Glossary

An activity defines what an employee is scheduled to do for a segment of time. For example, in retail sales, each customer service representative could be assigned to a specific set of activities throughout a shift period that might include attending a one hour staff meeting, taking inventory in the stockroom for two hours and greeting and helping customers for five hours. These three segments represent activities that the supervisor can enter into the MVS.

To remove a shift, the supervisor must first remove the employee assignment of that shift, which results in an unstaffed shift. If the extra shift is not required, the supervisor can delete it, but the coverage number for the original requirement will not change. Alternatively, the supervisor can add an extra unstaffed shift even if staffing requirements do not exist for that position. Again, the coverage number will not change.

These unstaffed shifts represent ad-hoc scheduling needs that may not be predicted in the staffing requirements. They are created manually from within the MVS using the Save As New, Apply or Copy tools. Creating ad-hoc unstaffed shifts does not impact the required number of shifts used for coverage calculations. To impact coverage, the staffing requirements need to be edited. But ad-hoc unstaffed shifts do impact the actual number of scheduled shifts. Ad-hoc (manually created) shifts are indicated in the MVS by an (M) in the cell label.

Auto assign was previously referred to as “bumping”. The auto-assign feature is used to fill unstaffed shifts with the 'best-fit' employees according to pre-defined auto-assign criteria. Auto-assign attempts to match unassigned employees (employees that are scheduled to work, but have not yet been assigned to a specific job) to unstaffed shifts. The auto assign process helps a supervisor fill a number of unstaffed shifts. Auto-assignment can also be used during the weekly or daily scheduling routine when addressing absences or scheduling changes (e.g., last-minute change in staffing requirements). Auto-assignment is performed by day parts, by days, by week, by job times (select or all), or by team, depending on which view you are currently using.

When the supervisor books off an employee, two things happen:

• the employee is removed from assigned status, and
• If the book-off is due to an employee absence, then the employee is marked with an absence time code. If the book-off is due to overstaffing, the employee is not marked with an absence time code, and therefore, the employee is still available to work shifts for which they are eligible.

Two of the major reasons why a supervisor might book-off an employee include:

• The employee cannot work, so the supervisor marks the employee with an absence time code.
• The job is overstaffed and therefore, the supervisor must book-off the employee and specify a non-absence time code and then remove the extra shifts.

An employee can be booked off for an entire day or for a specific range of time (start/end time).

A cell represents a staffed/unstaffed shift and assigned employee in the MVS. A combination of times and other schedule details to which an employee may or may not be assigned.

Census data is used in healthcare to estimate the number of employees required to fill shifts. Estimates are based on the number of patients expected at the healthcare facility several weeks in advance and can be recorded to drive staffing requirements.

In order to use census data to determine the number of employees required to fill a shift, a census ratio must first be established. (For example, one hospital bed requires three nurses, two hospital beds requires four nurses). This information is specified in the staffing requirements.

Once this ratio has been established, you estimate the number of beds that will be filled during any given week. This is done using the Populate Data Page page (Add/Modify census data).

The clear schedule feature removes all employees assignments in the schedule retrieved. Shift pattern employees are returned to their original state (for example, unassigned, if their default job = 0, or assigned to their default job). Clear Schedule can be disabled in a published schedule. In this case, clear will only affect unpublished assignments.

This feature copies specific or all details of the currently selected shift to a target shift.

This is the actual number of employees scheduled compared to the required number of employees for a timeslot. If 5 employees are scheduled for a timeslot (job time), but 10 are needed, coverage would be displayed as 5/10.

Overstaffing is also displayed by appearing highlighted in red. For example, if 5 employees are needed, but 10 are scheduled, the displayed coverage would be 10/5.

A logical unit used to divide a day into non-overlapping parts. For example, in a cinema, day parts might be movie showings (matinee, twilight). In a hospital, the day parts could represent shifts (morning, afternoon, evening).

This is one of the three scheduling modes that the MVS can be run in. Day Parts with Interval uses pre-defined day part sets, but also enables the definition of requirements at a more granular level (either 15, 30 or 60 minutes). Unlike Day Part mode, where the requirement duration is for the length of the day part itself, in Day Part with Interval mode the requirements can be defined for a duration of 15, 30 or 60 min (as specified by the configuration). Requirements can also be defined at the day part level itself by keeping the intervals collapsed.

