Schedule form

There are several ways that you can open this form:

To open the form and automatically generate shifts for the current schedule:

select Generate shifts on the HOME form's To do list

To open the form without automatically generating shifts:

select the FORM | SCHEDULE option on the menu
select Schedule option on the Main group on the PLACES panel, or
select Review and edit schedule on the To do list

When the form opens, if you have already generated shifts the form will open filled in. If you have not yet generated shifts a message will appear on the screen "No schedule has been generated for the week. Click Generate Shifts button to begin."

To generate shifts, select the toolbar option Generate schedule. In the dialogue box that appears choose your Shift selection and then press OK to generate shifts. ESP reports its progress as it designs and fills shifts for the week. Once complete, ESP will display the schedule on screen, ready for reviewing and editing.

Purpose of the Schedule form

The Schedule form allows you to review and edit your schedule on screen before you print and post it.

This is a powerful feature of ESP; you can change shift times, stations, and employee assignments; you can add new shifts and remove unwanted ones; and you can alter the schedule in almost any way. The information you need to edit your schedule is available right on this screen.

If you are spending more than 45 minutes editing a single site each week, it is an indication that you need to examine your chart set-up for changes that would allow ESP to automatically generate a more workable schedule.

The Shifts section

The shifts area displays shifts for the scheduling week that you are viewing. You have three options for displaying this area; select your preference from the toolbar option View:

By Day
By employee
Errors

View shifts by day

The By day view displays your schedule for each day of the week on a single form, grouped by station. You can navigate through the days of the week using the day tabs at the top of the form.

Details about each shift are displayed on the left side of the form with a graphical display of the shift appearing on the right side. The graphical display lines are color coded so that you can quickly identify shifts that require attention:

Blue: indicates valid shifts; those without errors.
Red: indicates shifts with errors. The reason for the error will appear in the Status box located at the bottom of the PLACES panel.
Dark red: indicates a shift that contains a labor violation. You can refer to the Shift status box for more detail. If your schedule contains any violations, printing of the final schedule will be disabled, so you must correct the error in order to print the schedule. See the Settings chapter to learn how to designate labor rules that are allowed to be manually overridden on the PREFERENCES form.
Grey: indicates an unscheduled or unfilled shift. This is a shift that ESP was unable to find a qualified, available employee to fill the shift. You can manually re-arrange (edit) shift assignments to fill the shift.

If you schedule your employees for more than one location, or department, a tab for each location will appear at the top of the screen. Use the tabs to easily move between locations.

View shifts by employee

The By employee view displays the same information as the By day option except that no line bar appears. This option displays a weekly view of all shifts alphabetically by employee. As this view combines all the shifts for the week, a schedule that includes more than one department will have a column called, Department, added in the Shifts area that identifies which location the shift will be worked at.

This view allows you to quickly review each employee's shifts and find any shifts containing errors.

View Errors in schedule

The Errors view displays only shifts during the current schedule week that has an error or violation associated with it. The shifts area will be blank if the current schedule has no shifts with errors. The shifts with errors are displayed by employee and allow you to quickly identify and correct shifts with problems.

As you highlight each shift, an explanation of the error will appear in the status box on the left. You can click on the Details... bar at the top of the status box to open the Employee Summary. The summary includes more detail on the cause of the error.

Fields in the shifts area

For all views the following fields are displayed:

Employee: indicates the name of the employee assigned to the shift. If a shift is not assigned *Unassigned* will be displayed in this field, allowing you to easily identify shifts that need to be filled.
Day: indicates the day that the shift is assigned to.
Start: indicates the time that the shift begins.
Finish: indicates the time that the shift ends.
Station: indicates the station(s) that make up the shift. Although most shifts will be composed of a single station, some multi-station shifts may be necessary. To view a shift that is made up of multiple stations or to add a station to someone already scheduled, select the additional (...) button in the station field. This opens an expanded view of the shift showing details on when each station assignment begins and ends.

