Using the Honor Employee Fixed Status rule with other rules

When using the Honor Employee Fixed Status rule, the optimizer attempts to assign the fixed shifts to employees regardless of the other rules selected. Rules that are set as constraints may be broken due to the fixed shifts. For example, an employee would be assigned to their fixed shifts even if they exceed the maximum number of hours allowed in a schedule period. If an employee's fixed shifts violate a hard constraint rule, the optimizer fails to create a schedule. This happens because the fixed shifts make it impossible for the optimizer to find a schedule solution that satisfies the rule.

The Honor Employee Fixed Status rule causes specific outcomes when used with these other rules:

Fixed shifts with the Honor Availability rule

Fixed shifts are assigned to employees even if the employee is unavailable during the time of the fixed shifts.

Fixed shifts with the Maximum Schedule Budget rule

Care should be taken when designing schedules with fixed shifts that must work within a budget. The optimizer always assigns fixed shifts, and the cost of fixed shifts are counted towards the schedule budget. Each fixed shift reduces the amount of budget available to generate shifts. Fixed shifts are assigned even if the combined cost of the fixed shifts is higher than the budget. This causes schedule creation to fail when the Maximum Schedule Budget rule is used as a hard constraint.