Work on the schedule

The schedule is the main Planning screen. This page is for planners and project managers who plan their own projects. Employees without planner rights see the same screen read-only, with a card that lets them take or give back shifts.

Open the schedule#

Open Planning → Schedule and choose how to group the rows:

The same data is also available as a list, calendar, kanban, pivot and graph, with the view buttons at the top right. By default the schedule shows upcoming shifts for the current week.

[planning-schedule-week]

Move around in time#

• The arrows at the left of Today go to the previous and next period; Today goes back to now.
• The date box jumps to any date.
• Day, Week, Month and Year change the scale. In Week and Month each shift is drawn across its days like a rota; in Day it is drawn at its real hours.
• Ctrl and the mouse wheel zoom; the plain wheel scrolls the rows.
• The switch Only people with shifts hides people who have no shift in the period. Your choice is remembered in the browser.

The search box filters by Resource, Role, Department and Note (and by Project, Task, Sales Order, Customer or Skill when those bridges are installed). The rows follow the same filters, so people without shifts also disappear when you filter by role or department.

Read the rows and bars#

• Open Shifts is the first row. It collects shifts with nobody assigned.
• At the left of each person is a coloured dot and the figure planned / available h for the period shown: grey is spare capacity, green is busy, yellow is overloaded, and red means the person has a conflict. Materials show no colour.
• A thin strip under each day repeats the same colours for that day.
• Light shading shows non-working time (only when the period shown is 45 days or shorter). Darker shading shows approved time off and public holidays. Hovering over shaded time says what it is: "Outside working hours", "Public holiday: ..." or the description of the time-off entry. People who are not planners (and not HR officers) read only "Time off".
• The Total row at the bottom shows allocated hours for all rows, per day (per week when you view a long period).

A bar shows the role and the time, and the project when there is one. How to read a bar:

Look at a shift#

Hover over a bar for about half a second, or click it, to open its card.

[planning-shift-card]

The card shows the person (or "Open Shift"), the role, the state (Draft, Published or Forecast), the time, any warnings, the allocated time and, when relevant, the break, shift manager, project, task, sales order, skills, attendance and effective time. The buttons depend on your rights:

• Planners: Edit, Publish (when there is something to publish), Unassign, Duplicate, Split, Approve Change and Delete.
• Everyone else: View, Assign to Me, I Take It, Ask to Switch and I Am Unavailable, only those that apply to that shift.

Add a shift#

Point at an empty day in a row and press the + that appears, or double-click the empty day, or press New. See Create a shift.

Move a shift by dragging#

1. Drag the bar to another day, hour or row. In Week and Month it moves by whole days and keeps its times.
2. While you drag, rows of people who should not get the shift turn yellow: they lack the role, are busy then, have time off, lack a skill or are outside their contract.
3. Drop it. If the drop has a problem, a dialog says "Before you drop this shift here:" and lists it. Press Assign anyway to go on or Cancel.
4. If the shift is already published, the dialog asks: "This shift is published. Tell the employee now?" Choose Notify now (publish again and email) or Later (mark as To Publish Again). Tick Don't ask again this session to keep the answer until you reload.
5. A message says "Shift moved to ..." and offers Undo for eight seconds.

Moving a shift never changes its role, even to a person who lacks it: the wrong role is flagged instead. Planners can only drag shifts they are allowed to plan.

Copy a shift#

Hold Alt (Option on a Mac) while you drag. The original stays; a copy is created as a draft in the new place. If the person is already busy, nothing is copied and you see "Not copied: Name already has a shift at that time."

Select several shifts#

Hold Ctrl (or Shift) and click bars. A bar appears: "n selected", with Publish, Unassign, Move by…, Assign to…, Delete and Clear selection.

• Move by… asks for Hours, Minutes and Direction (Later or Earlier).
• Assign to… asks "Give n shifts to" a person. Shifts that would clash with that person's other shifts are left as they are.
• A message says how many shifts changed and lists the ones that were not changed with the reason, for example "now overlaps another shift" or "a forecast needs a person".

Delete a shift#

Choose Delete on the card, press Delete on the keyboard, or select shifts and press Delete. Confirm "Delete this shift?" The message that follows offers Undo, which brings the shift back as it was.

Undo#

Moves, copies, bulk changes and deletions offer Undo in the message for eight seconds. Undo puts the shifts back as they were, and recreates deleted shifts. After the message goes, use the shift's history in the chatter.

Use the keyboard#

Click the schedule, or press Tab until it is selected, then:

Plan work that has no shift yet: the To plan panel#

Press To plan (planners). A panel lists work waiting for someone in the period: open shifts and, with the bridges installed, project tasks and sales order lines that still have hours to plan. Use the search box to narrow it.

• Drag an open shift onto a person's row to give it to them at that time, or press Open to edit it.
• Drag a task or an order line onto a person to open the Plan dialog, or press Plan…. See Plan project tasks and Plan sold services.
• If nothing is waiting, the panel says "Nothing waiting in this period."

[planning-schedule-to-plan]

The Plan menu and the other header buttons#

Project managers who are not Planning Administrators see only Publish and Print Rota. For them Publish ends in an access error, because the dialog behind it is limited to the Planning Administrator group; see Troubleshooting.