When viewing the shifts area By employee or shifts with Errors when scheduling more than one location, a Department field will be displayed that indicates the location that the employee is working at during the shift.

Totals section

The Totals area located above the Shifts area, displays a comparison of projected versus actual labor for your schedule.

There are four rows of information; the top row displays your projected volume; the second row displays the total +/- labor for each hour; the third row displays the station +/- labor; and the final row provides the crew to management ratio for each hour. This information is live and updates automatically as you edit the schedule, which allows you to keep track of the effect that your changes make to your labor cost.

The +/- values are interpreted as follows:

a zero indicates that you are on target; the labor scheduled is the same as requested on the Positioning Guide.
a positive number indicates that you are over the requested labor on the Positioning Guide by that number.
a negative number indicates that you are under the requested labor on the Positioning Guide by that number.

For more detailed information on any row, expand it using the plus(+) sign. This will display the projected and actual amounts for each hour along with the variance.

When viewing your schedule Shifts by day, this totals area displays a comparison of the projected to actual hourly labor for each hour of the day and a projected to actual station labor for each hour of the day for the station that your cursor is on.

When viewing your schedule Shifts by employee, this totals area displays a comparison of projected to actual daily labor for each day of the week and projected to actual station labor for each day of the week for the station that your cursor is on.

Shift status

When the schedule form is open, a Status box will appear at the top of the PLACES panel. The status box displays information about the shift that your cursor is on and can help you determine the cause of any potential problems or errors.

To help you further, the Click here for details link at the top of the status box to open an Employee summary window with detailed information about the assigned person.

The information on the Employee summary screen is the same information that you have setup on the employee's information screen. This information can help you understand why a person may or may not be a good choice to fill a shift or determine why a shift may have created a violation. This information is live and will be updated immediately to reflect the changes you make on the editing screen.

The fields displayed are:

the Hours – Allowed field shows the employee’s minimum and maximum number of hours allowed to work in a week.
the Hours – Actual field displays the actual number of hours the employee is scheduled for the week.
the Shifts – Shift row shows a comparison of the actual number of days the employee was scheduled to the number of days the employee is allowed to work broken down by week, weekends, total, and in a row.
the Shifts – Closes row shows a comparison of the actual number of closes the employee was scheduled to the number of closes the employee is allowed to work broken down by week, weekends, total, and in a row.
the Availability section shows what the employee was Available to work for the week compared to what was actually Assigned.
the Qualification section shows each Station the employee is qualified to work, their rating on each station, and if there are any restrictions for this person on each station.
the Shift status box at the bottom displays the explanation for why the shift has an error and/or violation associated with it. For shifts without errors the status will display Valid shift assignment.

Editing your schedule on screen

One of the most powerful features of ESP is the ability to view and change the schedule on screen. You may change shift times, stations, and employee assignments. You can add new shifts and remove unwanted ones; you can alter the schedule in almost any way. However, if you spend a great deal of time editing, you should examine your chart setup for changes to allow ESP to automatically generate a more workable schedule.

As a guideline, if you spend more than 45 minutes editing a single location each week then you should examine your data's setup for improvements to help you generate a schedule closer to the one you post.

To edit information on the schedule screen select the field that you wish to change. Selecting most fields will activate a drop down list of all possible choices; allowing you to select from appropriate options.

If you simply want to scroll through the schedule be sure to click on the actual line in the grid areas rather than on any of the fields. Clicking on a field activates that field so moving the wheel on your mouse will change the field. By selecting the line, your mouse wheel will scroll through the schedule.

When you select the employee field you will also see an additional (...) button to the right of the employee's name. This opens a list of employees that includes information about each employee's assigned shifts to help you determine the best person to fill an unscheduled shift or replace someone already scheduled. You can sort the list by any of the columns by simply clicking on the column name. In most cases you will want to sort it by the Errors column so that you have the best choices at the top of your list.

