Configure Self-Schedule Requests

This topic describes how to configure employee requests for scheduling their own time.

Configuration overview

You can configure self-schedule requests so that the system presents employees with:

  • Open shifts (generated by the Scheduling Engine or manually created, for example)
  • Shift templates (based on the shift templates specified in the employee's shift template Data Access Profile)

Using shift templates provides the employee with more flexibility in building their own schedule, as it allows them to select shifts with the start and end times, duration, and colleagues that they prefer.

The process for configuring self-schedule requests involves these steps:

  1. Specify the type of self-schedule request you want to configure. If you are configuring the request to use shift templates, consider providing settings that allow you to exercise more control over the shifts that are available to employees. For example, you can specify:
    • Minimum and maximum shift template length
    • Whether or not you want to allow over coverage

    See Configure Self-Schedule Settings for more information.

  2. Optionally, create a generic workflow notification to notify managers of employees' self-schedule request submissions. See Create workflow notifications for more information. You can do this regardless of whether you are configuring the self-schedule request to use open shifts or shift templates.
  3. If you are configuring the self-schedule requests to use shift templates, you must create a shift template Data Access Profile to identify the shift templates you want to make accessible to employees. See Shift template data access profiles for more information.
  4. Specify the appropriate shift template Data Access Profile on the employee's People Information record (Scheduler section). See People Information for more information.

Controlling shift availability

The shift template Data Access Profile is the primary factor that determines whether or not a shift is available to an employee. The initial set of shifts defined by the shift templates in the profile are then filtered by a number of other criteria, many of which are specified as part of the self-schedule request configuration:

  • Minimum Shift Length and Maximum Shift Length
  • Location Filtering
  • Restrict Job Transfer Set to Scheduling Contexts
  • Allow Unrestricted Overlaps
  • Minimum Rule Severity to Block Submission

These and other criteria are used when configuring schedule rules. See Configure schedule rule sets for more information.

Configure Self-Schedule Settings

  1. Click Tap Main Menu Administration > Application Setup > Employee Self Service > Request Subtypes.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • Click Tap New. Enter a Name.
    • Select one self-scheduling request setting.
    • Select the settings. Click Tap Edit or Duplicate.
    • Select the settings. Click Tap Delete. Click Tap Yes to confirm.
  3. Enter a Name.
  4. (Optional) Enter a Description.
  5. For Symbol, enter ESS.
  6. For Request Type, enter Self-Scheduling.
  7. Use the Open Shift or Shift Template field to specify whether you want the system to display open shifts or shift templates to employees building their schedules. (Both shift types have the same appearance to the employee.) The possible set of shift templates available to the employee is determined by the shift templates in the shift template Data Access Profile assigned to the employee; the constraints defined in the request subtype (Minimum Shift Template Length (hours), Maximum Shift Template Length (hours), and Allow Over Coverage fields) as well as applicable schedule rules determine which shift templates are displayed to the employee when they create their request. (See Shift template data access profiles and Configure schedule rule sets for more information.)
    Note: You cannot change the value of this field if the request subtype is associated with an open employee visibility period. See
    Manage Employee Visibility Periods
    for more information.
  8. Enter a Priority for this request, with 0 as the highest priority.

  9. In Minimum Rule Severity to Block Submissions, select the minimum severity level that a request must violate for the application to block submission of that request.

    Open and shift template shifts that violate any configured schedule rules are filtered out from the list of available shifts that employees can request.

    • Not Considered — Requests that violate rules of any severity level are submitted.
    • Informational — Requests that violate rules of Informational, Warning, and No Save severity are not submitted.
    • Warning — Requests that violate rules of Warning or No Save severity are not submitted.
    • No Save — Requests that violate rules of No Save severity are not submitted.
      Note: If a request violates a schedule rule at this level or a more severe level, the request cannot be submitted. If a request violates rules of a lower severity, the request is submitted.
    Note: This field can be used to determine which shifts are made available for employees submitting Open, Cover, Swap, and Self-schedule requests. See Ensure break compliance for employee self-service requests for more information.

  10. In Location Filtering, select an option from the drop-down menu:

    • Primary Job Only: This option shows employees only the openand shift template shifts that match their primary job.
    • Primary Location Only: This option shows employees only the openand shift template shifts that match their primary location, meaning that if you go up one level in the organization map, any job that falls below that level can apply to you.
    • Employee Transfer Set: This option shows employees all available openand shift template shifts.
  11. In Manager Notification, select the way in which you want the system to notify the manager when an employee submits a Self-Schedule Request.

