Template Planning is a feature designed to streamline scheduling and planning for planning managers. This guide will help you understand and utilize this feature effectively within our system 💪
Key Concepts:
Template Mode: A dedicated stage for template planning. Often used for creating base plans for your employees, which can then later be customized to fit all your unique needs, before publishing the schedule towards the employees.
Zone View: A unique perspective for managing schedules.
1. Accessing Template Planning
Start a New Planning Period: Navigate to ‘Plan New Period’ and select ‘New Plan’ to enter Template Mode.
Use an Existing Plan: Choose an existing plan and enter Template Mode via the eye-icon (👁️).
Navigate to Unplanned Period: Use the date picker or arrows to move to an unplanned period and be prompted to start a new plan or enter Template Mode directly.
2. Template Planning FeaturesTemplate Mode Interface
Isolated Stage: Focus solely on template planning without distractions.
Easy Exit: Close the page to return to your original entry point.
Filter option: to focus on planning for specific zones or change the order of them.
3. Template Actions
Save: Assign a name and save your template. Use the ‘default template’ for recurring use.
Clear: Remove all shifts to start from scratch.
Load: Bring in previously saved templates.
Edit: Make changes to loaded templates.
4. Zone-Based View
Plan using both assigned and unassigned shifts.
Accommodate a 2-week scheduling period.
Note: Template length is fixed at 2 weeks and is unchangeable in this version.
5. Rolling Out the Template When you’re ready to apply your template to the actual schedule (unpublished):
Select the Template: Choose from saved templates.
Define Period: Specify the start and end dates for rolling out.
Settings: Decide if the template should add to or replace the existing schedule.
Employee Selection: Choose which employees the template applies to.
Shift Types and Zones: Select relevant shift types and zones.
Rolling out over existing absences
Templates cannot overwrite days that already have a recorded absence. If you need to roll out a template over a period that contains absences, remove the absences first and then proceed with the rollout.
Deselected employees during rollout
If you deselect an employee during the rollout process, their existing shifts remain unchanged. Only the selected employees will have the template applied.
Before overwriting an existing schedule
If you are rolling out a new template over an existing published schedule, it is recommended to take a screenshot of the current schedule first, so you have a record of it before it is overwritten.
Rolling out to a specific employee only
When rolling out a template, click Advanced criteria to filter the rollout by employee, shift type, or zone. Under Advanced criteria you can select specific employees, shift types, and zones so the rollout only applies to them rather than the whole department.
6. Releasing Schedule
Releasing a schedule for one employee only
It is possible to release a schedule for a single employee while leaving others unreleased. If a schedule is only partially released, this is shown as a blue "Partially released" status in the top right corner of the schedule.
Why a schedule won't release
A schedule cannot be released if there is a blocking violation anywhere in the period — for example, an employee exceeding legal hour limits, shown in red. This blocks release for everyone in the department, not just the employee with the violation. Identify and resolve the red violation before attempting to release again.
7. Additional Considerations
Conflicts and Compliance: The first version does not handle compliance checks during rollout, but we do make you aware of potential conflicts.
Feature: This feature will disable the opportunity to work with employee focused template planning. Later on it will become possible to work with both zone and employee view in template, but not for this version.
Template Length: Fixed at 2 weeks, with future plans to align user and zone view settings.
Adjusting Template Length: If you create a longer template than intended, adjust its settings and re-roll out using the 'Overwrite existing schedule' option to correct mismatches.
Does rolling out a new template delete planned vacation? No — when you overwrite a schedule period with a new template, any planned vacation or absence on employees remains in place. Rolling out a template never deletes vacation.
Summary Template Planning in Zone View is designed to make your scheduling tasks simpler and more efficient. By following these guidelines, you can make the most of this feature to enhance your planning workflow 🙌
Tips and Troubleshooting Scenarios
Testing Templates Privately: Apply templates to unpublished periods to ensure changes are hidden from employees during testing.
Changing the order of the weeks in a template
A template covers two weeks, and you can swap which week comes first.
In Template Mode, click the button next to Load.
Drag the weeks into the order you want.
Roll the template out again, using Overwrite existing schedule if the period is already planned.
In the previous schedule version these were referred to as odd and even weeks. Removing Scheduled Shifts: To accept availability for periods like an entire month, clear all shifts first, then roll out a new template if needed.
More questions? Get in touch with us on the chat 😊
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