The information displayed includes:

a comparison of each person's scheduled to actual hours, days, and closes;
a rating to indicate how good a fit each person is to cover the shift; the higher the number the better choice the person is to fill the shift;
the employee's availability for the day;
whether or not the employee is qualified to work the station;
a zero in the Errors field means that the employee can be assigned to the shift without breaking any of the rules listed on the PREFERENCES form. Essentially, the existence of an error indicates that a basic scheduling rule has been broken (employee schedule over maximum employee hours, etc); and
a zero in the Violations field means that the employee can be assigned the shift without breaking any of the unchecked rules on the PREFERFENCES form. Violations are more severe than errors in that you have indicated on the PREFERENCES form that you are not allowed to override these rules.

When you choose an employee on the list, the Status box at the top of the PLACES panel will display information about that selected employee, including any errors that would occur if you assign the shift to that person. As you scroll through the list, the information in the Status box changes to display the selected employee's information.

ESP has added features to make selecting people on the list easier:

Sorting: When you open the choose employee list your cursor will be on the person already selected. To help select the best person to fill the shift, you can sort the list by any column. To resort the list click on the heading for the column you wish to sort by and the entries will be resorted by that column.
Employee searching: if you know the name of the employee that you want to fill the shift, use the search feature to quickly move to that person. Simply type the employee's first initial and ESP will move down the list to display the first name that begins with that initial. If there are a number of people whose name begins with that letter and you can't see the person you wish to use, type the second letter to move further down the list; you can continue typing letters until you see the name you wish to select.

To fill the shift with the selected employee, press the OK button. To return to the schedule form without changing the person scheduled press the CANCEL button. You can leave the employee list on the screen at all times and move it anywhere you like by simply dragging it and sizing it to your preference. To close the list, click the close button on the top right corner.

In addition to editing the employee, you can change the times and station of the shift. When you select the Station field, you can choose from a drop-down list of stations, or enter a multi-segment shift by pressing the additional (...) button. Using a multi-segment shift allows you to assign an employee to work two or more stations in a single shift.

Selecting the (...) button in the Station field will open the multi-segment shift window. Use this information to edit a shift that is made up of more than one station or to add another station to a shift already scheduled. After you make your changes, select the OK button to save them or choose CANCEL to return to the schedule form without saving the changes.

On either the Schedule form or the Edit shift segments form you can modify information the same way:

To Add a new entry, click in the top row labeled Click here to add a new row and enter the information under each column.
Save the changes by moving off the row or by clicking the button at the bottom of the screen.
To Change an entry, click inside the field that you want to change, make your change, and then save it by moving off the row or by clicking the button at the bottom of the screen.
To Remove an entry, click inside the row that you want removed and then click the button at the bottom of the screen.
To Cancel a change before it has been saved, click on the button at the bottom of the screen.

Toolbar options

The options on the Schedule form's toolbar are:

View: you can select to view the shifts by day, by employee, or by errors. The By employee option allows you to see each employee's shift assignment for the entire week. The By day option provides an overview of shifts for each day organized by station and includes each shift drawn on a line bar view. The By errors option displays only shifts with errors or violations.
Statistics: opens a window that displays a labor summary, including daily and weekly labor cost, labor percent, hours, and sales and transaction counts per man hour. This information is live and updated as you edit the schedule, which will help you keep track of the effect that your editing changes are having on your labor cost.
Expand/Contract all: this option will open or hide all of the entries on the screen at once. Alternatively you may expand or contract the entries for an individual employee or station by using the +/- sign beside the group's name.
Generate schedule: this option can be used to generate shifts at any time during the scheduling process. Be careful, however, as selecting this option will regenerate all shifts and will erase any edited changes you have made.

Scheduling multiple sites

If you schedule more than one location, a tab will be displayed above the day tabs when viewing shifts By day and a column will appear in the shifts section when viewing shifts By employee or by Errors. This allows you to easily identify the department where the shift is assigned to.

Return to original page: Online help, The Schedule form