  12. In Restrict Job Transfer Set to Scheduling Contexts, select the contexts from Available Scheduling Contexts. Click Tap the right arrow to move the contexts to Selected Scheduling Contexts.

  13. Allow Unrestricted Overlaps is checked by default to allow overlapping shifts at anytime. Clear the check box to restrict overlapping to 30 minutes.
  14. (For Shift Template type requests only.) In Minimum Shift Template Length (hours), enter the minimum number of hours in length a shift template must have in order to be displayed to employees when they make a self-schedule request. Shift templates with fewer hours than the value you specify are not displayed.
  15. (For Shift Template type requests only.) In Maximum Shift Template Length (hours), enter the maximum number of hours in length a shift template must have in order to be displayed to employees when they make a self-schedule request. Shift templates with more hours than the value you specify are not displayed.
  16. (For Shift Template type requests only.) Click Tap the Allow Over Coverage check box if you want the employee to be able to select shifts that would result in over coverage.
    Note: In certain circumstances, over coverage can result regardless of how this field is configured. This can occur when two or more employees using the same shift template simultaneously submit a request for the same job on the same day.
  17. Click Tap the Show Other Employees check box to display the People Also Working field on the Refine Shifts panel. Employees can use this panel when submitting a self-schedule request to help identify shifts they are interested in requesting. In addition to using colleagues to filter for preferred shifts, employees can also filter by location, job, and shift start and end times.
  18. (For Shift Template type requests only.) Click Tap the Show Coverage Information check box to display coverage information on the Request Self-Schedule panel. Coverage information — the number of employees scheduled versus the number of employees required for the schedule zone or shift set — is displayed as a pair of numbers, such as 3/4. These numbers are displayed with a color icon based on the color configured in coverage counting settings, and a label such as Fully Staffed or Understaffed to indicate coverage levels. (See Configure Coverage Counts for more information.)
    Note: The Coverage section is not displayed if your organization has created more than 12 schedule zone sets or workload shift sets. See Configure coverage by zone or shift set for more information.
  19. (For Shift Template type requests only.) In Show and Sort Employees Requesting Same Shift, select the procedure set you want to use to display the Employees requesting this shift section in the Request Self-Schedule panel. This section displays a list of employees who have requested the same shift for the same job. A number in the heading for this section displays the total number of employees who have requested the shift, including the employee making the current request. The name of the employee making the request is displayed in bold. Select <none> if you do not want to display this information to employees making self-schedule requests.
    Note: Only procedure sets with a context of Sort Employees are displayed here. See Build a sorting and matching procedure set for more information.
  20. (Optional) Select Adjust Breaks Automatically to apply the break rules to the shifts assigned to the requesting employee when the request is approved. The break rules are declared in the Work Rule, which is part of the Pay Rule assigned to the employee.
    Note: This field can be used to determine which shifts are made available for employees submitting Open, Cover, Swap, and Self-schedule requests. See Ensure break compliance for employee self-service requests for more information.
  21. Click Tap the Allow Submission of Partially Successful Requests check box if you want employees to be able to submit a self-schedule request when only some of the shifts they have selected are available. For example, imagine Employee A submits a request with these shifts: AM1, PM2, and PM3, but PM2 was approved for another employee while Employee A was in the process of submitting their request.
    If Allow Submission of Partially Successful Requests is:
    • Enabled, the employee is notified that two of the shifts they selected were successfully submitted (AM1 and PM3), but the one that was unavailable (PM2) was not.
    • Disabled, the entire request cannot be successfully submitted because not all of the selected shifts are available.
      Note: These rules are not validated if you enable this setting:
      • Minimum Hours per Day
      • Minimum Hours per Week
      • Minimum Days per Week
      • Period Hours
      • Events
      Note: This setting is valid only if Open Shift or Shift Template is set to Open Shift.
  22. Click Tap the Allow Submit and Add More Shifts check box if you want employees to be able to submit partial self-schedule requests and then add additional shifts to the same request at a later time.
    Note: These rules are not validated if you enable this setting:
    • Minimum Hours per Day
    • Minimum Hours per Week
    • Minimum Days per Week
    • Period Hours
    • Events
    Note: This setting is valid only if Open Shift or Shift Template is set to Open Shift.
  23. Click Tap Save & Return.
Warning:

If you create an Employee Visibility Period for a self-scheduling request with a submission period using Any Time or specify a long period of time, the self-scheduling request stays open for the entire period and does not close.

Although employees can edit their requests to add additional shifts, only the single self-scheduling request remains open.

Therefore, it is recommended to define a specific date range of a reasonable time frame, for example a few weeks or a month, and to set the Recurring Period for the Employee Visibility Period to reopen the submission period periodically.