Scheduler

Scheduler Overview

The Scheduler provides a budgetary controlled scheduling process. This is a shift-based scheduler designed to handle multiple shifts in a day, with a required staffing level based on shift count.

The process of using and configuring the Scheduler is comprised of:

Budget – the budget defines the number of schedules created based on the day of week, the shift, and the labor levels. For example, your CNA budget for Unit 1 for weekdays in the Day shift is seven shifts. The Scheduler is “budget controlled,” because the budget level controls the number of schedules created.

Scheduler Periods – defines a start and end date for each of your scheduler periods. Typically, this is from 1 week to 8 weeks in length.

Budget and Scheduling Labor Levels – define labor levels to enforce your budgets. For example, you may have a department structure like CNA Day, CNA Evening and CNA Night, but from a budgetary viewpoint, all CNA departments fall under the CNA budget. You would define a labor level above the department level, such as “Budget Group” or “Division” that would act as an "umbrella" over one or more departments.

Employee Schedule Pattern – define when the employee works on a regular basis. This is also known as the Master Schedule. The schedule pattern can be a single or multi-week pattern and allows you to define the day of the week, the week number, the shift, and the labor level placement.

Planned Absences – planned days off are entered as soon as they are known. This eliminates manual changes to your schedules. When the schedules are built, the employee is not assigned a schedule if they are in a planned absence. Instead, they are given a placeholder in lieu of the schedule.

Replacements – as a schedule moves between employees and the available pool, history is maintained. This allows the software to be able to display replacement information.

Building Schedules – builds the schedules for the selected scheduler period and selected budgetary labor levels. The schedules are assigned to the employees who have a matching schedule pattern. Schedules that remain unassigned are available to assign manually.

Available Schedules – after the schedules are built, those schedules that remain unassigned are known as the available schedules, because they are available to be assigned to employees.

Scheduler Grid – displays the schedules for each employee within the scheduler period. The grid uses color and text to provide information about where and when an employee is working. The scheduler grid includes schedule totals and available schedules. Move schedules between employees, between an employee and the available pool, and between the available pool and an employee. Filter, sort, and search the information displayed in the grid.

Reporting – use reports throughout the scheduling process. Examples of reports include:

• Pinpoint where the employee's schedule patterns do not match the employee's shift level.
• Show where budgetary hours and schedule hours are not aligned.
• Highlight where schedule patterns exceed budget and therefore would leave some employees unscheduled although their schedule pattern defines them as working.
• Display the schedule pattern projected as a master schedule considering employee status and planned absences.
• Give employees a one-page calendar view of their schedules.
• Post monthly schedule reports, so that employees can see when they are working.
• Replacement and daily staffing reports.
• Placeholder reports.
• Employee contact information such as a phone list.

Build Schedules

The Build Schedules command is available in the Scheduler ribbon tab.

Before Building the Schedules

Before building the schedules, you need to ensure that you are not exceeding your budget levels. You can exceed your budget in two ways.

• Placing an employee into an unbudgeted position.
• Having too many employees assigned to a budgeted position.

Schedule Patterns Without Budget – the Schedule Patterns Without Budget report displays employees who have a schedule pattern that has no budget. This report is available from the Reports / Scheduling menu.

Budget Versus Schedule Pattern – the Budget Versus Schedule Pattern shows you where schedule pattern count does not equal the budget. This report is available from the Scheduling drop down in both the Scheduler ribbon tab and the Reports ribbon tab. Use the “Over Budget – Monthly” version of this report as this version checks the budget levels against your schedule pattern assignments in the same manner that schedules are created and assigned during the build process.

• Make sure that all the employees who are part of the scheduling process are selected.
• Select the correct date range from the Date Range tab. This is generally the next scheduler period.
• In the Budget tab, select the budgets that correspond to the selected employees.
• If you have an overage allowance, then you can include this allowance from the Options tab.

Upon running the report, it must be empty. If it is not empty, then building the schedules would result in some employees not getting their schedules. This report gives you the employee details on where you are over budget.

Building the Schedules

Once you have confirmed that you are within your budget, you can build your schedules.

The Build Schedules screen represents your budget with some additional information.

• The date range that schedules will be built for is shown in the Build Date and End Date columns.
• There is a check box column where you select the schedules to build.
• There is a status column to provide feedback as the schedules are built.

648x137px

Click on the Build Schedules button.

The status column will update as it builds and assigns the schedules for each budget item, and the build date will be set to the start of the following scheduler period. When the building is completed, you will be able to click on the Close button.

Scheduler Grid

Display the scheduler grid from the Scheduler ribbon tab.

Date Range

The date range group provides a drop down of the scheduler period dates. Select from the drop down to fill in the start and end dates. Change these dates before clicking on the Display Schedules command to work with a different date range.

629x433px

Make the day-to-day schedule changes in the scheduler grid. The scheduler grid allows the user to move schedules between employees or to/from the available schedules.

Cell color, text and text color help provide maximum schedule information while using the minimum amount of space. Hovering over a cell will provide more detailed information like schedule start and end times, labor levels, schedule history and punch information.

Scheduler Groups

The employees and the available schedules are grouped by their respective scheduler group. You can filter or collapse the scheduler groups.

Filtering the groups:

Collapsing the groups:

The filtering, collapsing and expanding of the scheduler groups applies to both the employee and the availables grid.

