Schedules Section: Using the Bid Board

How Does This Functionality Help You?

• A Bid Board allows multiple employees to bid on a shift that has been placed on the Bid Board by the scheduler.
• The organization controls who gets awarded the bid, either by selecting the criteria to Auto Fill the bid or by manually assigning the bid.

• Enterprise Portal: This setting is controlled in the Enterprise portal. Go to Admin > System and select the Enterprise tab. Once set in this window, empty shifts in your schedule can then be placed on the Bid Board. This also means that empty shifts not placed on the Bid Board will be placed on the regular Swap Board for employees to try to claim.
  Note: Employee portal displays a link to the shift:
  - If a regular Swap Board empty shift, the employee link is [Check…] 
  - If a Bid Board shift, the employee link is [Bid]
   
• Location Portal: All Swapping must be Enabled in the Location portal. Go to Admin  > Privileges > Swap Board Rules. The employee must have access to the Swap Board Section as this is where the Bid Board shifts will appear.
  
  
• Swap settings enforcement on Bid Board shifts.
  - If a Station is set to No Swap, then bid Board shifts do not display.
  - If an Employee is set to No Swap, the employee does not see bid shifts.
  - Swap Lead time and Empty Shift Lead time do not affect Bid Board shifts. Bid Board shifts display when assigned to a bid.
  
  
• The schedule must be Published and set to Allow Swap for bid shifts to appear. 
  
  
• If you only want to use the Bid Board and not allow swapping of other shifts, see Setting for Using a Bid Board only - no other swapping allowed.
  
  

Creating a Bid Board

1. Select Schedules > Tools > Bid Boards.
   
2. Select [Add]
3. Name the new Bid Board. Description is Optional.
   - Set allow manual assign to Yes if you want the user to have the option to manually award the bids. If you want the bids only filled by rank settings, set this to No.
   - Choose the Settings for the criteria you want to use to award the bids. Options are: Employee Rank, Hire Date, Birth Date, and Timestamp (2nd and 3rd ranking choices). The final rank is Timestamp as a tie-breaker.
   - Click Save.
     
   
   
4. Select the List Tab to display the list of Bid Boards. 
   

   
   
   

5. To edit the Bid Board settings, click on the name to open the Settings page.

• Only empty, unassigned shifts can be assigned to a Bid Board. 
  
• The Schedule must be Published in order for Employees to see the shifts to bid on in the Employee portal under the Swap Board.
  

1. Open the Schedule and List the Shifts.
   
2. Select the Empty shifts to assign. Select the check the box and they will be highlighted in orange. 
   

   
   
   

3. Under the Selected Tab, choose ‘Assign/Clear Bid Board’ from the drop-down list. 
   

   
   - Select the Bid Board to assign to from the drop-down list. All Bid Boards that you have created will appear in the drop down list.
   - Click Assign.
   
   
   

4. The Shift list will refresh and a green BID appears by the shifts posted.
   

   

    

5. Go to the Tools Folder and open the Bid Board. Select the Shifts & Bids tab to see the shifts assigned.
   

   
   
   

6. Check to be sure the Schedule(s) containing the shifts have been published.
   - Employees can now submit bids from the Employee portal.
   - In the Swap Board section, the employee sees this: ;
   - Employees only see bid shifts IF they are skilled at the station.
   - Employees can bid on multiple shifts. Employees select their 1st, 2nd, 3rd…10th choice when they bid.
   - Employees can see a list of other employees that have bid and check availability.
   - Employees can cancel their bid if the shift has not been awarded.
   
   
   

1. Go to the Tools Folder and open the Bid Board. Select the Shifts & Bids tab.
   
2. To view the Bids, click on the number in the Bids column.
   
3. To manually assign, select Check Availability. Only available employees will appear in the drop down assign list. Choose the employee. Select Assign.
   

   

4. To auto-award the Shifts, based on the criteria you set on the settings page, select [Award Bids]. Scroll to the week that you want to assign. Select Auto-Award Shifts.

1. Enable the Swap Board in the Enterprise portal. See Required Settings to Use a Bid Board.
   
2. Enable all Swap Board Rules in the Location portal.

• Determine how many weeks ahead for which you normally publish schedules.
  
• Calculate the total number of hours for the weeks of published schedules that you normally schedule in advance.
  - Ex: 1 week = 168 hours.
  - Thus, if you publish schedules 6 weeks in advance, the total hours for published schedules would be 6 x 168 =1008 hours.
• Set Swap Lead Time to a number of hours that exceeds your calculated published schedules hour total.
  
  This will remove the [swap] link from shifts in an employee schedule.
  
  
• Set Empty Shift Lead time to this same large number.
  
  This will stop empty shifts in your schedule (which are not assigned to the Bid Board) from being posted on the Swap Board for employees to claim.
  
• The result is that the Employee Portal will have the Swap Board Section, but only shifts placed on a Bid Board will be visible.