Shift schedules

Here you can create and manage shift schedules. Each shift schedule can contain any number of shifts with any number of participants. The shift schedules themselves can be active permanently or alternate on a weekly basis. In the event of an alarm, only the participants assigned to an active shift are alerted.

If none of the shift schedules are active at a given time, all participants are released for alerting again.

The times defined within a shift (e.g. 09:00 to 17:00) are always processed using the current time zone of the organisation (default: "Europe/Berlin").

Creating a new shift schedule

To create a new shift schedule, click on the CREATE SHIFT SCHEDULE button under Configuration > Shift schedules.

Assign an individual name for the entire shift schedule here. A shift schedule can contain several shifts that can be active at individual times.

Each individual shift is given a name, a colour and participants belonging to this shift for configuration purposes. A start date is used to configure when a shift schedule should be active. Here you can select the Monday of the current week, for example. The shift length specifies the number of weeks a shift should run for. If you enter 2 weeks here, for example, you can configure the next 14 days under Select weekdays. Your shift is then repeated every 14 days with the weekdays.

Under Start time and End time, enter the desired start and end time. These times are processed in the time zone of your organisation (default: "Europe/Berlin"). You or an organisation administrator can change this in the organisation settings.

Escalations

For later use within an alarm in escalation mode or full escalation, you can link several shift schedules together in the Escalations tab and put them in the desired order.

In an alarm in escalation mode, the participants in the first shift schedule, and therefore the first escalation level, are initially used as the set of possible participants for the available positions. If this set is exhausted and positions in the alarm are still unfilled, the set of possible participants is supplemented by the participants from the second shift schedule, and therefore the second escalation level. This procedure is repeated until all positions are filled or no more participants are available.

In an alarm in Full escalation mode, all participants in the first shift schedule, and therefore the first escalation level, are alerted immediately if they are eligible for the available positions. After the specified waiting time has elapsed, the system checks whether any positions in the alarm are still unoccupied. If this is the case, all participants in the second shift schedule, and therefore the second escalation level, are also alerted. This procedure is repeated until all positions are occupied or no more participants are available.

Created escalations can only be used in the Full escalation if you activate the corresponding option and enter valid waiting times. However, escalations created for full escalation can also be used in escalation mode. In this case, the defined waiting times are ignored.

Create escalation

To do this, select Create escalation and give the model a unique name. Then drag the respective shift schedules from the left-hand side to the right-hand side and arrange them in the desired order. You can remove selected shift schedules from the escalation in the same way.

To make it easier to distinguish between the shift schedules, you will see a selection of the assigned participants directly below the name of the shift schedule.

If you are satisfied with the selection and sequence of the escalation, save the escalation using the CREATE button and return to the overview.

Shift groups

Shift groups can be used to organise individual participants into predefined groups. This is particularly helpful if you use several shift schedules in which the same participants should always be stored. Instead of the individual participants, you add the shift group to the shift schedules. This means that the participants only need to be maintained once in the shift group. Changes to the shift group automatically affect all shift schedules in which the shift group is used.

In addition to individual participants, labels can also be added to a shift group. This has the advantage that new participants who are assigned the corresponding label are also automatically added to the shift group.

If a shift group is already being used in a shift, it cannot be deleted, as otherwise the shift schedule may not have any participants and would no longer work.

Updated on: 08/08/2024