Configure a schedule generation strategy

 

Configure a schedule generation strategy to provide optimized scheduling solutions. The schedule generation accounts for workload Specifies a number of employees needed for a certain job at a certain location over a certain span of time. and coverage, shift templates A shift that has a name and defined segments and attributes, but no date or assigned employee. or shift profiles, employee and organizational rules, and schedule generation strategies.

Note:

Make sure that all of the relevant scheduling building blocks that are inputs to schedule generation are configured before you configure schedule generation strategies:

See Overview of Schedule Generator for more information.

  1. From the Main Menu, select Administration > Application Setup > Access Profiles > Function Access Profiles.
  2. Select a profile and click Edit.
  3. Select Manager — Department Manager > Scheduling.
    1. Set Run Schedule Engine to Allowed.
    2. Expand Schedule Views and set at least one view to Allowed. For example, set Employee View of Schedule to Allowed.
  4. Select Manager — Common Setup > Schedule Configuration.
    • Set Workload Setup to Allowed.
  5. Click Save & Return.

Make sure that the updated Function Access Profile is associated with the relevant managers in Main Menu > Maintenance > People Information. If you do not have access to edit People Information, contact the administrator who has access.

Schedule generation strategies are inherited between locations in the business structure:

  • A location can have more than one schedule generation strategy.
  • Child locations inherit schedule generation strategies from all parent locations.
  • Child locations inherit changes at parent locations.
  • If a location is not explicitly assigned to a strategy, and its parent locations have no strategies assigned, you cannot use the Schedule Generation Engine to create a schedule for that location from the user interface or from an API.

    • Note: The assignation is not considered in Batch mode.

    For more information, see the site.scheduling.schedGen.business.ShowAllLocationStrategies setting.

Configure at least one schedule generation strategy to define actions and parameters.

From the Main Menu, select Administration > Application Setup > Scheduler Setup > Location Settings > Schedule Generation Strategy. Click New, or select an existing strategy and click Edit or Duplicate.

Note: If you need to delete a strategy, select it and click Delete. Delete a strategy only if you also want to delete all associations to locations. If your access profile does not display all locations, you may accidentally delete associations to locations that you cannot see. The system does not display a warning message. The system does not display a warning message.

Enter or change the Name and optionally enter a Description, then complete the following sections.

Select or clear the following check boxes as necessary:

  • Overwrite Current Schedule — Select to remove unlocked or open shifts in the current schedule before schedule generation generates a new schedule. Schedule generation never affects locked shifts, shifts during locked days, or pay codes; it can only override the shifts that it can regenerate.
  • Allow Break in Segment Tags — Select to allow breaks in shifts that are built around segment tags. For example, allow a break during a long meeting.
  • Ignore Break Placement Rules — Select to not assign breaks within the generated shifts.
  • Treat Manually Created Shifts as Locked — Select to prevent changes to existing assigned shifts that were created or modified manually, as well as shifts generated through shift patterns. Clear this option to allow schedule generation to remove unlocked shifts even if they are assigned to employees.
  • This setting has no effect if Overwrite Current Schedule is not selected.
  • Regardless of this setting, schedule generation can assign any open shifts no matter how these were created.
  • Allow Multi-Job Shifts — Select to allow shifts to contain multiple segments for different jobs. Define the shortest length of shift segments in Minimum Job Segment Length.
  • This setting has no effect if Assign Shifts to Primary Job Only is selected.
  • Allow Shifts when Availability is Undefined — Select to generate and assign shifts that overlap unknown availability periods.

    • This setting has no effect if the rule "the employee is scheduled for a time period when the employee is unavailable to work" in an employee's schedule rule set has a Not Considered severity or if the employee's schedule rule set in question is not active for the considered run period.

  • Overwrite Open Shift A shift that is scheduled for a job, but no employee is assigned to work it. Breaks — Select to modify breaks according to the break placement rules when schedule generation assigns existing open shifts.
  • Allow Overlap with Unavailability — Select to generate and assign shifts that overlap an employee's unavailability periods.

