ShiftPlanning Overview

The objective of this tutorial is to show you how you can use ShiftPlanning Module to create and manage the schedules.

Yasir Ehsan avatar
Written by Yasir Ehsan
Updated over a week ago

Objective

The objective of this tutorial is to help you understand how you can use 'ShiftPlanning' module to create or manage the schedules for your employees.

Overview

Access from your: Computer
Applies to: Managers, Supervisors, Schedulers and Employees with Scheduler Permissions

The 'ShiftPlanning' tab is the central hub where you can easily create or manage your staff schedules Whether you have a single location or multiple, ShiftPlanning has the robust views making it easy to plan and visualize your staff schedules.

You can access the ShiftPlanning in Humanity web app at any time by clicking the 'ShiftPlanning' tab at the top of the page.

Things to know before you begin:

  1. Managers/Admins have full access to the application to create and manage their staff schedules.

  2. Supervisors can manage all locations/positions/staff+wages.

  3. Scheduler manages specific locations/positions/staff which has been granted to your staff under Scheduler permissions tab.

  4. Employees can be granted scheduler permission to specific positions.

The scenario outlined in this tutorial consists of the following building blocks:

  1. Schedule Views

  2. Basic Views

  3. Timeline Views

  4. Filter Panel

  5. Advanced Filters

  6. Creating Shifts

  7. Editing Shifts

  8. New Shift Creation Experience

  9. Publish Schedule

  10. Publish and Republish Schedules

  11. Schedule Conflicts

  12. Save a Reference to a Period

  13. Schedule Actions

  14. Schedule Search

  15. Schedule Notes

  16. Block Leave Requests for Specific Dates

  17. ShiftPlanning Settings

  18. Hot Keys

Schedule Views

ShiftPlanning tab will open up in "week" view as a default behaviour, however, from the top right side of the schedule, you can always change the views. Let's review this in detail.

Schedule Views help you better visualize the schedule by date range and view. Under the 'ShiftPlanning'tab at the upper right corner, schedule views can be changed based on the view type and the date range. You can navigate the schedule to different dates under any selected view by clicking the 'arrows' found at top mid of the page.
 

There are four types of "Basic View":

  1. Employee view

  2. Position view

  3. Visual view

  4. List view

These can further be seen in "Timeline View" depending on the "Basic View":

  1. Day

  2. Week

  3. 2 weeks

  4. 4 weeks

  5. Month

Basic Views

Employee View

Employee view lists your staff names to the left with their corresponding shifts on the calendar.

Position View

Position view lists your staff positions to the left with their corresponding shifts on the calendar.

If the management has enabled the Position view for you as an employee, then you need to click"Schedule Overview" from the left menu of the app, to reveal the position view for yourself.

Note: 'Employee and Position view' can further be customized to be seen in Day, Week, 2 Week and 4 Week mode.

Visual View

Visual view enhances the way you can view all your shift details at a glance.

List View

List view represents your staff schedule in a top to bottom list with the shift position and time.

Note: The "Visual and List" view can further be customized to be seen in Day, Week and Month mode.

Timeline Views

You can view the schedule by Day, Week, 2 weeks, 4 weeks and Month by using the buttons at the top left side of the Scheduler.

Day Mode

Day mode is helpful when you want better visualize the coverage for a single day. Click "Day" tab at the top right or press the shortcut key 'D' to view the Schedule in Day mode.

Week Mode

Week mode view is the default view. Week Start Day is set to Monday by default. However, you may customise it according to your business requirements under ' ShiftPlanning Settings'. Week mode can further be expanded to 2 weeks or 4 weeks.
 

Month Mode

Month view shows the weeks of the month along with the 'Shift times', 'Staff name' and the 'Shift position' indicated by colour. You can see more details about the shift by clicking on the shift.

Filter Panel

On the left side of the ShiftPlanning tab, you will be able to view the filter panel with 'Mini Calendar', 'Filters' and the 'Advanced' tab. If you are not able to view the panel, click the 'arrow' option, next to'Schedule Search' box. The panel can easily be hidden by clicking the same arrow again.
 

After clicking on the 'Filters' tab, you will be able to view the following options:

  1. Mini Calendar

  2. My Schedule

  3. Schedule Overview

  4. Leave Schedule

  5. Staff Availability

  6. Primary location positions only

  7. Additional location and positions

  8. Manage Positions

Mini Calendar

From the left sidebar, you may click any date on the 'Mini-Calendar' for quick navigation to any week or a specific day.

 

My Schedule

'My Schedule' is the default view when employees go the ShiftPlanning tab to display their shifts only. Make sure you navigate to the appropriate dates to view your upcoming/past shifts.
 

Employees can click on their shifts to view more details of the shift along with additional options to Trade Shift, Release Shift, Drop Shift, Submit Work Unit, Set-up the availability, View notes, View On Call details and Shift Acknowledgement.
 

Managers also have access to this view from the left filters panel on the ShiftPlanning tab, showing them their shifts only, in read-mode.

Schedule Overview

By selecting 'Schedule Overview' from the left sidebar, it will show you the entire company schedule according to the selected 'basic' and 'timeline' view. You may also select Primary location's position and Additional Locations to filter down the schedule by an individual or multiple locations and positions.
 

Under 'Schedule Overview', you may also add employees by clicking 'Add Employees' icon, once you click on it, it will open up the pop-up window where you can add First, Last name/s and Positions.
 

Note: You may only be able to view the positions of the primary location, it is a default behaviour of the application.

Leave Schedule

By selecting 'Leave Schedule' from the left sidebar, you will be able to see who in your company is on vacation. Managers can click on an 'Approved' vacation and 'Unapproved' upcoming time off or remove any past time off.
 

