Auto-schedule – Advanced settings

Customise your open shifts assignment preferences by using the auto-schedule advanced settings

Saad Saeed avatar
Written by Saad Saeed
Updated over a week ago

🎯 For advanced admins. This feature is included from the Pro Plan and up.
​Reach out to our support team if you'd like to try it out.

After you've set up and used the Auto-schedule feature, you might find that some default settings are not optimal for you. If that is the case you can use the Auto-schedule advanced settings to make this feature save you time, with a few tweaks to fit your organization.

Go to Settings > Schedule > Auto-schedule.

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There, you'll find settings for:

  • Auto-schedule results: this gives you the option to find better solutions for allocating shifts. So the longer it runs, the more likely it is to find a solution that fits all the requirements.

  • Employee availability: allows you to decide how to account for your employees' Availability preferences.

  • Scheduling approach: where you can choose between a rotating or fixed approach.

  • including breaks or employees with no contracted hour requirements set into the Auto-schedule analysis.

If you would like to use these options and cannot find them in your Settings menu, please reach out to our support team to have them enabled for your schedule and organisation.


Auto-schedule results

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This option allows you to choose whether the calculations should stop at the first suitable solution (after a few seconds) or continue until the optimal solution is found (could take more than 90 seconds).


That way, you can get the following:

  • acceptable results, after an estimated short processing time;

  • good results, after a medium amount of time used for processing;

  • optimal results, taking the time to take the best-fit approach, and considering all the factors included in the analysis.

You can read more about what Auto-schedule takes into account when drafting a schedule, in the setup guide, available here.

You can tweak this option at any time and you can always run the analysis again if the resulting schedule doesn't fit with your scheduling needs or preferences.


Employee availability

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The availability preferences of your employees can also be considered when automatically assigning shifts.

The availability settings only work for normal availability, not contracted availability.


1. When availability is prioritized and shifts are prevented in time slots marked as unavailable, the analysis will try to find a solution that will:

  • prioritize assigning shifts in the Available time slots

  • will not assign shifts in the time slots marked as Unavailable and

  • fill in the rest of the Schedule with the necessary time slots, even if the is no preference marking for them (if needed).

2. When availability is prioritized and unavailable slots are considered, the analysis will try to find a solution that will:

  • prioritize assigning shifts in the Available time slots

  • will try to avoid assigning shifts in the time slots marked as Unavailable, if possible,

  • fill in the rest of the Schedule with the necessary time slots, even if the is no preference marking for them (if needed).

3. When Shifts are assigned only in Available time slots, the analysis will present a solution that will:

  • only assign shifts in the Available time slots. This means that the Schedule draft might not comply with all the other requirements and might need more input from you.


Scheduling approach

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The Schedule draft will prioritize assigning as many shifts as possible over following a certain approach, but it will respect your selected guideline when possible.

  • No restrictions - assign employees to shifts based on best current fit

    The system will determine whether an employee is eligible to take the shift (skills, is part of the employee group, is not on holiday, is available to work, etc.)

  • Alternating rotation - prioritise variation for an employee’s positions/employee groups, when assigning shifts

    This setting will try to rotate employees between the different positions and employee groups they are allowed to work in, during the period that is being scheduled. The rotation is viewed as an average over the period, not from shift to shift.

  • Fixed - prioritise an employee’s experience when assigning shifts

    This means that within the period being scheduled, the auto-scheduling tool will try to make sure an employee is allocated shifts with the same employee group they’ve been scheduled for. So if they are in groups A and B, but have mostly been scheduled in A, it will make sure that in the period selected they will get shifts mostly in employee group A, but not an even split of A and B.


Employees with no fixed hours & breaks

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  • No fixed working hours requirement (1): if none of your employees has a set contracted hours requirement, you should include employees with no fixed working hours requirement if you want them to be assigned Shifts in the Auto-schedule draft.
    💡 Please keep in mind that the Schedule draft will be better suited for your organisation if contracted hours are specified, where possible.

  • Breaks (2): when creating your schedule draft, the Auto-schedule feature will try to fit your requirements for working hours by:

    • comparing the working hours’ requirements against paid hours (or payroll-approved hours), if you choose to Include breaks in the total working hours

    • comparing the working hours’ requirements against all hours ( scheduled and payroll-approved hours, which might also include breaks), if you choose NOT to Include breaks in the total working hours.


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