Once requirements are defined in one scheduling mode, the schedule mode should not be changed.

The day part view displays staffed and unstaffed shifts grouped by day part, Scheduled Team and job. Day parts are non-overlapping durations of time which span the 24 hour day. An employee’s shift can span multiple day parts. This view provides a snapshot showing which employees are working together for certain portions of a day. Unassigned employees are also grouped at the scheduled team level.

List of employees who are qualified for the currently selected cell. The list is retrieved when you click on a shift based on the definitions from the Employee Find and Sort Order Configuration form, though these parameters can be adjusted on a shift or session basis. From this list, you can select employees to use to staff unstaffed shifts or replace an existing employee in a staffed shift.

The employee view provides a complete view of all employees that belong to the selected team(s), including their schedules with vacations, availability and absences.

For each employee row, the system tallies and displays the number of hours scheduled per employee for each day and for the whole week. For example, If Mary works 3 hours per day Monday to Friday, her total for the week is 15 hours, and her total for each day is 3 hours.

This is the employee’s default team.

Defines what role an employee plays for a segment of time. Employees have a list of jobs that they are qualified for. Employees also have a default job based on default labor allocation which employees are assigned to if a shift pattern is used. This job can be overridden for a scheduled shift using the MVS.

Staffing requirements are defined in the form of Job Times where schedulers define arbitrary start and end times with requirements for job, skill and activity. For more information, see "Staffing Requirements and Census" on page 79.

The job requirements view provides a list of teams, job times and jobs based on the staffing requirements defined. For example:

This view enables the user to see which employees are working together for job times on a daily basis. The user scrolls down this view to see all the teams that the schedule was retrieved for. Coverage can be displayed for the team, job time and job level.

For each job, the staffing requirements are identified, as well as the employees assigned to the job. Positions that are unstaffed are identified by an "Unstaffed" cell in the schedule. Staffed positions have an employee attached to the specific "cell" with details on start time and end time.

Labor and production metrics (also known simply as labor metrics) are used to track, measure, and control the amount of work, time, and costs devoted to different activities and tasks within a company. By determining how much time and labor is being devoted to specific activities, a company can measure the true cost of these activities and products. Ultimately, this helps a company to understand the profitability and efficiency of their products, workforce, and overall business. The system allows time to be tracked against a virtually unlimited number of labor metrics, but the MVS specifically uses the metrics docket, project and team; these can be customized to any set of metrics.

Locate is used to find employees in a schedule and navigate to their shifts or cells. You enter an employee’s name, and then search to see if they exist in the schedule. If they do, you can click Locate to navigate to the first instance of that employee. The cell is selected and details are displayed in the Schedule Details panel. If this is the right employee, but not the right instance you are looking for, you can now click Locate Next to find the next instance. Repeat until the employee and shift/cell you are looking for is found.

A Long Term Absence (LTA) override affects an employee’s availability. When an employee is booked off, they are still technically available for work. When they are booked off using an LTA override, they are not available to work.

Name for the consolidated interface encompassing several simultaneous views. Enables schedulers to create and manage employee schedules.

Also known as Non-Productive Transition Time, this is defined as "non-productive" if the shift offset activity is defined as “non-working” and “non-paid”.

When a schedule is published, you have the option of notifying using Workmail:

• All employees in the schedule
• Affected employees
• No one

Employees who are scheduled to a shift but are on standby and do not actually work unless they are called to work while on an On-Call shift.

The system relies on the registry parameter configuration for its function and behavior. Registry parameters define the way in which certain parts of the application appear. For more information on MVS-specific registry parameters, see the MVS chapter of the Registry Parameter Reference Guide.

Printing the schedule gives you a fully-expanded view of the current schedule view. A PDF is rendered, which you can view/print/save, as desired.

Also known as Productive Transition Time, this is defined as "productive" if the shift offset activity is defined as “working” and “paid”.

Publishing the MVS schedule means that the scheduler is releasing the schedule details to employees for viewing. The act of publishing the schedule means that the scheduler posts the schedule to the ETM for employees to view. Publishing the schedule also saves the details to the system timesheet and, based on the notification criteria set by the scheduler, may notify employees using workmail.

