How to do Automatic Shift Scheduling with RotaPlanner

We have integrated our first AI functionality! You can now populate your rota with the best employees completely with AI.

The minimum you need to generate an automatic rota is:

• Shifts
• Employees

You can kick off the automatic rota generator via the 'Auto populate' button in the toolbar.

The process will ensure to assign shifts fairly by assigning the employee with the least hours worked first. It tries to give everyone the same amount of hours within the period that you've selected, which can be for a whole month or more if desired.

How It Works

The auto population software is primarily driven based on:

• Employee skills
• Employee available locations
• Availability sheets
• Optimising for contractual hours
• Ensuring a minimum rest time of 12 hours between shifts for each employee (configurable in the future)

Here’s a quick run-through of how the Auto Populate feature works:

1. Input Data: Start by adding all your employees and the shifts you need to fill. The more information you provide, the better the results will be.
2. Employee Information: Include details such as:
   • Availability
   • Preferred working hours
   • Skills
   • Maximum weekly hours
   • Available locations
3. Shift Requirements: Define your shifts with information like:
   • Start and end times
   • Required skills
   • Minimum and maximum staff needed
   • Location
4. Initiate Auto-Scheduling: Click the 'Auto populate' button in the toolbar to start the process.
5. AI Analysis: RotaPlanner's AI analyzes all the input data to create a balanced schedule.
6. Fair Distribution: The system assigns shifts starting with employees who have the least hours worked, ensuring a fair distribution of work. If it cannot assign any shifts (e.g., six shifts but only five employees), it will leave the remaining shifts blank.
7. Optimization: The AI considers factors such as employee skills, available locations, availability sheets, and contractual hours to optimize the schedule. It also takes into account specific restrictions such as location assignments and employee availability per day.
8. Schedule Generation: A complete schedule is generated based on all the analyzed data.

Examples

Here are a few examples to illustrate the functionality:

• Suppose you have a hotel with a cleaner and a receptionist role. You can add shifts for these roles and assign the necessary skills. For instance, assign Annabelle and James as cleaners and Sylvia and Harry as receptionists. When you run the Auto Populate, it will assign shifts based on these roles and skills.
• If you have multiple locations, you can restrict employees to specific locations. For example, assign James to the London hotel and Sylvia to the Brighton hotel.

Additional Features

The Auto Populate feature also accounts for:

• Staff availability per day if enabled in the configuration.
• Booked leave, ensuring no shifts are assigned to employees on leave.

Getting the Best Results

To maximize the effectiveness of the automatic scheduling feature:

• Provide as much relevant data as possible about your employees and shifts
• Regularly update employee availability and preferences
• Keep skills and qualifications information up to date
• Review and adjust auto-generated schedules as needed

Customizing Your Schedule

After the automatic scheduling process is complete, you have full flexibility to modify the generated schedule. You can:

• Manually adjust shift assignments
• Add or remove shifts as needed
• Make changes to accommodate last-minute requests or changes in availability

This combination of AI-powered automation and manual customization ensures that you can create the most efficient and fair schedule for your team.

Continuous Improvement

We're now working on fine-tuning the AI to perform even better. During this time, your feedback is extremely valuable to us. As you use the automatic scheduling feature, please let us know about your experience and any suggestions for improvement.

Try RotaPlanner's Automatic Scheduling Software Today

Experience the power of AI-driven scheduling and save hours of manual work. RotaPlanner's automatic scheduling feature is available on all our plans. For pricing information, please visit our pricing page.

Give our auto scheduling software a try by signing up for your free Rota Planner trial.