Generate, publish and undo

The next step card

Editors see one green card at the top of the roster with the one thing to do next. It shows one of these:

Generate

Generate builds a legal roster for the whole period in seconds. It keeps to the law and your company rules, and it never breaks a hard budget. Choose what matters most in Optimise for:

• Balanced: the default, a bit of everything.
• Lowest cost
• Fairest: nights and weekends shared evenly.
• Happiest team: wishes first.
• Most stable: as few changes as possible.
• Same faces: the same people on the same shifts.

Press Generate roster on the card, or later Generate again in the ⋯ menu. When it is done, a note says how many shifts it filled and how many are still open. With a budget, it also says if the roster is within it. You can undo a generate in one step.

Publish

Publishing sends the roster to your team. People with shifts get a notification, if they have turned them on. Every publish keeps a version, so you can compare later.

• Press Publish on the next step card, or Publish changes in the header.
• Publish changes is greyed out while a legal rule is broken. Hover it to read Fix the rule breaks first.
• If someone else changed the roster while you were looking, eTime asks you to check the latest version and publish again.

Undo

The round arrow in the header is Undo. It takes back your last change: an assignment, a move or swap, adding someone in an extra place, a Generate, a suggested fix, a rotation or a version restore. Press it again to go further back, up to about 30 steps.

• Undo covers the changes you made in this browser, since you opened the roster.
• There is no redo.
• Offers, sick reports and shift type changes aren't undone this way.
• In What if, Undo steps back through your tried changes.

Suggested fixes and auto-fill

When a shift in the next 7 days is open, or breaks a rule, a bar under the status line suggests a fix. Press Apply to use it, or More ideas to see other fixes for each problem. Show jumps to the shift.

Owners and admins can tick Fill open shifts automatically (when it costs nothing extra and breaks no rule). Then, when a shift opens up, for example after a sick report, eTime fills it on its own when it can do that at no extra cost. The bar tells you what it did: eTime filled … on its own, at no extra cost. This setting is for the whole workplace.

Versions

Open Versions from the ⋯ menu. Each publish is listed as Version 1, Version 2 and so on. The one your team has is marked Live.

• Choose two versions in Compare and With. You see the difference in cost, rule breaks, open shifts and fairness (Fairer, Less fair or Same).
• A table lists each shift that was Moved, Added or Removed.
• Editors can Restore an earlier version. Changes that would break a rule now are left out. Undo takes a restore back.

Plan the next period

When the latest period is published and ends within 14 days, the card says Plan the next period. Start the next period makes a new period of the same length, starting the day after, with the same shifts and nobody on them yet. Then generate it. You can also start it from the ⋯ menu.

Budget

Owners, admins and managers can set a budget for the period from the ⋯ menu or on Costs. A soft budget: Generate tries to stay under it and still fills every shift it can. A hard budget: Generate never goes over it, even if some shifts stay open. See Costs and payroll.