Once you have made shifts available to your team, viewing any subsequent requests and applying these to the Rota is also done from within the Rota Drafting Bench.
This guide will look at:
As soon as an employee has made a request to work an available shift via the Self Service App, it will show in the Drafting Bench as a yellow person icon (you will need to refresh the Rota in order to see any changes). The total number of requests are displayed inside the yellow person icon. This total only includes requests from employees who are not already working on the day in question. So, an icon showing ‘0’ means that, although requests have been made, they are from employees who already have shifts allocated to them that day. All requests are viewable by selecting the yellow person icon.
Once you are ready to apply the shift requests, you have a few options. They all start by selecting the yellow person icon. The pop-up box shows the list of employees who have requested that particular shift, when they made their requests and whether they have any other pending shift requests on the same day.
Focus will attempt to auto allocate the shifts, based on certain criteria. You can override or modify Focus’s suggestions with your own preferences.
The default order is set to ‘Requested’. Focus will automatically select the employees in time order of when they made their requests. If you have more requests than shifts required, it will stop selection once the required amount is reached. Select ‘Apply’, and all those selected will be added to the Rota.
In the example above, after selecting ‘Apply’, the DAY shift shows in the Drafting Bench as fully staffed (a green tick with a change in shift colour).
Notice how the EARLY shift request number has now changed from 2 to 0. This is because you have just applied two employees to the DAY shift who also requested the EARLY shift. The employees are greyed out and have not been auto-selected. This allows you to make informed decisions without unwittingly applying the same employees again to a second shift. For instance, is it possible for them to work a double shift? Do you need to make any changes to the Rota? Or can you simply ignore it?
Changing the order to ‘Other Requests’ filters out anyone that has other pending shift requests on the same day. Therefore, enabling you to fill a shift whilst keeping other employees in mind for other shifts that day.
In the example above, after selecting ‘Apply’, the DAY shift shows in the Drafting Bench as fully staffed (a green tick with a change in shift colour).
The EARLY shift request number remains at 2, as you didn’t apply these two employees to the DAY shift. If you wish, you can now simply apply them to the EARLY shift.
Manually choose which employees to apply to the shift by ticking / unticking them, before selecting ‘Apply’. This method is useful if, for example, you are trying to give all employees an equal share of the available shifts over a specific time period.
As soon as a shift requirement is fulfilled in the Rota, the shift will no longer appear as available to employees in the Self Service App.
Although not essential, it is good practice to turn on ‘Restrict to Drafting Bench’ in ‘Options, Filters & Preferences’. This will reduce the chance of making mistakes when building the Rota using Available Shifts.
The Drafting Bench is designed to assist with the planning and building of your Rotas.
Work with templates to quickly define your scheduling needs for the week.
Define your shift requirements and let your team request which shifts they wish to work.