This button allows you to remove/delete a shift. When a staffed shift is selected, this button in the Schedule Details panel is labeled Remove. If you click it, the employee assigned to the shift is removed and the shift becomes an unstaffed shift. When an unstaffed shift is selected, this button is labeled Delete. If you click it, the unstaffed shift is deleted from the schedule. When neither a staffed nor an unstaffed shift is selected, this button is grayed-out.

Schedule Compliance validates any changes to a schedule against a set of configured rules. For more information, see "Schedule Compliance" on page 55 and the Schedule Compliance Implementation and Administration Guide.

A schedule period is a date range consisting of any number of weeks, configured based on your needs, not limited to any days or number of weeks. This enables organizations to create multi-week schedules.

The Schedule Period view is a high-level representation of the schedule period currently retrieved. Supervisors can view at a glance single-week or multi-week schedule periods, easily determining scheduling status and needs. Brief details of each employee, such as scheduled times, availability, vacation, and so on, are shown in one consolidated view.

Employees are grouped by day part, Scheduled Team and their job assignment. Floating of employees across hospital units is supported. This view also displays the total employee scheduled hours for the currently retrieved schedule period.

The Scheduled Team view displays a list of employees and their schedules arranged by team. This view enables the supervisor to determine which employees are working together within one team. For example, the supervisor might analyze this view to ensure that a good mix of employees (experienced vs. less experienced) exist for the team. Coverage for the team is displayed in addition to scheduled/unscheduled hours for the period.

A session is defined as starting when a user enters MVS and ending when that user leaves MVS.

A shift pattern determines the order in which an employee works a shift or a combination of shifts. The pattern may be a straight and simple work week or a complex rotating pattern of multiple shifts that only repeats itself monthly or quarterly.

Each pattern contains an ordered list of repeating shifts that employees are scheduled work. The pattern must include all the shifts and days off that make up a complete, repeating cycle. When an employee works the last defined shift of the pattern, their next day begins again at the first shift in the pattern.

Since a shift pattern does not associate a shift with a particular day of the week (that is, Day 1 does not represent Sunday), you must use a reference point to define a physical date that corresponds to Day 1 in the shift pattern. From this reference point, any other position in the pattern, or offset, can be calculated.

To determine what shift an employee works on a given day, continue the pattern forward (or backward), repeating as necessary.

Segment of time associated to an activity attached to the start and/or end of a shift; this is often referred to as "transition activities".

Specific activities used to distinguish this offset (transition) period of an employee's shift from the other part of their shift. This offset (transition) activity can only be at the start or the end of a shift. A shift offset activity is similar to current MVS activities, in that it can either be working or non-working, and either paid or unpaid.

Staffing requirements are the number of people needed for a particular job, based on predicted demand. Using the staffing requirements, the scheduler can begin to create/manage employee schedules by searching for qualified and available employees to fulfill the demand.

The Summary Statistics contain real-time statistics for the current schedule period and is updated as edits to the schedule are made.

A shift swap occurs when the supervisor exchanges two scheduled employees’ shifts. The shifts can be of different lengths, different days, and even different jobs, as long as both employees are eligible and available to work each other’s shifts.

A group of employees used to determine security permissions in the system. The initial setup of the Team Security model (creating users, employees, roles, and teams) must be performed through the desktop application. However, the management of Team Security users, employees, and teams can be performed using the Security Editor.

This is the employee’s alternate or temporary team. Employees can be “loaned” to another team, besides their home team, to cover a shift only they have the correct skill set to perform.

An unassigned employee is one that is scheduled to work but has not yet been assigned to a specific job. Unassigned shifts are typically applied using shift patterns.

An unstaffed shift is one that has not yet been filled with an eligible employee. Most unstaffed shifts are generated based on the staffing requirements by using the Batch Process for Unstaffed Shifts, or the Create/Update Unstaffed Shifts function from the Staffing Requirements screen. An unstaffed shift can be filled either automatically (using the Auto-assign process) or manually, where the eligible employee is determined by the default find/sort configuration criteria. If set up by the system administrator, the supervisor can change these criteria to broaden or narrow the search’s scope.

Unstaffed shifts can also be created manually from within the MVS.