Defining Staffing Requirements

When creating staffing requirements for the same job/team/time, avoid ranking attributes having a blank (wildcard) value higher in the list of matching criteria higher than attributes having a specific value.

For example, the default attribute sort order is Activity, Docket, Project and, thus, staffing requirements with a defined Docket attribute should avoid having Activity field blank to avoid the limitations of the Create Unstaffed Shifts process’ matching algorithm. For more information, see Limitations of the Matching Algorithm.

To add a staffing requirement for a team for a specific schedule period:

  1. Select Scheduling > Multi-view Scheduler > Advanced Settings > Staffing Requirements.
    With a schedule already loaded, you can use the Staffing Requirements quick link to open the Staffing Requirements page in a secondary window.
  2. Select the team for which you want to add staffing requirements using the Team lookup.

    You can only add and edit requirements for teams you have permission to view.

  3. Select a date within the schedule period for which you want to add the staffing requirements using the Period calendar.
  4. Click Go.

    The Staffing Requirements Edit page is displayed.

    To change to the next or previous period, you can use the Next or the Prev buttons at the top of the page and the new period date range is displayed in the title bar.

  5. To use the previous period’s staffing requirements as a starting point for setting up new staffing requirements:
    1. Select Copy previous from the drop-down list.
    2. Click Go.
    Any existing staffing requirements are replaced with those from the previous period specified.
  6. To update the staffing requirements by census:
    Census data must exist for the team and date range in order for Update from Census to be available on the Staffing Requirements page.
    1. Select Update by census from the drop-down list. For more information, see Defining Census Teams and Requirements.
    2. Click Go.
    Any existing staffing requirements are replaced with ones derived from the census data.
  7. To view any current staffing requirements, click Staffing Requirements at the top of the page.
    To view current staffing requirements for individual day parts, click the day part name.
  8. Click Add Row to add a new requirement details row to the day part.
  9. The following requirement details can be added:

    If you do not enter a value for a particular field, <blank> will be displayed, which means that it can be matched with any value.

    Priority
    Type a number to prioritize how staffing requirements are filled.
    Job
    Select the job requirement using the lookup. Only employees with this job in their profile can be used to fill this requirement.
    Skill
    Select the skill requirement using the lookup. Only employees with this skill in their profile can be used to fill this requirement.
    Skill Level
    If it applies, you can type a skill level to apply to the Skill field.
    Activity
    Select the activity the employee will perform using the lookup. For example, when you are defining an on-call staffing requirement, you need to specify an on-call activity.
    Project
    Select the project metric using the lookup.
    Docket
    Select the docket metric using the lookup.
    Department
    Select the department metric using the lookup.
    Shift Offset Before
    Type the time, in minutes, of the shift offset activity for the start of the shift. If the field is grayed out, the job/team has no pre-defined shift offsets. If the activity is On Call, the offsets will also be grayed out.
    Shift Offset After
    Type the time, in minutes, of the shift offset activity for the end of the shift. If the field is grayed out, the job/team has no pre-defined shift offsets. If the activity is On Call, the offsets will also be grayed out.
  10. Specify how many employees are required on each day of the schedule period for the requirement. You can either enter a value at the day part level (with the interval levels collapsed below it) and any value entered will be extrapolated to the interval levels, or you can expand the intervals and individually specify values for each interval, in which case the intervals are averaged to determine the day part level value (that is, values of 2, 2 and 4 for intervals would average out to a day part value of 2.7).
    When the interval levels are expanded, the day part level becomes read-only.
  11. Click Submit to save the staffing requirements.
To delete any job details or job times, select the trashcan check box beside the item to be deleted and click Submit.