    • This setting has no effect if the rule "the employee is scheduled for a time period when the employee is unavailable to work" in an employee's schedule rule set has a Not Considered severity or if the employee's schedule rule set in question is not active for the considered run period.

  • Assign Shifts to Primary Job Only — Select to generate shifts only for the primary job of employees. Selecting this option disables the Allow Multi-Job Shifts setting.
  • Restrict Job Transfer Set to Scheduling Context — The jobs in the Transfer set of the employees that are not in the schedule context are ignored.

Provide values as necessary in the following fields:

  • Minimize Overcoverage — Enter a value as follows:
    • High value = Minimizing over-coverage is more relevant.
    • Low value = Minimizing over-coverage is less relevant.
    • To ignore over-coverage, enter 0.
  • Minimize Undercoverage — Enter a value as follows:
    • High value = Minimizing under-coverage is more relevant.
    • Low value = Minimizing under-coverage is less relevant.
    • To ignore under-coverage, enter 0.
  • Minimize Open Shift Creation — Enter a value to minimize coverage by open shifts as follows:
  • Any value higher than 0 (zero) penalizes the generation of open shifts.
    • High value = Minimizing coverage by open shifts is more relevant.
    • Low value = Minimizing coverage by open shifts is less relevant.
    • To not penalize coverage by open shifts, enter 0.

    Note: For the Generate Open Shifts Only context, this setting is redundant with Minimize Overcoverage. This setting is also redundant if the site.scheduling.schedGen.business.protocol.SprayOverCoverage system setting is set to True.

  • Match Shift Profile Set Distribution — Only if shift profiles are configured for open shifts, define how closely the profiles of open shifts match the relative parts that are defined in shift profile sets in this field.
  • Relative parts define a minimum percentage of generated open shifts that conform to a shift profile set. This is a soft constraint; schedule generation can try to generate more open shifts for this shift profile set, but not fewer open shifts.
    • High value = Closely matching the relative parts is more important.
    • Low value = Closely matching the relative parts is less important.
    • To not penalize relative parts matching, enter 0.
  • Minimize Zero Coverage — Define the penalty when workload is required but no employee is scheduled.

    • Example: Set this penalty to avoid scheduling all employees to take breaks at the same time.

    • High value = Minimizing zero coverage is more relevant.
    • Low value = Minimizing zero coverage is less relevant.
    • To ignore gaps in coverage, enter 0.

      • Note: The penalty considered by the engine for avoiding zero coverage will be the value entered here plus the value entered in Minimize Undercoverage.

  • Skill and Certification Undercoverage Weight — Enter a relative value to minimize under-coverage of the Skills and Certifications organizational rules as follows:
    • High value = Minimizing under-coverage is more relevant.
    • Low value = Minimizing under-coverage is less relevant.
    • Range = Integers
    • To ignore under-coverage, enter 0.
  • Minimum Job Segment Length (hh:mm)

    • Note: Use this setting to set the minimum length of a shift segment for a job. This setting ignores segments, such as breaks, that are not associated with jobs.

    This setting considers breaks in the calculation of the minimum segment length (for the calculation before, during or after the job).

    For example, if you need a minimum two-hour shift segment for a job, the schedule generation engine can produce a shift with one hour for Job1, one hour for a break, and one hour for Job2. The break will be included in Job1 and Job2 for the calculation of the minimum length.

  • Default = 0:00.
  • This setting has no effect if Allow Multi-Job Shifts is not selected.
  • Single-Location Type — This setting identifies under which type of physical location (as defined in Jobs and Business Structure Represents the logical structure of an organization as it concerns staffing. It contains the locations and jobs to which an employee may be assigned.) employees can be transferred during the same shift, taking into account their Job assignments and qualifications defined within People Information.

    Users may need to prevent scheduling employees to be transferred to different physical locations on the same shift, and for example, having to account for an employee spending time traveling between locations.

