Linking Certain Duties with Assignment Numbers and Individual Employees

The ability to specifically assign certain employees to individual duties gives you, as the manager, more power over your employees and you organization. This also allows you to assign your strongest employees to the tasks that they are particularly suited for. This section discusses the steps necessary to Link certain duties with individual employees and assignment numbers.

The Setting: Let us say that you are managing a restaurant. You split your dining room in 4 sections and assign a different section to 4 different service employees (servers). Additionally you have one new employee who is training on Monday Day.

   
Step 1: Start the program. The Employee Division screen appears. Since we will be creating a Server schedule, select the "Servers" employee division and click the "OK" button.

(Note: This tutorial assumes that you have already created your Employee Divisions and have already entered all employee Permanent Availability information. If you have not done this, you must do so before continuing.)

Step 2: The Main Menu appears. Click the Create New Schedule button.
Step 3: The Temporary Availability Alterations screen appears. Let us say that the new employee who will be in training is "Ally". We need to link her name with the specific duty entitled "Trainee". Select her name from the employee list.
Allison's permanent availability information will be displayed.
Step 4: Click the "Assign A Specific Section" button and then click on the box corresponding to Monday Night.
The Special Assignments window will appear. Since there will be 4 servers assigned on Monday Night, plus the Trainee, there will be a total of 5 servers assigned on Monday Night. Since sections 1 through 4 are standard, we need only add a fifth section while Ally is in training.
Step 5: Click the drop down list box and select section 5 from the list to assign Ally to section 5.
You will now notice that the box corresponding to Monday Night has been changed to a yellow box noting that Ally is to be assigned to Section 5.
Step 6: Click the "Next" button.

The Floor Chart window will appear.
Step 7: Select Monday from the drop down list box.
Step 8: Since you normally only schedule 4 people on Monday Night, you need to tell the computer that you need to schedule a 5th person, that is your trainee. Select 5 from the Monday Night drop down list box.
Step 9: Since section 5 on Monday Night will only be used by trainees, type "Trainee" in the "Section/Title" box as shown at left.

From this point on, anyone assigned to section 5 on Monday Night will automatically be specified as being a "Trainee" on the finished schedule.

After Ally is finished with training, you can switch the number of employees back to 4 as was shown in step 8. This will prevent the computer from scheduling people for "Training" when not required.