Assigning Employees

Using WorkRoster, assigning employees to shifts is quick and easy.

When you hover over a shift, the "Shift Details" box appears above with various controls. On the "Assign" line, click the "Employee" link, to open the pop-up assignment menu.

From the Assignment Menu, click on an employee’s name to immediately assign them to that shift.

You can assign multiple employees to a shift.

To remove an employee from a shift, hover your mouse over the assignment and then click the "remove" link that appears. The employee is immediately removed from the shift.

Next to each employee in the assignment menu is the number of shift hours they have already been assigned for that week.

This can help managers to allocate new shift assignments more fairly, or within regulation limits.

If your Workforce uses the Availability Feature, then the assignment menu also shows the registered availability of connected users in colored squares next to their names. This information can help the manager decide which employees to assign.

A Green box indicates the employee has said they are available.

A red box indicates they have set their availability to busy (or unavailable).

A Grey box indicates they have not yet set their availability.

Employee records that aren't yet connected with a user account do not show any color box - because that employee can not log in to set their availability.

Another way to view employee Availability is using "Availability Rows".

Open the View Options menu,

and then set the Availability Row option.

There are six different settings to choose from, for the "Availability Row"

the "Hide Availability Row" option hides the availability on the screen.

With the Availability Row hidden, employee availability can still be seen on shift assignments, and on the shift assignment menu.

the "Just My Availability" option shows only the availability row for You, the current user.

the "Dynamic Availability Row" option displays a single availability row that dynamically updates and displays the availability of the employee currently being hovered over by the mouse. If you hover an employee name on a shift assignment, or in the shift assignment menu, or in the Employees list, then their availability information will be displayed in the dynamic availability row.

the "All With Availability" option will display availability rows for each employee that has entered some availabilty information, either "free" or "busy". Rows are not displayed for employees that have not entered any availaibility in order to save space on the screen.

the "All Users" option will display an availability row for each user. Rows are not displayed for employees without a connected user in order to save space on the screen.

the "All Employees" option will display an availability row for each employee. If you have many employees then this will result in many availability rows on the screen - so this option might not be practical for large workforces. Instead, using the availability squares shown on assignments and the assignment menu, or using the "Dynamic" availability row option, would be more convenient and practical.

If your Workforce uses the Shift Interest feature then your employees can mark themselves as "Willing" for shifts they are not yet assigned to. The Workforce Settings might also allow for "reluctant" interest to be set. The Assignment menu will show the "Shift Interest", "Willing" or "Reluctant", made by connected employees.

A happy face icon will be shown for Employees that have marked Willing for the shift.

A frowning face icon will be shown for Employees that are "Reluctant" for the shift.

A neutral face will show for employees that have not set any Shift Interest for that particular shift.

An empty circle will show for Employees that have no connected user, because these employees can not yet login to set any shift interest.

The Shift Assignment Menu includes a search box. Use this to locate an employee quickly.

If you type in this box, the text will be used to match any part of your employee names.

You can press Return or Enter to automatically assign the first listed match to the shift.

Using "Search" can be very helpful if you assign shifts from a Workforce containing dozens or hundreds of employees.

The Shift Assignment menu has a "Sort" button.

Click this button to change the listing order of your employees.

Click the name of each sort field to make it the primary sort field.

Click the up or the down arrow next to each field to change the ordering for that field.

For Example, we could make the Assignment menu sorted first by Availability, then by Hours assigned, then by Interest, and then by Last Name.

Click the "Sort" button again, to hide the sorting controls.

If your Workforce has "Client Records", or "Resource Records", then making a client assignment, or a resource assignment, to a shift works in a similar way.

Click the Assign "Resource" link, to display the resource assignment menu, and then click a resource to make the assignment.

Click the Assign "Client" link to display the client assignment menu, and then click a client name to assign them.

To quickly see only the shifts for a particular employee, click the filter-funnel icon next to their name in the employee list.

The screen is updated to show only the shifts for that employee.

Click the "Clear Filter" button to return to the full roster view.

You can also find the "Filter" button at the bottom of the Employee Record.

When viewing a filtered view of the roster, like this, then any new shifts created will automatically have the corresponding employee immediately assigned.

This auto-assignment-in-the-filtered-view feature also works when the view is filtered by a client record or a resource record.

When using WorkRoster, instead of assigning shifts to employees, employees are assigned to shifts, which we believe is the more natural way to think about it.

Thank You.