    Do one of the following:

    • Select the Location Type at which level transfers are allowed.

    • Select None to have no restriction on employee transfers taken into account.

    When a Location Type is specified, an employee cannot be transferred on the same shift to different locations of the specified type. However, they can be transferred as follows: 

    • On the same shift to other jobs within the same location.

    • On the same shift to other jobs in locations whose location type is not the same as the chosen one if there are not any parent locations of the selected location type.

    • To a different location of the same location type on different shifts.

  • Satisfy Minimum Hours — Set a penalty for scheduling fewer than the minimum number of hours each period of time for any employee. This applies to minimum hours per week rules, minimum period hours rules, and schedule event rules of amount type.
    • High value = Scheduling fewer than the minimum hours is more penalized.
    • Low value = Scheduling fewer than the minimum hours is less penalized.
    • To ignore the minimum number of hours each week, enter 0.

    The importance for minimum hours per week rules and minimum period hours rules increases with the system setting parameter site.scheduling.schedGen.rules.emphasizeMinHours. For more information, see the site.scheduling.schedGen.rules.emphasizeMinHours setting.

  • Satisfy Minimum Days per Week — Set the importance of scheduling a minimum number of days each week for any employee.
    • High value = Scheduling fewer than the minimum days is more penalized.
    • Low value = Scheduling fewer than the minimum days is less penalized.
    • To ignore the minimum days per week, enter 0.
  • Satisfy Minimum Event Occurrences (previously named Satisfy Minimum Weekend Off) — Set a penalty for scheduling fewer than the minimum number of event occurrences for any employee, including the minimum number of weekends off.
    • High value = Scheduling fewer than the minimum event occurrences off is more penalized.
    • Low value = Scheduling fewer than the minimum event occurrences off is less penalized.
    • To ignore the minimum number of event occurrences off, enter 0.

    Note: For minimum number of weekends off rules, the system considers the weekend to be Saturday and Sunday. Use the event rules for a more accurate and flexible handling of the rules.

  • Overall Employee Preferences Weight — Enter a value to set the penalty for not accounting for employee preferences in a schedule.
    • High value = The employee preferences are more important.
    • Low value = The employee preferences are less important.
    • To ignore employee preferences, enter 0.

    Enter the relative importance of each type of employee preference.

    Best practice: To preserve good workload coverage, using reasonable values (for example, maximum 1/10 of the lower penalty among Minimize Overcoverage/Undercoverage) is highly recommended.

    Note: If the sum of percentages for all different preferences does not reach 100%, they will be normalized to sum up exactly to 100%.

  • Preferred Availability (%) — Enter a percentage to set the relative importance of scheduling employees during their preferred availability.
    • High value = The preference is more important.
    • Low value = The preference is less important.
    • To ignore preferred availability, enter 0.
  • Employee Preferred Job (%) — Enter a percentage to set the relative importance of scheduling employees to their preferred job.
    • High value = The preference is more important.
    • Low value = The preference is less important.
    • To ignore preferred job, enter 0.

    Note: Employee job preferences can be edited in People Information > Timekeeping > Employee Role.

  • Preferred Hours per Week (%) — Enter a percentage to set the relative importance of scheduling employees to their preferred number of hours each week.
    • High value = The preference is more important.
    • Low value = The preference is less important.
    • To ignore preferred hours each week, enter 0.

    The preferred hours per week are taken from the Standard Hours Non-overtime hours that each employee is expected to work. per week defined in People Information.

