Schedule shifts

It is Friday and Tom is writing next week's rota for Claymont. This page is how to create, confirm, edit and cancel shifts, and which single action on the scheduling page replaces it with an error.

Who can do this

• Front-line staff
• Site director
• Regional director
• Organisation admin
• Super admin

Confirming and cancelling a shift are open to anyone who can open the calendar.

Choosing a site on this page replaces it with an error

Shift Scheduling opens with no site chosen and looks fine. Choose one from the list at the top and the whole page becomes "Something went wrong", calendar, float pool and all. Try Again fails the same way. The reason is under Choosing a site breaks the page. Until it is fixed, manage shifts from the staff member's own Schedule tab, which works, and only use the scheduling page to create a shift, pressing Create Shift before you touch the site list.

What you need

Decide the shift type. It is required, and the dialog offers the types PTRS accepts.

A person cannot hold two overlapping shifts on the same date, at any site. PTRS ignores the site when it checks, which is right, because one person at two sites at once is still one person in two places. Shifts that merely touch are allowed: one ending at 12:00 and the next starting at 12:00 do not overlap.

Create a shift

1. Open Staff, then Shift Scheduling, subtitled "Manage staff schedules, identify coverage gaps, and coordinate float pool assignments."

2. Press Create Shift before touching the site list at the top of the page. The dialog has its own site field.

3. In the dialog, set:

   Field	Required	Note
   Staff member	Yes	Searched from up to 500 active staff
   Location	Yes	PTRS does not check that it is a real site
   Room	No	PTRS does not check that it is a real room, or that it belongs to the site
   Date	Yes
   Start time and End time	Yes	The end must be after the start. A shift cannot cross midnight.
   Shift type	Yes
   Notes	No	Any length
   Recurring and weeks	No	1 to 52. Repeats weekly on the same weekday.

4. Submit. A message reads "Shift created".

Checkpoint

The shift appears on the calendar for that date, unconfirmed. If you asked for a repeating series, either every copy was created or none was: PTRS checks each date for a clash and stops at the first one. The message names the date that clashed.

Manage a shift from the staff member's record

Open the staff member, then the Schedule tab. It lists Upcoming Shifts, or "No shifts scheduled". This tab cannot create a shift, and it can confirm and cancel one, which makes it the safe place to work while the scheduling page is unusable. View Full Schedule takes you to the scheduling page.

Confirm, edit and cancel

• Confirm: press the confirm control on the shift. A message reads "Shift confirmed". Confirming twice is refused.
• Edit: changes the room, date, times, type and notes. Editing also clears the confirmation, even if you only changed the notes.
• Cancel: the shift is hidden, not erased. A message reads "Shift cancelled". It cannot be undone from any screen.

A shift cannot be moved to a different person or a different site. Both are fixed when it is created. Cancel it and create a new one.

The calendar has Week and Month views, with weeks starting on Sunday.

What PTRS records

The shift is on the calendar and in the staff member's Schedule tab, and the audit trail carries an entry.

Creating or editing a shift for today also makes PTRS re-work that site's ratio and tell any open screens about it. No screen in PTRS listens for that message. See What happens automatically.

What this page does not do

Choosing a site breaks the page

The coverage-gap panel cannot read its own answer

When you choose a site, the page asks PTRS for that site's coverage gaps. PTRS answers with one summary, and the panel expects a list, so it fails before it can draw anything and the error page replaces the whole route. The panel does not ask until a site is chosen, which is why the page loads normally and fails on the first thing you do. Work from the staff member's Schedule tab, which does not have this panel.

No coverage gap can ever be found

Even if the panel worked, it would never show a gap. PTRS works out how many staff each half-hour needs from the number of children in the site's rooms, divided by the strictest ratio rule. The number of children comes from room headcounts, and no room in PTRS ever has one. So the required staff is always zero, no half-hour is ever short, and the panel reads "No coverage gaps detected, All time periods have adequate staffing levels." for every site on every date, including a site with nobody scheduled. Two more limits for when it is fixed: it only looks between 6 am and 10 pm, and it applies the strictest rule, an infant rule, to every room, school-age or not.

The cross-site conflict warning only sees what is already on screen

The amber Cross-Site Scheduling Conflict banner is worked out from the shifts already on the calendar, which are the chosen site's shifts. It can only notice a conflict that is already in that list, which does not normally happen, so the banner does not appear when it should. PTRS can find these conflicts properly across the whole organisation, and no screen asks it to. When a shift is created that puts someone at a second site on the same day, PTRS notes it and nothing acts on the note.

The float pool is a list and nothing more

Float Pool Manager records a person's county, maximum travel minutes, available sites and preferred shifts. Nothing reads any of it. Being in the pool changes nothing on the calendar, in the coverage gaps, in the ratio or anywhere else. The available sites and preferred shifts are not checked against real sites or real shift types, and a person cannot be removed from the pool.

Nothing checks whether the person is cleared to work

Creating a shift checks that the staff member exists in your organisation and that the times do not overlap another shift. It checks nothing else. Not the background check, not the onboarding banner, not whether the person is active: a deactivated staff member can be given a shift. Not their credentials, training or personnel file. A person whose onboarding board shows Cannot Start Work in red, or whose background check is CHU Denied, can be scheduled here without comment. See Work an onboarding workflow.

Confirming a shift tells nobody, and nor does anything else

Creating or editing a shift for today makes PTRS re-work the site's ratio and send the result to open screens, under a name no screen listens for. Confirming a shift does not even do that. Cancelling one does the same as editing.

A date range on one person's shifts is ignored

The staff member's Schedule tab asks PTRS for shifts between two dates using names PTRS does not recognise, so PTRS ignores the dates and sends everything. The tab does not currently ask for a range, so nothing visibly breaks.

When PTRS refuses

What you see	What it means	What to do
Something went wrong, after choosing a site	The coverage-gap panel above	Work from the staff member's Schedule tab
Staff member '…' already has an overlapping shift on (date).	Double-booked, possibly at another site	Check the other site before rescheduling
Shift end time must be after start time.	The end is at or before the start, or the shift crosses midnight	Split an overnight shift into two
Shift '…' is already confirmed.	Confirmed twice, or in two tabs	Reload
Shift with ID '…' was not found.	Cancelled elsewhere, or another organisation's	Reload
A repeating series was not created and nothing appeared	One date clashed and the whole request stopped	The message names the date. Clear that clash, or shorten the series.
Failed to load scheduling data	The calendar could not load. The page shows the reason.	A site with no shifts is not an error. This is a failed request. Reload.

Related

• Read the ratio monitor, the screen this page's staffing feeds
• How ratio compliance is measured, why coverage gaps cannot be found
• Work an onboarding workflow, the banner nothing enforces
• Who can do what in Staff