Overview of Deployments

Deployments are an exciting new feature that will give schedulers more precision when creating shifts. They will allow those who are scheduling shifts to station staff members in certain areas of a venue and move them around throughout the shift. For example, a staff member might be positioned at the venue entrance in the morning and move to the foyer in the afternoon, depending on scheduling needs.

Deployment Permissions

You are able to set up separate permissions for how deployments are handled. Under the permissions list, there are four separate permissions for deployments that you can set access to. You can allow someone to have permissions to set deployment permissions, which allows chosen personnel to be able to create, edit and remove positions used within shift deployments. There is a separate permission that, when assigned, allows personnel to prevent staff members from being assigned to shifts that contain specified deployment positions. 

Creating deployment patterns is also a separate permission and is separated so that more senior management might be able to create deployment patterns that can be used again and again for easy scheduling. Managing these deployments and being able to edit them once they have been created is also a separate permission and  grants the staff member permission to manage shift deployments; using patterns or custom deployments per shift.

Deployment Positions

When creating a deployment, you will first need to set up positions. Positions are physical locations and will often be rooms or key spaces within your venue. To make them easy to recognise for other managers, if they are titled something shorter, you can also add a description to your positions so it is clear where within the venue you are talking about.

The same position can also be added to multiple venues. This is helpful in cases where you may have separate venues for different teams that are under the same physical location. For example, if you have a venue that is ‘Museum security team’ and ‘Museum front of house team’ they might both have use the same physical locations so you can assign the position to both venues to be able to be added to shifts.

As the example above shows, once you have created your positions, you can view them as a list. Positions can each be a distinct colour, making them easy to view when printing out deployments. 

You also have the option to add a unique texture to each position. However, it is worth keeping in mind that textures will not print out in physical copies and are mainly useful if you are using digital deployments only.

Deployment Patterns

A key feature of deployments is the ability to create patterns. Patterns can easily be created for regular deployments and used repeatedly. 

  Once a pattern has been created, you can add it to a staff member’s shift. Copy-and-paste options are also available if you want to quickly repeat the same deployment pattern to multiple staff members, which can be especially useful with larger teams.

Managing Deployments

Once your positions and patterns (if using) have been created, deployments will be ready to be used in your regular day-to-day scheduling. Once you have scheduled shifts in a regular way, even if they are still unassigned, when you then go to Shifts > Manage Deployments > Shift deployments, you will see a list of all upcoming dates. To start inputting deployments, you need to go to the date you are interested in by clicking ‘manage positions’. 

From here, you can start adding deployments manually by clicking on the blank time slots or applying a pattern to a staff member’s shift using the select pattern button next to the staff member’s name. You can choose from any patterns you have already created and copy and paste this pattern to other staff members to speed up the scheduling process.

You can quickly adjust times by dragging each deployment in any direction at 5-minute intervals, making last-minute adjustments to deployments simple. You can also create a lunch position and factor that into your deployment plan.

You can also easily adjust the labels at the top of deployments. By default, they are times, but you can rename them to relate more to events, e.g., ‘Doors open’ or ‘interval. '

Deployment Planner

Similar to the shift template scheduling tool, we have introduced a deployment planner that allows you to schedule deployments on a much wider scale for more automatic scheduling. 

The planner works by creating a deployment planner pattern, which can include a certain number of your patterns. Per the example from a theatre below, you could include 3 Front of House 1: Foyer, 2 of Front of House 1: Outside 2 and 4 of Front of House: Circle. This could all be under the pattern planner title of 'Evening - Full House'.

You can then layer this pattern onto your calendar. You can choose to repeat this pattern format and also decide the frequency with which it should be repeated.

Deployment Requirements

Once included in your calendar, these templates will automatically appear in your shift deployments as deployments/deployment patterns that need to be filled. 

Template options for Shift Deployments

When creating the template, you can specify whether those positions are ‘required’ or ‘optional’.

When creating a template, you are also able to specify which of your patterns you want to be filled first with the auto-assign priority button. For example, if there are not enough members of staff on shift, which deployment patterns are the most important to fill first if using the autofill deployments option.

 If you choose required you will see the ‘on plan?’ Button will stay red until you have added those deployments.

Automatic Deployments

You can also assign deployment patterns automatically. Under shift deployments, once you have assigned deployment patterns into the deployment planner, all patterns that are still needed will appear at the top of the page. You now have the option to automatically fill up any shifts that have not yet been assigned a deployment pattern with the deployments needed, as laid out by the deployment planner template assigned. You can auto-assign just one of the missing deployment patterns or auto-fill all empty patterns.

Below, you can see the shift deployments before you choose the auto-fill all empty patterns option.

Then, you can see how the shift deployments look after the template has been assigned to staff.

The deployment templates are randomly allocated to staff. You can also randomly reshuffle these patterns by choosing the clear and reallocate option. 

It is important to note that you cannot automatically fill empty patterns if the shift timings do not match the times in the planner template. For example, if the planner template deployment pattern starts at 7am but the staff member’s shift only begins at 9am, they cannot be assigned that pattern as it is outside their shift time and, therefore, would not fulfil the requirement. It is essential to go back and check your assigned template in the planner if you click the autofill button and nothing is being added to your shift deployments or only some of your shift deployments are being assigned patterns.

If you do not want to autofill the entire pattern but would like to fill one of the deployment patterns, you can choose the autofill option that runs alongside each deployment pattern.

Another point to remember when creating shift deployments is that if you do not wish to assign staff randomly, you can still manually assign staff to the deployment template under the options menu for each pattern. Click the options button along with the pattern you want to change. You can either just clear or clear and auto-fill that pattern. Under the ‘On plan?’ button, you can see that you are now on target for that pattern.

Clear Deployments

You are also able to quickly remove deployment patterns in bulk rather than individually removing each one that has been assigned. Find this under the options button. You can also choose to clear all patterns simultaneously but not all deployments and vice versa.You have three options for clearing ALL deployments and two options when clearing a deployment pattern.

You have the option to:

• Clear and reallocate all patterns
• Clear all patterns
• Clear all deployments

The first option will clear what has already been input and then randomly allocate the deployment patterns that need to be filled (you can use the reshuffle option multiple times). The second option clears all patterns and allows you to start from scratch. The third option will clear all deployments, including only single deployments and any custom deployments you have assigned.

Viewing Deployments

Deployments are also specifically designed to be printed out, and various options are available for this. We have three options: print by deployment or print by a staff member. You can separate your printout by having a single position/deployment per page. 

This is helpful if you want to leave a printed-out copy of your deployments at the specified location, for example, so that everyone at the front door can see who is in that position and at what times.