Auto Schedule

Auto Schedule fills your roster. It weighs every open shift, every person and your rules at once, and answers with a proposal on the board. Nothing is saved until you apply it.

Run it

The first time, select Optimize on the board. A dialog shows what a sample run does, and exactly what a real run would use. Select Try a free sample run to connect your environment to Chrona. A System Administrator, or someone with the Chrona Scheduler Admin role, connects once for each environment.

After that, the button is Solve. A line beside it names what the run takes into account. While the run works, the board shows its progress, with Cancel.

With a roster period on the board, a run plans that period. See Roster periods and publishing.

A run plans ahead. Shifts that have started keep their person. An open shift that is still running, after a sick call for example, is filled like any other. Open shifts that have ended stay open, and so do pinned open shifts; the proposal counts them as unfilled and says why.

What every run keeps to

• Roles. A person works only shifts whose role they hold.
• Time off. No one works during their Unavailable time.
• Hours. No one works more than their Hours per week, counted over the weeks in the run. Unpaid breaks do not count.
• Agreements. No one breaks a Must rule of their agreement: rest between shifts, days in a row, maximum hours, days off, weekly rest and average hours. People with no agreement are not checked. See Agreements.
• One shift at a time. No one works two shifts that overlap.
• Pins. A pinned shift stays as it is: same times, same person.
• Split shifts. With Same person for both parts, one person works both parts.

When no one fits a shift without breaking one of these, the shift stays open. Within them, Auto Schedule fills as many shifts as it can, spreads the work across people, and keeps to their preferred and unpreferred times and their agreements’ Should rules where it can. It keeps overtime cost low where the agreement sets an overtime rate.

Review the proposal

The board shows the proposal, with Current and Proposed to switch between the two rosters. A scorecard above the board sets Must rules broken, Shifts filled and Preferences met against today’s roster, with the changes and the people affected, and shows how many rosters Auto Schedule checked. Select Must rules broken to see each rule: Rest between shifts, Days in a row, Skills, On leave or unavailable and Other Must rules. Select a rule to list its shifts. Fold the scorecard with Scorecard, and the line above the board sums up the figures instead. The Proposed changes list groups the changes into Assigned, Moved and Unassigned, and says under each change what it fixes or adds. Untick a change to leave it out, or use Keep all or Keep none; the counts change at once, and Apply says how many changes it writes. Above 24 changes, the list shows one line per person. On a very large roster, the scorecard shows the counts without reasons.

• A shift’s menu on the board also has Drop this change and Keep this change.
• Select Apply to save the kept changes. One Undo takes them all back.
• Select Discard to leave the roster as it was.

While you review, the board is read-only.

If you leave while a run works, the board tells you when you come back. Follow a run that is still going, or Review or Discard one that has finished.

Ask why not

Open a shift’s menu and select Why not…?, or select it on a change in Proposed changes. Type a name and pick the person. The answer says first whether that person would break a Must rule, then lists the rules the move breaks or fixes, for them and for the person who has the shift now. On today’s roster it offers Assign when the person is free, or Swap when both moves keep every Must rule. While you review a proposal, drop the change first and act after Apply.

What a run sends

A run sends a copy of the period: its shifts with their roles, breaks, the current person and any pin, and which shifts are the parts of one split; each person as a placeholder, with their roles, hours and agreement; their unavailable, preferred and unpreferred time; the rules of each agreement that are on, with their dates; and the shifts people worked before the period, as far back as the rules need. No names, notes or contact details leave your environment. The Optimize dialog shows the exact data before your first run.

Runs and billing

A Chrona Workforce Scheduler subscription runs Auto Schedule without a daily limit, within fair use. Run time grows with the size of the roster, and a run stops when it stops finding a better roster. Your organisation can have two runs going at a time. Solve for, on your calendar in Scheduler calendars, sets the longest a run takes.

Each person a run assigns counts once in the billing period, whether you apply the result or not. See Plan and billing.