  • Preferred Day Off (%) — Enter a percentage to set the relative importance of not scheduling employees during their preferred unavailability periods.
    • High value = The preference is more important.
    • Low value = The preference is less important.
    • To ignore preferred days off, enter 0.
  • Most Hours per Week (%) — Enter a percentage to set the relative importance of scheduling employees to their preferred maximum number of hours each week.
    • High value = The preference is more important.
    • Low value = The preference is less important.
    • To ignore the most hours each week, enter 0.
  • Earliest Shift (%) — Enter a percentage to set the relative importance of scheduling employees to work the earliest shifts in the day.
    • High value = The preference is more important.
    • Low value = The preference is less important.
    • To ignore a preference for the earliest shifts, enter 0.
  • Longest Shift (%) — Enter a percentage to set the relative importance of scheduling employees to work the longest shifts that are available.
    • High value = The preference is more important.
    • Low value = The preference is less important.
    • To ignore a preference for the longest shifts, enter 0.
  • Low Priority Jobs/High Priority Jobs — To set the relative importance of covering specific jobs, select job groups that are defined via Organizational Sets for each field. Jobs that are not part of either High or Low are considered in between both.

    Note: If the number of organizational sets is too large to display in the drop-down list, the system displays an informational message instructing you to search for more results.

  • Low Priority Factor — Enter a value to provide more granularity for low priority job lists.
    • High value = The preference is more important.
    • Low value = The preference is less important.

      • You can enter a value between 2 and 10. The default value is 2.

  • High Priority Factor — Enter a value to provide more granularity for high priority job lists.
    • High value = The preference is more important.
    • Low value = The preference is less important.

      • You can enter a value between 2 and 10. The default value is 2.

  • Group Employee Days Off Together — Enter a value to minimize the number of non-consecutive days off that are scheduled for any employee.
    • High value = Scheduling days off consecutively is more important.
    • Low value = Scheduling days off consecutively is less important.
    • To not prioritize consecutive days off, enter 0.
  • Minimize the Number of Generated Shifts — Enter a value to minimize the number of generated shifts as follows:
    • High value = Scheduling fewer shifts is more important.
    • Low value = Scheduling fewer shifts is less important.
    • To not penalize scheduling more and shorter shifts, enter 0.
  • Priority-based hours balancing (%) — Enter a value to control how hours are distributed amongst employees relative to their seniority as follows:
    • High value = Distributing hours to the more senior employees is less important; encourages fairness between senior and junior employees
    • Low value = Distributing hours to the more senior employees is more important; favors senior employees by to the detriment of junior employees

    • To not control how hours are distributed, enter 0.

    Note:

    When this setting has a value of 100%, employees should receive — as much as possible — the same number of hours worked during the week. Several factors may impact this objective:

    • under- and over-coverage of demand, which is typically the dominant goal
    • minimum and maximum number of hours worked per week, defined per employee
    • shift-length restrictions
    • other factors, such as the employee availability

    For more information, see Configure Hours Distribution for Employee Priority Groups.

  • Employee Priority Group — Select the employee priority groups in the priority order that you want from top (most important) to bottom (least important).

    For more information, see Configure Hours Distribution for Employee Priority Groups.

    Employee priority groups are configured in Schedule Groups Assembles employees who share schedules or any other work characteristics. and for each person in People Information.

    An employee priority group is a set of employees that are ranked based on certain attributes typically reflecting their seniority. The Schedule Generation engine assigns each employee to only one employee priority group. Based on the ordered list of employee priority groups selected in the strategy and the schedule group assignment for each employee, the first schedule group assigned to the employee that is applicable during the optimization horizon is the priority group assigned to the employee.

  • Grouped Arrival Weight — The grouped arrival setting attempts to group employees by their arrival times. Enter a value to minimize the number of different start times for employees. For example, when employees who work similar jobs arrive together, managers can provide shift information more efficiently.
    • High value = Scheduling groups together is more important.
    • Low value = Scheduling groups together is less important.
    • To ignore arrival times, enter 0.
  • Stable Schedule Penalty — Consistency in shift start times is between off days. Schedule stability applies to all shifts that are scheduled between these off days and does not carry over from one week to the next. Consistency resets after off periods.

    Set the importance of consistent shift start times:

    • High value = Schedule stability is more important.
    • Low value = Schedule stability is less important.
    • To ignore the consistency of shift start times and durations, enter 0.

