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Managing Your Staff Schedules and Shifts
Auto-Fill Schedule
Auto-Fill Schedule
Use "Auto-Fill Schedule" to assign staff to empty and open slots
Yasir Ehsan avatar
Written by Yasir Ehsan
Updated over a week ago

Objective

To provide a step-by-step walk through of how to set up and run the Auto-Fill Schedule on Humanity. 

Overview

Access from your: Computer
Applies to: Managers

Auto-Fill Schedule allows your organization to auto-fill empty shifts and open slots, and optimize the existing staff schedule on the Humanity platform.   

Things to know before you begin:

  1. You must have Manager, Supervisor or Scheduler access privilege to run Auto-Fill Schedule.

  2. The Auto-Fill Schedule can only be run:
    a. From the Schedule Overview
    b. On the future timeline
    c. From the Position and Employee views
    d. For a week, 2-week, and 4-week timelines. 

  3. Position and Location filters may be applied.  

  4. Shifts need to be created or copied to Auto-Fill—either empty or with assigned employees.

Run Auto-Fill Schedule

Step 1: Click on the “Auto-Fill Schedule” button (upper right corner of your Humanity instance).

Image 1 

Step 2: The selected timeline shows all shifts displayed on a schedule that Humanity will use to generate the Auto-Fill schedule. The timeline can be adjusted by selecting different views—1-week, 2-week, 4-week—or by using Position and/or Location filters. The counter will display the number of shifts in the selected timeline.  

Image 2 

Definitions

  • Empty shifts: the number of shifts without assignments. Empty shifts can be assigned by managers. 

  • Open shifts: the number of shifts not assigned to an employee. Employees can pick up open shifts.

  • Total shifts: the total number of shifts in the selected timeline.

Choose an option

  • Auto-fill shifts: fill empty shifts, open slots, or both. Select the maximum number of employees that can be assigned on a single shift. The default value is 1, and the maximum number will equal the number of employees in your current selection (filtered by position and location).

  • Optimize existing schedule: optimize existing shift assignments, while also filling empty shifts and open slots. (Note that this process is more complex and will take longer to complete.)

Step 3: Enable/disable rules to adjust the results of auto-scheduling. 

Select which rules to include for the auto-generated schedule. When enabled, the selected rules will be viewed as hard constraints, avoiding the creation of new conflicts.

Important: When disabled, rules will be ignored during schedule generation. However, once the process is completed and the results are applied, all any scheduling conflicts will be displayed. 

Image 3 

Step 4: A summary of affected shifts will be displayed prior to auto-schedule generation. To continue, click on “Start Auto-Fill Schedule” to begin the process.

Basic Mode vs Advanced Mode

When running Auto-Fill Schedule in Auto-Fill Shifts mode (both “Fill empty shifts” and “Fill open slots”), two different modes for generating schedules may be selected. If a simple schedule is needed—or time is at a premium—select Basic Mode (default) complex schedule is required or an optimal result is needed, choose the Advanced Mode. 

Image 4

Step 5: You’ll be able to preview your new schedule in read-only mode, as shown in Image 5.

Notes:

  1. Shifts altered by the auto-fill process will be marked with white stripes, while those unaffected will be displayed normally. Shift details are viewable.   

  2. “Before-and-after” comparison will be displayed showing the difference in the number of conflicts, open slots, and empty shifts before and after auto-fill schedule generation.

  3. The new schedule is viewable in the Employee and Position views. 

Important: The number of conflicts displayed reflects the selections in the Auto-Scheduling Rules from Step 3.

Image 5 

Step 6: Choose to apply or discard the results of the auto-generated schedule. Discarding the schedule will revert the schedule to its original state. Applying the auto-generated schedule will overwrite the existing schedule with the new schedule.

Important: All conflicts will be displayed, including those that were disabled during the auto-fill schedule generation.

Step 7: When the auto-fill schedule is applied, the new schedule will be saved and potential conflicts will be shown. Once the schedule is created and conflicts are solved, the schedule may be published so all employees are informed of their upcoming shifts.

Important: The number of Auto-Fill Schedule requests is limited to three per minute. 

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

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