Each WorkRoster workforce has multiple settings that can be changed to enable or disable the various software features and how they work.
The workforce owner or any workforce roster manager can change the workforce settings.
Any change the workforce settings will affect all users.
When making a change to Workforce Settings it 's nice to communicate with fellow managers ( and maybe also employees) about your changes so that they know why things have changed when they next use WorkRoster.
The workforce name (e.g. Your Company or Business name) and description can be changed in Workforce settings. The description is optional.
The "First day of week" is the day when your new weekly roster normally starts. Weekly totals of assigned hours shown on the assignment menus are calculated starting from this day. Quick data navigation using the 'jump-to' data menus are to this day of the week. On the web User Interface and also PDF printouts a thin green line will show just before this first day of the week.
Adjust your business hours to show just beyond the hours that you need. This saves space on the both the roster web UI and the printed PDF roster view.
The 'Show Sundays', 'Show Mondays', etc. settings control which days appear on the web roster.
If you never schedule shifts on a certain days (e.g. the weekend) then turning off the display of these days might be a good idea.
Normally shifts are created with a 'draft' status. Draft status provides an indication to employees that shift planning is not yet complete and further changes might be made. Shifts can be 'confirmed' by clicking on the clock face icon.
If you prefer that shifts instead be created with an automatic 'confirmed' status then turn this Confirmed Status for New Shifts setting to on.
This Workforce Setting controls if employees can see shifts that are currently in draft status. Setting 'Draft Shifts Visible' to off will allow roster managers to plan and schedule new shifts without allowing employees to see them until they are confirmed. The draft shifts are completely hidden from employees.
When 'Draft Shifts Visible' is set to off then the other Workforce Setting 'Auto Confirm Shifts Day Before' is automatically turned on. This is to make sure the shifts will be visible to the employees at some stage (in case the roster manager forgets to confirm the shifts).
Auto Confirm Shifts Days Before, can be used to automatically confirm shifts a selected number of days before each shift is scheduled to begin.
It's good practice for roster managers to confirm shifts (rather than leave them with draft status) and this setting can be used to automatically confirm shifts when they have not already been manually confirmed (i.e. by clicking on the clock-face icon).
Warn About Empty Shifts, when turned on, will cause empty shifts (i.e. shifts without any employees assigned) that are scheduled to begin within the next 48 hours to flash with a red warning colour on the roster view.
One way to stop the warnings about an empty shift being triggered when you actually want/need the shift to be empty is to assign a fake employee to the shift. Create an employee record with a name something like 'EMPTY SHIFT' or 'CANCELLED SHIFT' and assign this employee to the empty shift. Now the shift is no longer empty and the warnings will stop.
Any Holiday Requests posted to the roster by an employee will be as a request (draft status). Holidays can only be confirmed by roster managers. When this setting is set to 'No' then only managers can add holidays and holiday requests to the roster.
You can also set whether you want holiday requests (and approved holidays) to be show to all employees or just managers (and the employees concerned).
If you have many holidays and holiday requests on your rosters you can create a separately dedicated roster in your workforce (e.g called "Holidays") specifically for holiday requests. This will keep them out of your normal scheduling web view, and printed PDFs, of your everyday work shift rosters.
Normally employees can see all shifts on the rosters. If this is set to "No, just their own" then employees will only be able to see shifts to which they are assigned to.
Managers take note: One thing to consider is that if employees can't see other shifts then won't also won't be able to pre-accept/decline the Agreements for those invisible shifts either.
The Use Availability setting can used to completely turn off the Availability feature for the workforce.
Managers and employees will no longer see the free/busy (red/green) controls on the roster and shift assignments views.
When set to "Yes" then employees can see the availability indicated by other employees.
If this is set to "No, just their own" then employees will only see their own availability.
Managers always see the availability of all employees.
The Use Shift Agreements setting can be used to completely turn off the Shift Agreements feature for the workforce.
Managers and employees will no longer see the Accept/Decline (tick/cross/question-mark) controls on the roster and shift assignments views.
If your workforce doesn't use the Shift Agreements feature ( accept/decline (tick/cross/question-mark)) at all, then turning off 'Use Shift Agreements' can slightly speed up WorkRoster for you and your employees and make the system slightly easier to understand with fewer controls on the screen.
This new Workforce Setting controls if employees are allowed to set 'Shift Agreements' on shifts that they are not yet assigned to, i.e. allowing them to Pre-Accept and Pre-Decline. Turning this setting off will then only allow employees to Accept and Decline shifts to which they are already assigned.
(Note: If the Workforce Setting 'All Shifts Visible to Employees' is off then employees will only see their own shifts and so can't pre-accept/pre-decline other shifts regardless of the 'Allow Pre-Assignment-Agreements' setting).
Setting "Agreements Visible to Employees" to "YES" (and also "Availability Visible to Employees") can help encourage individual employees to update (e.g. Accept) their assignments as a result of seeing their colleagues doing the same.
This Workforce Setting controls if employees are allowed to set their 'Shift Agreements' to Declined (and Pre-Declined). Turning this setting off will cause 'Shift Agreements' to be 'Accept (and Pre-Accept) Only' for all employees.
The "Agreement lock on confirmed shifts" option can be set. With this setting set to yes employees are unable to set their agreement to declined when the shift is confirmed and they are already assigned to to it.
So, if an assigned employee tries to update their agreement to declined they will get an error message.
Workforce owners can purchase SMS credits that are used to send SMS messages from WorkRoster. Set 'Employee SMS access' to yes if you'd like your connected employees to be able to receive shift reminders by SMS using your workforce SMS credits.
When set to "YES" employees can see the workforce Activity stream.
The Activity stream always includes details about Shifts, Assignments, Availability and Agreements regardless of the other advanced settings listed above. This setting allows access to the Activity stream to be restricted to managers only if desired.
Email Addresses added to Employee (and Client) Records are hidden from other employees by default. Email Addresses are always visible to roster managers.
Change this setting to allow connected users (employees) to see the Email addresses on all employee records. This is sometimes required If your company provides email accounts or your business requires that each employee has access to others email addresses for work purposes.
If you have 'Email Addresses Visible To Employees' turned off but require some email address information to be shared then you can add these email address to the text of the employee record 'Description' fields. The Description field is always visible to all connected users (employees and managers).
Telephone Numbers added to Employee (and Client) Records are hidden from other employees by default. Telephone Numbers are always visible to roster managers.
Change this setting to allow connected users (employees) to see the Telephone Numbers on all employee records. This is sometimes required If your company provides telephones or your business requires that each employee has access to others' telephone numbers for work purposes.
Use Photos setting controls what photos are displayed for resources, clients, and employees. The options are
- Do not show photos - no photos are shown.
- Only show uploaded photos - No default (random) photos are displayed. Only photos uploaded to the Employee Record (by a manager) or User Profile (by the user) are shown.
- Show uploaded and default photos - when no photo has been uploaded then a random image from the WorkRoster image library is used.
Employees (and clients and resources) are usually displayed each with their own colour for easier recognition. The individual colours can be set manually or chosen automatically by WorkRoster.
The 'Use Employees Colors' setting allows individual colours to be turned off for the entire workforce. When set off, all employees will appear the same colour. All clients and all resources will also have the same colour.
You can replace the default logo image for your workforce with your own by clicking the "Add Logo" button.