Advanced Workforce Settings

After creating a Workforce and roster, you can find more advanced settings in ‘Workforce Settings’.

Depending on the needs of your business, you can change these advanced settings accordingly.

Please note that any manager can make changes to the Workforce Settings. Any change to the Workforce Settings will alter the behaviour of WorkRoster for all users in the workforce.

I'll quickly explain each setting to you now.

If desired, you can update the "Workforce Name" and "Workforce Description".

You can set the "First Day of the Week" setting to be what your business considers the first day of the week to be. This might be Sunday, or Monday, or the day when you traditionally issue a new roster or start a new rotation. This setting is used when the total weekly hours for an employee is displayed on the Shift Assignment Menu.

The "Roster Hours Start" value is used as the first hour to display on the weekly roster view.

We recommend that you set this to be 1 hour earlier than when your first shift of the day starts.

The "Roster Hours Finish" value is used as the last hour to display on the weekly roster view.

If you have shifts that run past midnight, then you can extend the "business hours finish" into the next day.

The "Shift Time Precision" setting controls time increments that shifts will "snap" or "fix" to when creating, resizing, and editing, shifts. We recommend that you set this to the largest value which meets the granularity of the precision you need. For instance, if your shifts will only ever start and finish on even 15-minute boundaries, then set this to 15 minutes.

Your company or organisation might need a roster for only 1, or 2, days per week. If so, you can turn off the display of selected days on the weekly roster, that you don't want to see, using the various "Show Weekday" settings.

The "Confirmed Status for New Shifts" setting controls if new shifts are created witha default status of "confirmed", or, a default status of "draft".

The "Show Draft Shifts" setting controls if draft shifts are visible to employees. Hiding draft shifts from employees, gives managers a way to do shift planning privately. Hiding draft shifts also gives managers a way to conceal future planned shifts from employees. When Draft Shifts are hidden, then the next workforce setting, "Auto Confirm Shifts Days Before" must be set to a minimum of "7 days". Please note that managers can always see all shifts.

The "Auto Confirm Shifts Days Before" setting can be set to automatically confirm draft shifts a selected number of days before the shift is scheduled to begin. This setting is useful when Draft Shifts are hidden from employees, so that shifts are automatically made visible to them with adequate notice.

The "Warn about Empty Shifts" setting is for when you'd like to be alerted about empty, or "unassigned", shifts. With this setting turned on, an empty shift on the roster will start visually flashing 48 hours before it's scheduled to begin. Also "Empty Shift Notifications" will be sent to all managers via email and mobile push notifications. Individual managers can opt-out of these notifications from their own personal account settings.

The "Resource Double Assignments", "Client Double Assignments", and "Employee Double Assignments" settings control what WorkRoster allows when a double assignment occurs. A double assignment is when something is assigned to two different shifts that are occurring at the same time.

When set to "okay" the system will do nothing, and double assignments are allowed. No warning or feedback will be given to the manager about double assignments.

Setting "Okay" for Resources or Clients might be suitable depending on how your business uses these records.

When set to "Warn" the system will warn you about the double assignment when it is made, and double assignments will be clearly shown on the roster with a line strike through the name on the assignments.

When set to "Block", the system will not allow double assignments. Setting "block" for Employees might be suitable if your employees can't be in two places at one time, or if you wish to avoid your employees accruing double hours (and thus maybe double payroll) at the same time.

The "Show All Resources to Employees" setting controls if employees are able to see all resources (and their assignments) on WorkRoster.

When set to "No", employees will only see resources that they have been assigned to work with. When set to "No", employees will not be able to see the resource records, and corresponding assignments, of resources they have never been assigned to work with. Please note that managers can see all resources and assignments.

The "Show All Clients to Employees" setting controls if employees are able to see all clients (and their assignments) on WorkRoster.

When set to "No", employees will only see clients that they have been assigned to work with. When set to "No", employees will NOT be able to see the client records, and corresponding assignments, of clients they have never been assigned to work with. Please note that managers can see all clients and assignments.

The "Show All Employees to Employees" setting controls if employees are able to see all employees (and their assignments) on WorkRoster.

When set to "No", employees will only see other employees that they have been assigned to work with. When set to "No", employees will NOT be able to see the employee records, and corresponding assignments, of other employees they have never been assigned to work with. Please note that managers can see all employees and assignments.

Please also note, that while employee records of other employees are hidden when this setting is set to "no", the employee records of all "managers" are always shown to all employees. In other words, manager records can not be hidden. This is required so that employees can interact with managers through the system.

In a typical business, employees see each other at work, know each other's names, can observe when others are working, and might actually need to know when others are scheduled to work in order to do their own job properly. In this case, it makes sense to "Show All Employees to Employees", and it allows them to communicate with each other through the WorkRoster system.

In an agency style business, there might be no need for employees to be aware of who the other employees are, in this case the setting can be set to "no". Also, to avoid employee records becoming visible to each other, managers should always create multiple shifts (that is one shift for each employee assignment) rather than co-assigning multiple employees to a single shift.

For all "Show All..." settings, the definition of "working with" extends to the full time-horizon of the visible roster, that is, 12 months in advance and 12 months in the past. So, for example, if an employee was once assigned to work with a client six months ago, then they can still see the client record today.

The "Employee Holiday Requests" setting controls if employees can add Holiday Requests on the roster.

After a Holiday Request has been added, a manager can approve it, or edit it, or delete it.