Schedule and Placeholder Display

Weekly schedule totals display and can be used to sort the employees (those with less schedules listed first).

Employee Display

Employee information displays in columns that can be filtered. Additionally, employee information needed only for filtering, displays above the column headers at the top of the scheduler grid.

Description: C:\SBV Software\Ta\software design\scheduler redesign\employee fields.jpg

In the above screen shot, the department field filter is shown. Employees can be filtered by Name, Shift Count, and Company.

Context Menu

The right click menu provides management of the schedules and placeholders, and access to reports. When applicable, menu selections are provided for multiple days and/or multiple employees. For example, the Monthly Schedule for Employee report is available for all selected employees.

Sorting

Employees can be sorted by:

Employee Name – the default sorting, alphabetically by their name.

Employee ID – sorted by the employee’s ID.

Seniority – sorted by date of hire.

Weekly Shift Count – sorted by the total schedule count in the selected week.

Available Schedules

The availables are grouped to provide a clear visual distinction between availables from different shifts and floors. The number in the cell represents the count of the available schedules. If the text color is white, then you are over budget on the shift and floor.

Description: C:\SBV Software\Ta\software design\scheduler redesign\availables.jpg

Find and Filter

The Filter button is like the Filter Row in the employee list on the main screen. Only employees that match part of the filter text will display. Pressing Enter keeps the currently shown employees visible while newly found employees are displayed.

Here is the result of entering Smith, clicking Filter, entering Brown and pressing Enter.

Shift and floor filtering is available from the 2 drop downs. The Filter Availables option will apply the same shift and floor filtering to the availables. Here is a screen shot of the availables filtered to floor 2.

Include Home Shift applies when using shift filtering and will include employees that are homed in the filtered shift, although they do not have any schedules.

With Placeholders Only filters the scheduler screen to employees that have one or more schedule placeholders.

Tool Tips

There is an employee tool tip and the schedule / placeholder tool tip.

The employee tool tip displays additional information about the employee.

The schedule / placeholder tool tip displays detail on the schedule / placeholder and punch information for the day.

Employees Crossing Budget Groups

Employees with schedules that cross a budget group, when the budget groups are not displayed together (e.g. RNs and LPNs) will display twice and with the correct counting of schedules for the group.

An RN supervisor works a floor nurse position. The totals are correct.

Other

Monthly Mode

Make changes in the scheduler in Daily or Monthly mode.

Monthly mode changes are not considered to be a schedule change. Two employees swapping schedules is a typical example of a monthly change. Monthly mode changes do not add to the schedule history.

Daily changes are changes that occur on the "day of," and changes that you do before posting the schedule where you want the employee to have a placeholder, and/or the schedule to maintain history. Examples are a sick call or a last minute vacation request.

Tools

Build Schedules

See [ Build Schedules].

Scheduler Grid Editing

The scheduler grid allows you to manage the schedules assigned to the employees, restricted only by the authorizations of the user. Examples are:

• Move one or more schedules from one employee to another employee
• Move one or more schedules from the availables to an employee
• Move one or more schedules from an employee to the availables
• Add a schedule
• Add or delete placeholders

Moving Schedules

Schedule moves are a 2-part process. Schedules you are taking “from” (either an employee or the availables) and then giving “to” (either an employee or the availables).

After selecting the “from” schedule(s), press the F key. The selected cells have a red border to indicate that you are in the middle of a from/to action.

You can only select a single employee’s schedules (i.e. from the same row). Available schedules can be selected from different shifts and floors (i.e. different rows). Select cells that are not adjacent to each other using the Ctrl key.

Select the receiving employee (known as the “to” employee) from any of their cells and press the T key.

In the screen shot below, the schedules from the 11th and the 13th will move to the employee even though the cell from the 12th is the selected cell. Note: you cannot move schedules from one pay date to a different pay date.

Move schedules from an employee to the availables with the single keystroke of U.

Swapping Schedules

Schedule swapping occurs when the receiving employee already has a schedule in the same shift. The employee(s) keep their schedule start and end times.

You can combine swaps and moves at the same time.

The two available schedules on the 5th floor are given to an employee. The 11th is an “available to employee” while the 12th is a schedule swap.

Multiple Schedules in a Pay Date

If an employee has more than one schedule in a pay date, then you must provide the schedule number to take “from” this employee. The top left schedule is number 1 and the bottom right schedule is number 2. If there are 3 schedules, then they are numbered 1 to 3 from top to bottom. These alternate keys represent the keystroke and number combinations:

R = T and 1

E = T and 2

W = T and 3

I = U + 1

J = U + 2

K = U + 3

If you do not indicate the schedule number, the software will prompt you.

Placeholders

Add or edit placeholders for multiple days by selecting cells and using the [ Schedule Status Type] shortcut (Shift + Key).

Scheduler Type

Use the scheduler type for categorizing a schedule. The default scheduler type is Standard. Other scheduler types are Orientation, Light Duty and Make Up. Categorize schedules to provide indicators on the staffing reports. Pressing S, O, L or M on a selected schedule changes the scheduler type between Standard, Orientation, Light Duty and Make Up. The displayed text underlines for all scheduler types except Standard. Additionally, the text color can be configured for each scheduler type (Standard is always black).