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This article discusses the following topics:
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The Temporary Availability
Alterations screen allows you to make temporary changes in an employees
availability without effecting the employees
Permanent Availability information.
This is useful when an employee requests time off for vacation, sick leave,
or other temporary reasons. Any changes made in the Temporary Availability Alterations screen are remembered by the computer only while you are working within the current Employee Division. If you change employee divisions or close the program, any changes made in the Temporary Availability Alterations window are discarded. This is makes the changes "temporary" and is convenient in that you will not ever have to remember to change an employees availability back to the original version after making changes because the computer will do it for you automatically. The Temporary Availability Alterations screen works very much the same way as the Permanent Availability screen with the exception that you cannot Add, Remove or alter the Category of employees. These things must be done in the Permanent Availability window. |
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Selecting Employees from the Database
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To edit an employees Temporary 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
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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!
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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 |
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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. |
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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. |
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If you make a mistake while entering temporary availability alterations for an employee, you can easily reset the screen back to reflect the employees permanent availability information. It is a type of "undo" option, if you will. |