Schedule generation can schedule groups of employees by priority and, within those groups, equalize assignments by employee preferences, weekly scheduled hours, or both. Without equalization, prioritizing by worker type acts similarly to ranking by custom field.

Note:

Interaction of worker type and employee priority settings:

  • Not selecting a worker type for an employee has the opposite effect of not configuring a custom field. The employee who does not have a worker type defined has lower priority, while the employee who does not have a priority custom field defined has the highest priority.
  • If Worker Type Priority is activated without equalization and the Custom Field for Employee Priority is selected, schedule generation combines both ranking settings but with priority to the worker type, and the custom field acts as a tie-breaker when needed.
  • If you define Worker Type Equalization, schedule generation ignores the Custom Field for Employee Priority setting for employees who are ranked by worker type. Schedule generation uses the custom field to rank only employees who do not have a worker type defined.

Provide the following information:

  • Custom Field for Employee Priority — Select a custom field to set the priority of employees. This custom field comes from People Information > Person tab > Additional Information. Use this priority to improve employee satisfaction. This value is alphanumeric.

    Example: Select Seniority.

    • High value = Setting the priority of employees by this custom field is more important.
    • Low value = Setting the priority of employees by this custom field is less important.
    • Default = blank.

    • If employees share the same value, they are handled equally.

  • In the Worker Type Priority area, select the worker types in the priority order that you need from top (most important) to bottom (least important). The order sets the priority of satisfying employee preferences, worked hours, or both. Click the right arrow.

    Worker types are defined in Common Setup and for each person in People Information. Examples: Full Time; Part Time; Per Diem.

  • Worker Type Equalization regularizes the differences between employee hours, employee preferences, or both. Select one of the following:
    • Equalize Hours: Schedule employees from the same worker type the same number of worked hours each week. This setting overrides the Custom Field for Employee Priority for the selected worker types.
    • Equalize Preferences: Schedule employees from the same worker type the same level of employee preferences each week. This setting overrides the Custom Field for Employee Priority for the selected worker types.
    • Equalize Hours & Preferences: Schedule employees from the same worker type for the same number of worked hours and the same level of employee preferences each week. This setting overrides the Custom Field for Employee Priority for the selected worker types.
    • None = Ignore equalization.
  • Work Type Hour Equalization Weight sets the importance of the Hour Distribution by Worker Type setting in relation to workload coverage and employee preferences. Enter a value:
    •  High value = Equalization of employee hours is more important.
    •  Low value = Equalization of employee hours is less important.
    •  To ignore equalization, enter 0.

Configure schedule generation to use a cost or hours budget to limit the total weekly cost or the total weekly hours.

  • For cost, the budget is calculated from worked hours multiplied by wages.
  • For hours, the budget is calculated from worked hours.

  1. In the Budget Type field, select one of the following:
    • Budget Cost From Strategy — Cost defined within Budget Limit Per Week.
    • Budget Hours From Strategy — Hours defined within Budget Limit Per Week.
    • Imported Budget Cost — The imported budget cost value from Forecasting.
    • Imported Budget Hours — The imported budget hours value from Forecasting.
  2. If the selected budget type is Budget Cost From Strategy or Budget Hours From Strategy, define a limit to the weekly budget amount in the Budget Limit Per Week field. Enter a positive value for cost or number of hours.

    The budget limit is an upper limit. If a tolerance is configured, the amount that fails in the range of the defined tolerance will be penalized by the Weekly Budget Weight.

    For budget types Imported Budget Cost or Imported Budget Hours, the budget limit comes from Forecasting.

  3. Use the Budget Tolerance Percentage field to add flexibility to Budget Limit Per Week. You must also define the Weekly Budget Weight.

    Possible values are integers greater than or equal to —100%.

    • Negative values: The Budget Limit per Week is considered as a hard limit. The soft limit is the lower bound of the tolerance range. For example, if the defined Budget Tolerance Percentage is -10, the tolerance range will run from 90% of Budget Limit per Week to Budget Limit per Week.

