Getting Started

Calendar

A Calendar is the core concept in ShiftExec. We use Calendars to organize and group together employees, managers, permissions, settings and more. Calendars can be used to represent any category to that you need to group your work schedule. The goal of categorizing shifts and time off with calendars 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.

Types Of Calendars

ShiftExec comes with the following types of calendars:

• Shift – calendars of this type are designed to schedule work shifts of your employees. You may use them to represent locations, positions, departments, skills, or anything else.
• Time Off – calendars of this type are used to manage various kinds of time off for your employees like vacation, holiday, sick leave, etc.

Example Calendars

In a simple example of a small restaurant staff scheduling system we could create the following calendars:

• Barista Shift – for staff members who can work as a barista.
• Waiter Shift – for staff members who can work as a waiter.
• Cook Shift – for staff members who can work as a cook.
• Sick Leave Time Off – for all staff members to manage their sick leaves.
• Vacation Time Off – for all staff members to manage their vacations and holidays.

We can assign employees to one or more calendars. For example, James can be linked to Barista and Waiter Shift calendars, and to Sick Leave and Vacation Time Off calendars. So when we are going to schedule some Barista calendar shifts, we'll be able to assign James to these shifts. But James won't be available for the Cook calendar shifts.

Calendar Relations

Setting up your calendars is the most important configuration step in ShiftExec. Furthermore, later on calendars should be related with other entities in ShiftExec such as Activities, Employees, Managers. Also each calendar has its own set of permissions.

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 several calendars. You can link a user as employee to a calendar either from the user detail page, or from the calendar detail page.

Employee Relations

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

Activity

Activities are used for identifying the different types and times of shifts, such as part-time, full-time, day, night, or weekend shifts, and grouping them accordingly. For Time Off calendars an Activity can represent various time and duration options for time off like Full Day Off or Half Day Off. Usually we suggest to use Activities to represent shift types for Shift calendars and time for Time Off calendars.

Activity Time and Duration

An Activity in ShiftExec may have one of the following time or duration options:

• Fixed Time – this activity has fixed start and end times, for example from 10am to 2pm. When scheduling a shift of this activity, you will need to choose the shift date only, the shift time will be set accordingly to the activity setting.
• Fixed Duration – the activity with fixed duration, for example 4 hours. When scheduling a shift of this activity, you will need to choose the shift date and start time, the shift end time will be set accordingly to the activity setting.
• Custom Time – the activity has no predefined time or duration. When scheduling a shift of this activity, you will be able to choose the shift date and any start and end time for each shift.
• Multiple Days – such activities are designed primarily for time off that span multiple days like vacation or sick leave. You can define minimum and maximum duration in days. When creating a time off of this activity, you will need to choose the start date, then the end date within the min/max duration limit.

Example Activities

In our simple example of a small restaurant staff scheduling system we would create the following activities:

• Morning Shift (10am - 2pm) – for Shift calendars.
• Afternoon Shift (2pm - 6pm) – for Shift calendars.
• Full Day Shift (10am - 6pm) – for Shift calendars.
• Day Off (1 day) – for Time Off calendars.
• Long Time Off (7 - 14 days) – for Time Off calendars.

Activity Relations

Each activity should be linked to at least one Calendar.

Other Activity Relations

How to relate a certain activity to a certain employee? As with almost everything in ShiftExec, we need calendars for that. We link employees to calendars, and we link activities to calendars. Then an employee is available to all the activities that are linked to the employee's calendars.

Shift

A Shift is an assignment of an Employee to an Activity in a Calendar. To create a shift, we must first select a calendar, then we will be able to select an activity and one or several employees from those linked to the selected calendar. Also, as each calendar features its own settings and permissions, various actions and options will be available for the shift depending on the calendar settings.

Time Off

Technically a Time Off is a shift in calendars of the Time Off type. So the same flexible configuration settings available for shifts thanks to calendar options are available to time off too.