Why Use Shift Categories? (Using Categories is optional)

You might want to create Categories for your shifts for many reasons. It allows you to filter schedules, pending trades, to show only certain groups (beyond filtering by Position or Position Group) and for certain time periods etc. Or you might want to create Reports to track certain types of shifts (ex. Late, or Called Out etc.). The shift category can also appear on various schedule views for each shift and some views can group shifts by category (ex. Calendar Weekly).

If you have shifts with similar begin and end times over multiple Positions you can create Categories with "Add Shift Default Settings" by clicking the Category drop down box and choosing Add / Edit Categories to create categories. (Ex. if you have similar night shifts for different positions you can create a NIGHT category and enter defaults so that when you Add Shifts you can first choose that Category and the fields will be prepopulated (but changeable) in the window.

There are many reasons to put shifts into categories:

1. Better control of AutoFill. Example: You can set all your weekend shifts (for some or all positions) to a category (WKND for example), then filter your schedule to that category before AutoFilling to get a better distribution of your weekend shifts before unfiltering to show all the shifts and using AutoFill again to assign the remaining non-weekend shifts.

2. Create an at-a-glance view of who is working certain types of shifts through the Category Chart's display of the assigned shifts' categories for up to 4 weeks at a time.

3. Get statistics (either through Statistics schedule view or the Reports section) on which Employees have worked shifts of certain categories like "graveyard" or "premium shift" or "Tardy" or for a certain event or client category.

4. For Commonly added shifts you can set a category default: position, start and end time, duration, color and/or description. When adding new shifts just choose the category first and the shift is automatically defaulted to your choices.

5. Grouping categories choose which categories to display together by creating Category Groups (similar to the Position Groups). You can use these category groups as shortcuts to view statistics or create reports as well.