Scheduling a week step by step
Once you know the tasks, absences and work shifts for the upcoming week, the whole week can be scheduled in one run. The same flow works for any period.
Selecting the period, location and segment
Section titled “Selecting the period, location and segment”-
Go to the Calendar.
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Select Scheduling.
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Select the Period for which you want to create the schedule — for example the upcoming week. If you use repeating tasks, we recommend scheduling at least a week long period so that the algorithm takes overlaps into account.
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Select the Location you want to schedule for, to see only their tasks. (Location is the default name for this grouping; your organization may have renamed it in the settings — see Good to know.)
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Select from the Segment menu the task segments you want to include in the scheduling.
The Segment selection only controls which tasks are added from the task list. Tasks already in the calendar for the period are always included in the optimization, whatever their identifier. Unlike Location, Segment cannot be renamed.
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Select Continue.
Choosing workers and optimization rules
Section titled “Choosing workers and optimization rules”- Select the Workers you want to schedule the tasks for. Allocator does not give work to workers who have no working hours, so absent people do not need to be removed from the list if they have been marked as absent.
- Select the optimization rules you want. We recommend selecting Re-optimize days and Don’t move tasks to others or remove — with these, Allocator keeps the tasks already given to the workers. When scheduling days with a significant number of short-term changes, selecting Tasks can be moved to others or removed makes Allocator optimize the day from a clean slate; on that day tasks may go to other workers or back to the task list. See Optimization rules.
- Select Suggestion to move to the next screen.
Reviewing the suggestion and publishing
Section titled “Reviewing the suggestion and publishing”- After selecting Suggestion, Allocator proposes a schedule where the selected tasks have been optimized for the selected workers, following the optimization rules. The suggestion screen shows both the scheduled tasks and the tasks that did not fit — see Tasks that did not fit.
- By selecting Publish, Allocator turns the suggestion into the new official schedule.
Tasks that did not fit
Section titled “Tasks that did not fit”In the suggestion phase, scheduling also shows the tasks that did not fit into the schedules. Their number can be reduced by changing, for example, the optimization rules. You can also review the tasks’ details to see other possible limiting factors, such as the time window and allowed workers.
Tasks left unscheduled are moved to the task list when publishing; there you can review and change their details, delete them, and move them manually to the worker you want.
did not fit, unscheduled, review, limiting factors