Adding/Removing Employees and Editing Permanent Availability

(Click on the small images below to make them bigger)

This article discusses the following topics:

 

The Permanent Availability dialogue box has many tools and features.

Adding New Employees to the Database

 

When you first start using the Schedule application, you will have to input all of the names of your employees and their corresponding availability information. Likewise, whenever you hire a new employee, you will need to add their name and information to the database before they will be added to the schedule.

To Add new employees to the database, click the "Create New Employee" button.

 

The Create New Record dialogue box appears. Enter the name of the employee in the box and click the "OK" button. You should usually only enter the first name of the individual (and perhaps a last initial). If you enter their entire name, it may not fully appear on the finished schedule.

 

After you enter the new name and click the "OK" button, the new name will appear in the alphabetical list at the top of the screen.
  To edit an employees permanent availability information, click their name in the alphabetical employee list. All of the availability information tools will become active and illustrate the current availability status of the selected employee.

Editing the Availability of Employee

 

In order for the computer to create accurate schedules, it must know when your employees are available to work. Let us say, for example, that the employee named "Allison"  needs every Sunday off for some reason. We can tell the computer that she is not available to work on Sundays and as a result, the computer will never schedule her to work on Sundays. It's as easy as that!

 

A quick glimpse at the availability matrix above will show you that any given day is divided into Day and Night shifts. Every time you click on one of the colored boxes in the matrix, it will cycle through different availability options. For example, setting both of the boxes for Sunday DAY and Sunday NIGHT to "Not Available" will ensure that Allison is never assigned any shift on Sunday.
We can see from the example above, however, that the box corresponding to Thursday NIGHT is set to "Available". This setting will tell the computer that Allison is available to work on Thursday nights if the need should arise.
A third availability option is accessible through the matrix as illustrated here for Tuesday NIGHT. In this example, setting the "Always Schedule" option will tell the computer to always schedule Alison to work on Tuesday NIGHT. This is a handy option to have around because some of your employees may request to always work certain shifts.
A final option is available as illustrated here. You can choose not only to force the computer to always schedule an employee for a certain shift, but also force the computer to always assign the employee to a certain assignment. Let us say for example that Alison is the best cashier we have and we want her to always work the register instead of serving on Wednesday DAY. All we have to is tell the computer that assignment 8 corresponds to the cashier position, and then tell the computer to always assign Alison to assignment 8 on Wednesday DAY.

For more information on how to link certain duties with certain assignment numbers, click HERE.

For more information on Special Assignments, click HERE.


Important Advanced Options

 

As the manager, you should identify which duties are the most difficult for your employees to handle and then only assign those duties to your most experienced employees. The Category option is a powerful tool that gives you as the manager the ability to control how the computer assigns such duties.

To begin, you should rank the four most difficult tasks in order from 1 through 4 with 1 & 2 being the hardest, and 3 & 4 being hard, but easier then 1 & 2.

Since you do not want new employees assigned to the difficult duties before they are capable of handling such tasks, you assign them as Category 3 employees. These employees will never be assigned to the difficult tasks 1 through 4 that you specified above.

Your employees with intermediate skill levels should be assigned to Category 2 status. These employees will be allowed to be assigned to tasks 3 & 4, but not the most difficult tasks 1 & 2.

Finally, only your most skilled employees should be assigned as Category 1. These employees are your most skilled and will be available for scheduling in all tasks.

A final tool at your disposal is the ability to limit the number of shifts per week any given employee is assigned. If you need to keep certain employees below a certain number of hours, you can limit the number of shifts per week they are assigned by selecting the corresponding number from the drop down box.

The "Denote in BOLD" check box is also useful when you need to highlight specific employees for some reason. Some businesses use this feature to denote employees who have special training or abilities. The end effect is visible on the final schedule in that their name will be both Italicize and Bolded for easy identification.