Our system is week-based so all features like AutoFill, Import and function a week at a time. Though we do not offer monthly or yearly scheduling features, you are able to view and publish your schedule data for multiple weeks at a time. So, each schedule needs to be created weekly by Importing a desired previous week or creating and Importing a saved Template.
The Import feature copies in your shifts fairly quickly, so hopefully it won’t take too long to navigate to the week you want to create, click Import to copy in a previous week, then navigate to next week and repeat process.
After you have created your weekly schedules, you are able to publish multiple weeks at a time. If you have your future weeks’ shifts scheduled, when you click the “Publish” button on the initial week, it will show all the future weeks that are available to be published. You simply need to click the circle next to the date of the furthest week out you would like to publish and all previous weeks to that date will be published at one time.
If you’d like to simply import the schedule, with its existing assignments, every week, you can surely do that.
Set up one week exactly as you want your basic schedule to be. Click ‘Save Template’ and name this (something like, Main Schedule or Master Schedule.) Then, whenever you want to create a new week, simply navigate to the new week, click Import and choose your Master Template from the dropdown menu of templates, and click Import. (There is a checkbox – you want to import your shifts with assignments.)
If you choose to import your shifts already assigned, before you Publish you might navigate to our “Grid List” schedule view, and use our “Analyze Shifts” button to see the status of how each assigned shift matches the employee’s preferences for that time in the “Pref” column. The Pref column also shows in red any violations or conflicts like when the shifts are assigned closer than the minimum set time between shifts, or too many hours in a day, overlapping shifts, etc that might occur from manually assigning your shifts.
Of course, you could disable the whole Preferences system if you like – at SETTINGS > Global Employee Permissions you can set whether employees are allowed to enter times they can and cannot work. This might be a good choice for you, since you are not scheduling shifts by preferences but have a set schedule instead. You might allow Time Off requests, but not allow them to enter Cannot Work times and Like/Dislike preferences.
The alternative we mentioned is to use Autofill. In that case, managers import the shifts they need filled, and Autofill analyzes the employee’s preferences (they’ve entered times they cannot work, times they like to work, etc.) and assigns the shifts based on that week’s preferences.
You can import the shifts with assignments, but note that if someone requests Time Off and you approve it, Autofill will show that shifts as ‘unassigned’ because they aren’t working that day. You can click on the shift to choose a replacement, or leave it unassigned and allow employees to bid on it (to do so, go to SETTINGS > Global Employee Permissions and allow them pick up unassigned shifts in the Trades section.)
Please keep in mind that we DO NOT RECOMMEND publishing your schedule too far in advance, as inevitably there will be schedule changes (new employees, time-off, exited staff, availability of your staff or employment position changes) which will be much more cumbersome for you to change/update on each individual weekly schedule (no bulk editing of shifts over multiple weeks).
create a reoccurring schedule over a period of time (whether monthly, qrtly, biannual or for a calendar year