Workforce Settings

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 to the Workforce Settings will affect all users.

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.

The Roster (Business) Hours can be set. These roster hours settings control what hours are displayed on the online and printed rosters. You should include all hours you need to show on the roster, including the time from your earliest shift start to the end of your latest shift.

We recommend that the Roster Business Hours Start be set to start one hour earlier than the earliest shift starts. Roster Business Hours Finish should be one hour after your last shift ends. This makes the roster easier to use and easier to read. It also helps when daylight savings starts and finishes - these are days with either 23 or 25 hours and are otherwise difficult to display accurately.

To allow shifts to extend past midnight, the Roster Business Hours Finish must be set to be into the Next Day.

Please note: Shifts are not allowed to start past midnight - instead, these shifts must start early on the following day.

Shift Time Precision controls the minimum time increments that shifts can start and finish at. If all your shifts always start and finish on the hour or half hour, then this setting can be set to 30 minutes. If you need a finer granularity of time for your shift start and end times, choose a lower value.

A higher value for Shift Time Precision makes using the web and mobile interfaces easier and less finicky to use.

The 'Show Sundays', 'Show Mondays', etc. settings control which days appear on the web roster.

If you never schedule shifts on certain days (e.g. the weekend) then turning off the display of these days might be a good idea.

Typically shifts are created with a 'draft' status. Draft status indicates to employees that shift planning is not yet complete and that further changes might be made. Shifts can be 'confirmed' by clicking on the clock face icon.

If you prefer that shifts be created with an automatic 'confirmed' status, turn this Confirmed Status for New Shifts setting to on.

This Workforce Setting controls if employees can see shifts currently in draft status. Setting 'Draft Shifts Visible' 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 ensures 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 is set 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).

When turned on, Warn About Empty Shifts will cause empty shifts (i.e. shifts without any employees assigned) scheduled to begin within the next 48 hours to flash with a red warning colour on the roster view.

Resource Double Assignments, Client Double Assignments, and Employee Double Assignments settings control what happens with a double-booked assignment, i.e., when an employee (or client or resource) is booked to work two shifts simultaneously.

By default, these settings are set to warn and any double-booked assignment will be marked on the roster with a strike through the employee name (and resource or client names).

Each of these settings can be set to:

warn - Double assignments can be made, but WorkRoster will mark them with a strike-through the name. This is the default WorkRoster behaviour.
allow - Double assignments can be made. WorkRoster will not mark or warn about these double-booked assignments.
block - Double assignment is not allowed. If the resource/client/employee is already scheduled, then their name will not appear in the shift assignment menu for any conflicting shifts.

Using the allow setting is helpful for when it's okay for Resource or Client records to be assigned concurrently.

When the block setting is used, there are still some circumstances when a double-booking might occur (such as automatically repeating shifts). Should this happen, then the double assignments are shown with the traditional strike-through treatment.

Use this setting to restrict the list of Resources shown to employees. Employees can be given access to the complete list or just a reduced list of any Resource Records that they have been co-assigned with within the past (12 months) or future (12 months).

Managers will always see the complete list of Resources.

The default setting for Show All Resources to Employees is No.

Use this setting to restrict the list of Clients shown to employees. Employees can be given access to the complete list or just a reduced list of any Client Records they have been co-assigned with within the past (12 months) or future (12 months).

Managers will always see the complete list of Clients.

The default setting for Show All Clients to Employees is No.

Use this setting to restrict the list of Employees shown to other employees. Employees can be given access to the complete list or just a reduced list of any Employee Records they have been co-assigned with within the past (12 months) or future (12 months).

Managers will always see the complete list of Employees.

Note: Employees will always see the complete list of Managers.

The default setting for Show All Employees to Employees is No.

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.

Only managers can add holidays and holiday requests to the roster when this setting is set to 'No'.

You can also set whether you want holiday requests (and approved holidays) to be shown to all employees or just managers (and the employees concerned).

This is the default number of annual holidays for each employee. This default allowance can be overridden in each employee's Employee Record.

Depending on the Holiday Counting Method used for the employee, either Days or Hours, then the corresponding workforce setting, Default Holiday Allowance Days or Default Holiday Allowance Hours, will be used.

The Holiday Allowance is used in the Holiday Report PDF (in the Print menu).

Your company's holiday allowance might be for the annual period starting from January 1st.  Or the annual holiday allowance period might start on a different day, such as July 1st or April 5th. Set this date using the Holiday Year Start Month and Holiday Year Start Month Day settings.

When set to 'Yes', then employees will be able to see the Sick Leave records of other employees on the roster.

When set to 'No, just their own', then employees will only see their own Sick Leave records on the roster.

Managers can always see all Sick Leave records.

Usually, employees can see all shifts on the rosters. If this setting is set to "No, just their own", then employees will only be able to see the shifts to which they are assigned.

Managers take note: One thing to consider is that if employees can't see other shifts, then they also won't be able to indicate Shift Interest (willing/reluctant) for those invisible shifts either.

By default, employees can only see the assignments on shifts that they are also assigned to. Change this setting to "Yes" to allow employees to see assignments on other shifts. Employees will only see the assignments of Clients, Resources, and Employees that are allowed to see as controlled by the "Show All Resources to Employees", "Show All Clients to Employees", and "Show All Employees to Employees" Settings.

This setting is helpful if you'd like your employees to see all the shifts (as per the "Show All Shifts to Employees" setting), but you'd only like them to see the assignments of their own shifts.

Employees will always see ALL the assignments of the shifts they are working (including other employees assigned to the same shifts and Clients assigned and Resources assigned).

The Use Availability setting can be used to 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 Interest setting can turn on or off the Shift Insterest feature for the workforce.

When set to Off, managers and employees will no longer see the Willing/Reluctant (happy-face/frowning-face) controls on the roster and shift assignments views.

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 (thumbs-up/down & question-mark) controls on the roster and shift assignments views.

This setting controls when, and if, employees can mark "decline" on their shift assignments. Turning this setting off will make the Shift Agreement feature "accept" only.

When set to "Yes", employees can see the Shift Agreements (accepts & declines) indicated by other employees.

If this is set to "No, just their own", then employees will only see their own Agreements.

Managers can always see the Shift Agreements of all employees.

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.

Workforce owners can purchase SMS credits 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. This is a legacy feature.

When set to "YES", employees can view the workforce Activity stream.

The Activity stream always includes details about Employees, 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 each employee to access others' email addresses for work purposes.

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 each employee to access 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, a random image from the WorkRoster image library is used.

Employees (and clients, and resources) are usually displayed 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.

The WorkRoster Memo feature allows memo messages to be posted to staff.

When the Restricted Memos setting is set to Yes then regular employees are restricted to posting memos to managers only.

When Restricted Memos is set to No, regular employees can post memos to everyone, including other regular employees.

Managers can always post memos without any restrictions.

You can replace the default logo image for your workforce with your own by clicking the "Add Logo" button.