Staff Availability

With this availability feature, managers can view the availability on ShiftPlanning calendar while creating shifts in 'Employee View' only if employees have set their availability. This feature enables automatically if you are creating the shifts in Day or Week view.

You may also select a specific employee to further filter out and view the availability details.
 

Manage Positions

By clicking 'Manage Positions', it will redirect you to the 'Staff Module' to create and manage staff positions if needed.
 

 Advanced Filters

After selecting the 'Advanced' tab, it will allow you to further filter the view by 'Shift Type,' 'Remote Sites,' 'Skills,' or 'Employees.'
 

Creating Shifts

Creating shifts has never been easier. Simply, click the calendar cell corresponding to the employee/position, add date and the shift time.
 

Editing Shifts

Click on any shift, and it will open up the 'Shift Edit' window where you can do some of the most robust things.
 

Features of 'Shift Edit' pop-up window:

  1. Change shift Positions by clicking on top of the position name

  2. Add Shift Title from the top

  3. Edit start/ end date and time

  4. Set a shift to repeat by clicking the option Repeat.

  5. Set shift to Open by clicking the option 'Set up Open Slots'

  6. Assign remote sites to shifts

  7. Add Additional notes for the shift

  8. Add tasks

  9. Filter by Skills

  10. Assign Staff to shifts

  11. Shift Acknowledgement

  12. In-line Shift Approval

  13. Assign Staff from other positions

  14. Schedule Breaks

  15. Assign Work Units

  16. Filter by Seniority (Read about Seniority-Based Scheduling)

  17. Auto - Fill Shift

  18. Shift History

  19. Deleting Shifts

New Shift Creation Experience

To enable the new shift creation experience, click on the 'Schedule Action' icon located next to the Publish button and click on 'Show New Shift Creation'. This has been redesigned, in hopes of making it easier and faster for you to create a work shift than ever before.
 

Publish Schedule

The idea of publishing schedules is that some managers want the ability to make changes to the schedule without their staff seeing these changes right away. Once the manager is ready, he can then click 'Publish',and the changes will go live.

'Publish' tab is located at the top right of the ShiftPlanning tab. Publishing shifts will also send out the email/text notifications to your employees.
 

Note: Managers can turn off the Publish tab under ShiftPlanning Settings. Disabling the Publish feature will give your staff visibility to their new shifts/shift changes instantly (not recommended).

Publish and Republish Schedules

Once you publish a schedule, any posterior changes made to those same shifts will show to staff immediately without republishing it. The Republish feature is only to notify staff via email of the changes.

Schedule Conflicts

The 'conflict' tab appears automatically at the top right of the ShiftPlanning's page. Scheduling conflicts can occur when the scheduled shifts fall in conflict with any configured scheduling rule. Also, the shift that has a conflict is highlighted with the red dotted shift border.
 

Clicking the note shows the details of the conflict as well as highlight the shift that has conflict. Managers can resolve or ignore the conflicts before publishing it.

Save a Reference to a Period

With this new feature, we wanted to give all our users an incredibly efficient and simple way to be able to'save' or 'bookmark' past work schedules so that they could easily reference and even reuse them at any time.

Schedule Actions

Click on the 'arrow down' icon next to the publish button on top of the ShiftPlanning tab, and a drop-down icon will show up with powerful action.
 

Features of 'Schedule Actions' drop-down menu:

  1. Print and Save

  2. Copy Schedule

  3. Schedule Wizard

  4. Import Schedule

  5. Schedule Sync

  6. Clear Schedule

  7. Enable Ghost Shift

  8. Show Budget Mode

  9. Show Forecast/Hour graph

  10. Show New Shift Creation

Schedule Search

At the top left of the ShiftPlanning tab, 'Schedule Search' is available to search the desired shifts quickly. Type the search parameter and press 'Enter' on the keyboard.
 

Search parameters are:

  • Search by Employee

  • Search by Position

  • Search by Shift Details

Schedule Notes

Post schedule notes to your Humanity schedule that you can use to give yourself reminders at work on daily basis. Now you can write notes to both yourself and your co-workers that will be visible every time you take a look at your work schedule. This is similar to 'Sticky Notes' on your desks or computer desktop.

Click on the 'Schedule' tab to open your work schedule. The 'Note' icon is right next to the dates on your schedule calendar.
 

After saving the note, you may further 'publish', 'edit' and 'delete' it as well if needed with the help of the icons shown below:

Block Leave Requests for Specific Dates

Now, being a manager, supervisor and scheduler, you may block leave requests for certain dates by creating a note on the particular date for which they want time off requests to be blocked.

Once the note window has opened, simply check the 'Don’t Allow Time Off' checkbox.
 

ShiftPlanning Settings

Users with 'Manager' permissions have control over what staff can take action on and view within ShiftPlanning accounts. To view additional details of the settings you may place your mouse cursor on top of a setting, and it will pop-up on the screen.

To customize the settings according to your business requirement you may go to the tab Settings > ShiftPlanning > Advanced Settings as shown below:

 

Hot-Keys

Hot-keys are keyboard shortcuts that allow the application to increase work speed in navigating the schedules and switching between various date ranges and views.

To quickly change the date Ranges of the ShiftPlanning page use the following hotkeys:

  •  Ctrl+Up: go to previous date range

  •  Ctrl+Left: go to previous date range

  •  Ctrl+Right: go to next date range

  •  Ctrl+Down: go to next date range

Easily Change Shiftplanning view modes use the following keys: 

  • T: view today

  • W: view week

  • M: view month/4Weeks

  • D: view day

If you have any further queries, please don't hesitate to reach us at support@humanity.com. Happy Scheduling!

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