    • Positive values: The Budget Limit per Week is considered as a soft limit. The hard limit is the upper bound of the tolerance range. For example, if the defined Budget Tolerance Percentage is 10, the tolerance range will run from Budget Limit per Week to 110% of Budget Limit per Week.

    Penalization is applied using the Weekly Budget Weight when the cost of the schedule reaches the tolerance range. There is no penalization for the part of the budget under the tolerance range.

  4. Use the Weekly Budget Weight to define the penalty for schedule costs or hours that fall inside the weekly Budget Tolerance Percentage setting.

    Important: For this setting to have effect, the Budget Tolerance Percentage setting cannot be 0.

    Use this penalty to resolve any tradeoff between exceeding a budget limit and other objectives such as minimization of under-coverage or maximization of employee preferences.

    • High value = Generation of shifts that exceed weekly budgets is penalized more.
    • Low value = Generation of shifts that exceed weekly budgets is penalized less.
    • To ignore shifts that exceed weekly budgets, enter 0.
  5. If the selected budget type is Budget Cost From Strategy, you must select a currency in the Budget Limit per Week Currency field.

    Select the currency of the employees or open shift wage costs. To use the default currency settings from the system configuration, select None.

    Note: The open shift wages for a job are defined in Location Settings, given the corresponding Business Structure.

System settings control certain advanced quality aspects and performance.

Note: Schedule problems can involve much data and many variables. You can use system settings to change the balance of processing time against solution quality.  

From the Main Menu, select Administration > Application Setup> System Configuration > System Settings > Schedule Generator tab. Edit the settings according to the following descriptions and click Save when finished. You do not have to restart the server.

Note: (Optional) Use the blackout periods to restrict when the schedule generation engine can run on the interactive server. The engine can still be run through the batch during those periods. These settings are located on the Engine Controller tab.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.runEngineOnNonInteractiveServer: Runs the engine on the non-interactive server. For example, if the Schedule Generation Engine is launched by the UI, it will run it on a batch job.
  • site.scheduling.schedGen.settings.employeeHolidayCredit: Sets the number of minutes to account for holidays.

    • Enter the number of minutes to account for each holiday in an employee schedule. This number will be deduced from the employee rules (minimum/maximum hours per week rules).

    • Default = 0
  • site.scheduling.schedGen.business.protocol.AllowWorkloadUnderCoverage: Allows or disallows workload under-coverage.
    • True = Allow under-coverage.
    • False (default) = Prevent under-coverage.

      • This parameter is implicitly set to True by the engine for contexts Assign Open Shifts Only and Generate Employee Shifts Only.

      For contexts Generate Open Shifts Only and Generate and Assign Shifts, if the problem is budget-constrained and the under-coverage is forbidden, then the generation of the schedule can be infeasible if the budget is not enough to cover all demand.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.business.ScheduleGenerationConfigOrder — Defines whether schedule generation strategies, schedule generation setups or both are to be displayed and run through UI or API calls.
    • Strategy Only (default)
    • Strategy then Setup
    • Setup then Strategy
    • Setup only
  • site.scheduling.schedGen.business.protocol.SprayOverCoverage: Avoids peaks of over-coverage.
    • True = Distribute shifts to avoid peaks of under- or over-coverage in the schedule.
    • False (default) = Do not distribute shifts to avoid peaks of under- or over-coverage.
  • site.scheduling.schedGen.business.protocol.AvoidWorkloadAtZeroToBeCovered: Defines coverage behavior based on workload. A workload of zero corresponds to periods when no employees are needed in the optimized locations.
    • 0 = None: Allow coverage during any time period that has a workload of zero.
    • 1 = Aggregated Workload: Allows workload at zero to be covered if there is another job with positive workload at the same time.
    • 2 = Individual Workload: Prevent coverage during time periods when the workload is zero, and the time period is greater than or equal to the minimum time period that is defined in site.scheduling.schedGen.business.protocol.ThresholdSpanForWorkloadAtZeroAnalysis.
  • site.scheduling.schedGen.db.workld.LowOverHighDemandWorkloadCoverageImportance: Relative importance (%) of workload coverage during low demand period over high demand period. The range is from 1 to 200. Engine generates a schedule that matches demand as closely as possible during periods that have higher relative importance.

