Shift Schedule Creation - Preview Shifts

Preview Shifts

Once you’ve created your schedule in schedule creation and you are ready to publish, you are able to preview the upcoming shifts first. This will present you with a list of configuration options relating to how the shifts will be assigned.  

To do this go to Shifts > Schedule Creation > Manage Schedule and then select the Create Preview Shifts button from the Actions Bar. 

Before the shifts are created to be previewed, you will be asked to confirm a few options.

• Prioritise Minimum Contracted Hours - If a staff member has not yet been assigned their minimum hours then the system will attempt to assign them to that shift first. Restrictions might prevent them from being assigned but they will remain a priority until their contracted hours are met. Following this shifts will be assigned based on the fill options set on the template. One of our available options is Shift Shuffling, which reallocates shifts to ensure priority roles are filled first. You can find a detailed explanation of how this feature works under Shift Processing. 
   
• Schedule Dates - This allows you to only generate part of the schedule between two dates. It’s perfect if you have scheduled several weeks or months but you want to only generate part of it at the moment. It also allows you to publish a fixed period of shifts early (such a Christmas or festival period) without publishing all upcoming shifts.
   

• Assigning Shift Order - This allows you to choose which shifts should be assigned/filled first. The more detailed options appear below.

  

   

• Gap between shifts - This is an additional option on top of any contracted rest periods that allows you to force the schedule logic to provide additional spaces between shifts. This is useful to prevent staff working in two places within one day for example. Gaps between shifts can be as little as 15 minutes and go up to 75 hours. 
  Note: This is only for the purposes of scheduling the shifts in this tool. It won’t prevent staff from taking shifts. That would require a contract restriction to enforce.
   
• Staff Venues
  This option allows you to prioritise staff that have the relevant venue as their base venue. You can choose to prioritise staff based on venue or use any staff who have access to the venue.
   
• Maintain linked shifts
  If you are using linked shifts in your schedule, set whether or not you would like to keep them linked. This would mean the same person must be assigned to all linked shifts.
   
• Fair Rota Logic
  This function dictates what data the system will use to decide how to fairly assign shifts (such as when you are using the assign equal shifts method) based on what shifts and hours are already in the system. The options include: drawing from the number of shifts in the system (Pulling from that month, that week, all upcoming shifts or shifts within the preview dates), or to process via number of hours (Hours options include; hours that day, that week, that month, or all hours within the preview dates). 
   
• Unable to Fill Shift
  What should the system do if it cannot find a staff member to work a shift? It can simply ignore it (and tell you), create extra shifts (which will be available for staff to take themselves), create offered shifts (staff offer to work it and managers make the final decision) or create unassigned shifts (which you need to allocate manually).
   
• Time Off/Holiday/ Absence Requests
  Choose whether to take into account holiday and absence requests or to only consider approved holidays and absences.
   
• Travel Times Grouping
  Group certain travel times together so that staff within a group will be scheduled the same. 
   
• Max Travel Times
  Prevent assigning shifts if the travel time exceeds a certain amount of time.

Processing shifts

Once you have set these configuration options, click Process Schedule. You will be asked to confirm whether you would like to generate the preview at this time - as it can take some time to load.

A confirmation message will appear saying how many shifts have been created and if there were any issues in the creation of the preview. Click Display Issues to see more information. Then click View Preview to view the new shifts. 

Shift Shuffling

The system will attempt to assign all shifts in sequence. If the Prioritise Meeting Contracted Hours setting is enabled, a special sequence will then be performed. The system will review if any staff members have not met their contracted hours. For each of these staff members, the system then checks if there are any shifts they can take from staff who have been assigned more hours than they need. If this is the case, the shift will be moved to the staff member who has not received enough hours.

This process is called shuffling. It is designed to mimic the manual actions managers often do once they have created the first draft of a schedule. Once all shifts have been assigned then it is easier to see which staff can give up some shifts to others to ensure minimum contracted hours are met.

This tool should ensure that, whenever possible, staff are assigned their minimum number of hours. There are still limitations.

Viewing the Shift Preview 

You will then see all shifts - now assigned - on one page. There are different ways to view this page which provide you different options. This can be changed at the top of the page.

Summary (per staff member), shows you the number of shifts that have been created for staff members and their total hours to be worked. It also shows you whether or not their contract requirements have been met.

Calendar view shows you how many shifts have been assigned to which days. 

Clicking on the shifts on any day will show you the shift summary for that day, which includes the staff member, their Skill, any Tasks, the start and end date and the duration of the shift. 

By clicking Who Else? you can quickly see the availability of all staff who might be able to take that shift, if the staff member is no longer able to. 

This will bring up the list of the staff with the right roles and access to the venue. Next to each staff member will be a red or orange bar with the reason the staff member can’t be assigned a shift. If they are available to be scheduled you will see a grey bar.

Finally, you have the Staffing Summary view that shows the overall number of staff assigned for each shift, their skills and any shifts that remain unassigned after processing.

Convert to real shifts

If you are happy about the shifts (staff, hours, etc.) then click the Convert Shifts to Real Shifts button. 

There are a couple of final options to select before confirming whether you are happy to publish the schedule. These include and whether whether you want to clear completed shifts from the schedule and whether you want to hide the shifts for now.

Once happy with the information, click Convert preview shifts. This will then add all of the preview shifts into the main shift management pages, ready to go.