If this setting is set to "no", then only managers can add holidays to the roster.

The "Show All Holidays To Employees" setting controls if employees can see the Holidays, and Holiday Requests, of others on the roster. If this is set to "yes", then employees will see the holidays of others, including holiday "title" and "info" information.

After setting this to "no", employees will only be able to see their own holidays on the roster.

Please note that managers can always see all holidays, of all employees, on the roster.

The "Default Holiday Allowance" settings are used to set a default holiday allowance for employees. This default value can be overridden in each Employee Record with a custom value. The Holiday Allowance is shown in the Holiday Reports.

The "Holiday Year Start Month" and "Holiday Year Start Month Day" settings are used to set when your annual holiday allowance period starts.

For some businesses, this might be the 6th of April, or 1st of July, or some other date.

The "Show All Sick Leave To Employees" setting controls if employees can see the Sick Leave of other employees on the roster. If this is set to "yes", then employees will see the Sick Leave of others, including "title" and "info" information. For some businesses, it might be necessary for employees to know if their colleagues are away sick.

If this is set to "no" then employees will only be able to see their own sick leave on the roster.

Please note that managers can always see all sick leave, of all employees, on the roster.

The "Show All Shifts To Employees" setting controls if employees can see all shifts, or just their own assigned shifts.

If unassigned shifts are hidden from employees, then the Shift Interest feature is automatically disabled.

Please note that managers can always see all shifts on the roster.

When employees can see all shifts, then the "Show Assignments On Other Shifts To Employees" setting controls if employees can see assignments on the other shifts that they are not assigned to.

Please note that when this is set to "yes", employees might still not see the names on the shift assignments depending on the chosen settings of the other "Show All.." settings above.

Please also note that employees can always see all the assignments on their own assigned shifts.

Please also note that managers can always see all assignments on all shifts.

The "Use Availability" setting controls if the "Availability" feature is used, or not.

When the "Availability" feature is on, the "Show All Availability To Employees" setting controls if an employee's availability information is shown to all employees.

Please note that managers can always see the availability information of all employees.

The "Use Shift Interest" setting controls if the "Shift Interest" feature is used, or not. When on, employees can mark themselves as "Willing" for shifts they are not yet assigned to.

Employees' "Willing" mark is shown to managers as a hollow tick in the Shift Assignment Menu.

When the "Shift Interest" feature is on, then the "Allow Reluctant" setting controls if, and when, employees mark themselves "Reluctant" on unassigned shifts.

Managers will see a hollow cross in the Shift Assignment Menu when an employee has marked "reluctant" for a shift.

Please note that when an employee is "reluctant" for a shift they can still be assigned to the shift by a manager. "Willing" and "Reluctant" are used as a signal to the manager about each employees interest for that particular shift.

The "Use Shift Agreements" setting controls if the "Shift Agreements" feature is used, or not.

When the "Shift Agreements" feature is on, the "Allow Decline" setting controls when and if employees can "decline" an assigned shift.

Setting this to "No, not allowed" will remove "decline" as an option on assigned shifts, and "accept" will be the only option.

Setting this to "Anytime" allows declines at any time.

Setting this to "Draft shifts only" will only allow declines when a shift is in "draft" status. "Confirmed" shifts can not be declined.

Or this can be set to allow declines a selected number of days before the shift is due to begin.

Please note that a "declined" shift assignment does not automatically mean that an employee is not required to work. Shift Agreements are used only as a signal to managers to help them with their scheduling. If an employee can not work an assigned shift, then they should contact their roster manager directly.

When the "Shift Agreements" feature is on, the "Show All Agreements To Employees" setting controls if employees can see the shift agreements of other employees.

Please note, all Shift Agreements are visible to managers.

The "Employee SMS Access" setting controls if employees can use workforce SMS credits for shift reminders or online SMS messages. This is a legacy feature and is not available to new workforces. Email and Mobile Push Notifications are now used for notifications on WorkRoster.

The "Activity Stream" on WorkRoster contains a detailed log of all changes made to the workforce and rosters ( this is regardless of the other workplace settings regarding data visibility). The "Activity Visible to Employees" setting controls whether employees can see this full activity stream or not. Managers can always see the stream.

The "Show Email Addresses To Employees" setting controls if employees can see the email addresses in other Employee Records and Client Records.

Please note that email addresses are always visible to managers.

The "Show Telephone Numbers To Employees" setting controls if employees can see the telephone number in other Employee Records and Client Records.

Please note that telephone numbers are always visible to managers.

The "Use Photos" setting controls if employee, client, and resource, photos are displayed on WorkRoster.

When set to "Do not show photos", then no photos are used.

When set to "Only show uploaded photos", then only uploaded photos are used.

When set to "show uploaded and default photos", then a photo is always used, either an uploaded photo, or a random fun image chosen by the system.

The "Use Employee Colours" setting controls if different colours are used for employees, clients, and resources, on WorkRoster. When set to "Yes", each record can have a colour chosen automatically or manually.

The "Restricted Memos" setting controls if employees can use the Memo feature to send memos only to managers, or to all employees.

After any workforce settings have been changed, click "Save Workforce Settings" to save the new settings.

You can upload your own custom Workforce image or logo.

Click "Edit Settings" from the "Workforce" menu tab.

Scroll to the bottom of the Edit Settings page, to the "Add Logo" button, and click it.

Select a file to upload as your workforce image on WorkRoster.

The Workforce image has been updated.

Thank You.