re-apply Days Off ensures that employees with a granted day off are removed from the shifts.
Select Insert Shifts.

The page automatically refreshes. The shift list displays all shifts inserted.
Note: If templates have been created and shared by the Enterprise portal, they display under the Enterprise section in the Select Template(s) list.

Adding Shifts from an Existing Schedule:

Go to Add > Schedules.
On the Add Schedule window, select the previous schedule you want to copy. It is highlighted.
Note: Only previous schedules with the same duration can be copied, thus only the previous schedules that match the duration of the current week will be displayed in the list.
Options: Apply Leave will ensure that employees with a granted day off will be removed from the shifts.
Select the week to apply the schedule to.
Choose Submit.
The page automatically refreshes to the shift list and displays all shifts inserted.

Step 3: Assigning a Schedule
Empty shifts in the schedule can be filled in two ways. Both ways allow you to honor all employee and system constraints when assigning employees to shifts.

Auto Fill – uses the schedule optimizer and enforces all constraints entered for employees in terms of max limits, availability, station skills, and granted days off. See Assigning Shifts Using Auto Fill.
Manual placement – choose the employee you want to work the shift from the employee available list. You can override constraints if you choose to do so. See Schedules Section: Assigning Shifts to Employees.

Assigning Shifts Using Auto Fill

Go to the Tools tab on the top menu bar and select Auto Fill Shifts from the drop-down list.
From the Auto Fill Shifts pop-up window, select options.
- Week (days): Select the week to fill (if your schedule is more than 7 days in duration).
- Prime time: default is 12 pm. This sets the most important time to fill shifts.
- Station: You can choose to fill the schedule one station at a time.
- Labor Pool: You can choose to fill the schedule by one labor pool at a time. See Location Section: Labor Pools.
- Preferred Overlap: Default is 0%. You can choose to allow employees to be scheduled to overlapping shifts of 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100%.
Select Execute.
The pop-up window refreshes with a notification of the shifts filled.
Note: If an employee with a fixed shift in a template is granted a day off (in the Employee/ days off section), when the schedule is built for that week, it will remove the employee from that shift and make it empty. See Templates Section: Editing a Template Shift for additional information.

Manually Filling shifts

See Schedules Section: Assigning Shifts to Employees for information on how to manually assign a shift to an employee.

Viewing Shifts

List and Grid options for viewing the set of shifts is under the Shifts tab in the top menu. The data filters under the Options tab can be applied to any of the three views below.

List: Displays shifts in a list. Use the Display settings under the Options tab in the left menu to sort and group the shift list the way you want.
Week: Displays shifts in a grid by day.
Day: Displays shifts in a grid with bar graph by hour. Each day is under a separate tab.