Configuring a shift

Overview

The second tab in the Scheduler section is the Schedule generator. This section is only available to users who have the time & attendance module enabled. 

In the first tab (the Working schedule), you can generate your company/department's schedule on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. You may do so individually (per day) and also in bulk (per week/month). 

If you want to generate shifts on a weekly/monthly basis, you will need to configure your shifts from the Schedule generator tab. 

Contents

1. Permissions
2. Working Schedule
3. Fixed Shift
4. Rotation

Permissions

To make use of this you will need the 'Manage Time and Attendance Settings' and 'Manage T&A Working Schedules' permissions.

Working Schedule

There are two types of shifts you can create from the Schedule generator:

Fixed Shift

A fixed shift is when an employee will be working the same hours per day and same days per week.

To set up a fixed schedule:

1. Make sure that your shift templates are set up
2. Go to the Scheduler section
3. Click on Schedule generator  
4. Select the relevant job schedule
5. Assign the correct shift template to the job schedule by clicking on it (it will turn red). 

Rotation

If the employees work on a rotation basis (i.e., their shift changes per day of the week), you will need to set up a rotation pattern.

To do so:

1. Make sure that your shift templates are set up first
2. Go to the Scheduler section
3. Click on Schedule generator  
4. Select the relevant job schedule
5. Click on the Switch to Rotation button in the top right hand corner
6. Click Add new to start creating your rotation pattern. 

It is worth noting that when a rotation pattern is set (and there are days outside the schedule) the pattern will ignore these days that fall outside the schedule and continue with the pattern. For example, if you have an employee with a day, off, day, off pattern. The rotation pattern will be generated as follows:

Monday – Day
Tuesday - Off
Wednesday- Day
Thursday - Off
Friday - Day
Saturday - Off (outside schedule)
Sunday – Off (outside schedule)

Monday - Off
Tuesday - Day
Wednesday - Off
Thursday - Day
Friday - Off
Saturday - Off (outside schedule)
Sunday – Off (outside schedule)

What's next?

After you configure a shift, you can generate a schedule for a period of time. However this is not always needed as configured shifts can be seen on the Scheduler using the filter "Show configured shifts".

Configured shifts, even though they are not generated and published, can be used for clocking approval. When a clocking has been made, and a configured shift has been set up, this can be approved without the need of an Approval Block or a published shift.

NOTE: To be able to use the configured shifts for clocking approval, the clockings must have been made with the punch state enabled.

Above and beyond this, a feature that might be of interest to you is the personalised rotation function. For more information on this, click here.