Getting Started

Business Categories and Terms

ShiftExec features a flexible concept of Business Terms and Categories which is a way of organizing and grouping together employees, managers, permissions, settings and more. Categories can be used to group terms which represent any property that you need to describe your work schedule. The goal of categorizing work with categories and terms is to ensure that every employee is assigned a suitable schedule that fits their availability and skillset. Through proper categorization, businesses can optimize their scheduling process, avoid mismatching skillsets, and improve overall productivity.

Example Categories and Terms

In a simple example of a staff scheduling system for a small restaurant chain we can create the following structure of business categories and terms:

• Category Position – to contain terms that define the position for shifts.
  • Term Barista – for staff members who can work as a barista.
  • Term Waiter – for staff members who can work as a waiter.
  • Term Cook – for staff members who can work as a cook.
• Category Location – to contain terms to define the physical location where shifts are performed.
  • Term 15 Maple St. – for our first venue.
  • Term 201 Main St. – for our second venue.

Term Features and Relations

Setting up your business categories and terms is the most important configuration step in ShiftExec. Furthermore, later on your terms should be related with other entities in ShiftExec such as Employees.

We can assign employees to one or more combination of business terms. For example, James can be linked to Barista and Waiter position in 15 Maple St. location. So when we are going to schedule some Barista shifts in 15 Maple St., we'll be able to assign James to these shifts. But James won't be available for the Cook position shifts or for shifts in 201 Main St. location.

Employee

An Employee is a user (person) who is available for shift assignments or can be scheduled for time off. To make a user employee you will need to link this user as employee to one or more combination of business terms. You can link a user as employee to terms either from the user detail page, or from the business term detail page.

Employee Relations

To make a user employee they should be linked to at least one Term as Employee.

Shift

A Shift is an assignment of an Employee to set of Terms with a start and end time. To create a shift, first we must select a set of terms, then we will be able to choose an employee who can perform the work given the selected set of terms. Also, as each set of terms features its own settings and permissions, various actions and options will be available for the shift depending on the terms.

For example, we can create the following shift:

• Position Barista
• Location 201 Main St.
• Shift Type Evening Shift

Time Off

Time Off is a block of unavailable time with start and end time. We can create a time off for an individual employee, or a time off that will be applied to all employees at once (Company Time off). Check out this page to learn more about time off management in ShiftExec.

About ShiftExec

Lightweight, easy to use yet very flexible online staff scheduling software to help you schedule employees and shifts anywhere at anytime online from your own website with no monthly fees. Get started with the free ShiftExec version and enjoy the beautiful add-ons of ShiftExec Pro.