    • Low value (1 ≤ Value < 100) : The coverage of low-level demand is less important than high-level demand. Engine generates a schedule that best matches the demand as the demand level increases, which means that the engine favors workload under/over-coverage during periods of low-level demand.

    • Default = 100: Coverage is independent of the level of demand.

    • High value (100 < Value ≤ 200) : The coverage of low-level demand is more important than high-level demand. Engine generates a schedule that best matches the demand as the demand level decreases, which means that the engine favors workload under/over-coverage during periods of high-level demand.

      • Note: This setting has no effect on the under-coverage distribution if the strategy parameter Minimize Undercoverage is equal to 0.

      Note: This setting has no effect on the over-coverage distribution if the strategy parameter Minimize Overcoverage is equal to 0.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.business.protocol.ThresholdSpanForWorkloadAtZeroAnalysis: Sets the threshold span (in minutes) for zero workload identification.

    • This setting has no effect if site.scheduling.schedGen.business.protocol.AllowWorkloadAtZeroToBeCovered is True.

  • Sets the maximum time period when workload is zero that can be covered. For example, if this parameter is equal to two hours, a one-hour period with no demand is not considered a zero workload. The generation of shifts covering this period is allowed. For example, it could be a lunch break. Conversely, if there is no need for employees for a duration of more than two hours, the generation of shifts covering such period is avoided.

    • High value = Large spans with zero workload can be covered.
    • Low value = Only small spans with zero coverage can be covered. Example: Allow coverage for only 30 minutes of zero workload or less.
    • Default = 1440 minutes (24 hours)
  • Example:
  • Example Zero Coverage

The following settings are applicable only for the workload based on the shift sets.

  • A standard shift is a shift which matches exactly with the workload span of the shift set.
  • A non-standard shift is a shift which does not match exactly but it covers the percentage given by the threshold (default = 15). The formula is following:
    • Intersection between initial shift span and workload span/workload span *100 >= threshold

An initial shift counts to the coverage of a workload span from the shift set according to these conditions:

  • There should be no confusion about which workload span to consider. Either the shift has the same label, or the shift does not have the label and there is only one workload span that matches.

  • Non-standard employee shifts are considered if the site.scheduling.schedGen.CalculateOpenShifts.UseNonStandShifts setting is equal to true and the threshold is met.

  • Non-standard open shifts are not considered, regardless of the settings.

  • Standard employee shifts and standard open shifts are considered.

New shifts with be created according to the start and end times of workload spans. If the workload span is provided by a shift template and the site.scheduling.schedGen.CalculateOpenShifts.UseShiftTemplates setting is True, the breaks will be assigned as the template.

Caution: Only qualified personnel who are trained to configure schedule generation and who understand schedule optimization should be allowed to modify these advanced system settings.

The default values of these advanced system settings are the most appropriate in almost all situations, but may need to be adjusted according to the business case. However if schedule generation cannot find appropriate solutions, you can adjust these settings to change the balance of schedule quality against system performance. Then, test the results. If needed, change the settings and test again.

Because schedule problems can involve many constraints and variables, schedule generation balances processing time against the quality of the solution. It breaks the schedule problem into smaller problems, generates sub-schedules, and combines results to generate an entire schedule. The main tradeoffs occur between performance and quality:

  • If you shorten processing time, you reduce solution quality.
  • If you improve solution quality, you increase processing time.
  • site.scheduling.schedGen.ConsiderShiftExtension: Allows extension of shifts generated by the engine during a subsequent phase of the schedule generation.

    Note: When True, reconsider already generated shifts to extension them and better cover the demand. This parameter is not compatible and overrides the site.scheduling.schedGen.business.solver.schedulegeneration.SolveAsynchronously system setting.

