The 'Set Availabilities' feature allows you to set working patterns (Days/Times) for individual staff members - without directly assigning them to recurring shifts in a certain location.
It's most commonly used in Community Care or Outreach where staff work set patterns, but the shifts, locations and individual visit/shift times they work will often vary.
RotaMaster matches the staff patterns to shifts/visits built in the rota and creates a proposed rota for review.
There are two main stages to the process. Setup, which is only required once per staff member and Allocation, which is done every time you want to match staff to shifts for a new period.
The allocation will always try to allocate as many shifts/visits per day to each person to maximise efficiency, and will always prioritise duty stations (locations) closest to the previous shift.
Setting Availabilities
To set Availability/Working Patterns for staff members, go to Rota > Set Availabilities.
Select the Rota Group of the person you'd like to configure and select the 'Add a Pattern' button on the top left.
Give the pattern a name and select the number of weeks you'd like to add 'Availabilities' for. You may want to build a two week template for staff members that work different hours every other week.
To add Availability for a staff member, click on a day of the week and then click on the green plus button.
Enter the details of the staff member and the times that they can work on that day and click Save. Repeat this for each staff member in your team.
If the availabilities are the same on each day (Mon-Fri for example), complete one full day and then right click on that day name, click Copy Day and select a day to copy to.
Running the Wizard
Note; before trying to allocate people to shifts based on availability, make sure that there are vacant live shifts in your rota for the period you want to allocate.
To run the allocation, go to Rota > Set Availabilities Allocation. Click the 'Create Proposed Allocation' button (with the small star).
Select the dates and Rota Group you want to create the allocated rota for.
On the next screen, select the pattern of availabilities you want to use, and which week (from within the pattern) you want to start with.
Run the Allocation Wizard to see your proposed allocation. If multiple people have availability for the same shifts, you will be able to see why other staff members have not been allocated.
If you're happy with the proposed allocation, you can roll it out to your live rota by selecting the 'Rollout' icon on the left. This will put your staff into the live rota - ready to publish when you're ready.