    This setting could impact the performance.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.UseCompleteWeekDuringOptimization: Uses complete week during the Schedule Generation Engine optimization.
    • True = Use complete week during Schedule Generation Engine optimization
    • False = Do not use complete week during the Schedule Generation Engine optimization.

    The Schedule Generation Engine will be able to anticipate more information like employee unavailability’s and weekly hours.

    Example: Suppose a calendar week starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday. The Schedule Generation Engine needs to be run from Sunday to Thursday. An employee is unavailable Friday and Saturday and needs to have their minimum hours per week.

    • If the parameter is set to False, the engine might not assign all minimum hours because it assumed that the employee could work Friday or Saturday.
    • If the parameter is set to True, the engine will consider the whole week for its calculation and can assign the minimum hours.
  • site.scheduling.schedGen.ConsiderBreakAssignmentsDuringShiftEnumeration: Considers break assignments during the shift enumeration phase.

    Note: This setting could impact the performance.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.shiftenumerator.EnumeratedShiftLimit: Limits the daily number of shifts to create from shift profile sets.

    Note: Limit the number of shifts that schedule generation considers for each day. The shifts are based on shift profile sets.

    • Enter a value of 5 or higher.
    • High value = A high quality of coverage but long processing time.
    • Low value = A low quality of coverage but fast processing time.
    • The default value of 5000 effectively turns off this limit.
  • site.scheduling.schedGen.CtrWorkloadDivider.MaxSize: Sets the maximum number of jobs to process in an iteration of the calculation process.
    • Enter the maximum number of jobs to process in each iteration of the calculation process.
    • Default = 1
  • site.scheduling.schedGen.business.solver.schedulegeneration.SolveAsynchronously: Enables or disables the asynchronous generation.
    • True = Allow schedule generation to process asynchronously.
    • False (default) = Schedule generation processes only synchronously.
  • site.scheduling.schedGen.EmployeeDivider.MaxSize: Sets the number of employees to process in each iteration.
    • Enter the maximum number of employees to process in each iteration.
    • Must be greater than or equal to 1
    • Default = 30
      • An increased value would impact mainly contexts where several employees share qualifications.

    • High values could negatively impact the performance.

    This parameter is not considered when site.scheduling.schedGen.solver.EmployeePreferenceHandlingStrategy is set to Individual Preferences.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.solver.ClusteringStrategy: Sets the clustering strategy to regroup employees and jobs.

    Specifies the clustering strategy to regroup employees and jobs. A clustering strategy is a way to regroup employees and jobs for the engine to generate the schedule efficiently.

    • Compact (default) = Employees and jobs are divided into subgroups considering their rules and qualifications.
    • Global = All the employees and jobs are considered together as a whole group.

      • Note: The Global strategy can significantly impact the performance of the engine.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.business.db.workld.defaultResolution: Controls the time increments at which shifts can start or end.
    • site.scheduling.schedGen.business.ShowAllLocationStrategies: In the Schedule Planner, show all schedule generation strategies that have an association with any of the selected locations.
    • True = In the Schedule Planner, all schedule generation strategies that are assigned to at least one of the selected locations or jobs are available to use. Only the jobs that are assigned to the strategy are considered when the Schedule Engine is run.
      • The Skills & Certifications requirement is only considered if all assigned locations and jobs are selected within the Schedule Planner, even if not all of them are assigned to the selected schedule generation strategy.
      • Existing shifts within the Schedule Planner are always considered regarding workload and Skills & Certifications coverage.
      • When the system setting site.scheduling.schedGen.engine.ExcludeExternalEmployees is set to False, all qualified employees shown in the Schedule Planner will be considered during the schedule generation.
      • When the site.scheduling.schedGen.engine.ExcludeExternalEmployees is set to True, only employees having their primary job assigned to the selected schedule generation strategy will be considered during the schedule generation.
    • False (default) = In the Schedule Planner, only schedule generation strategies that are assigned to the entire selected locations and jobs are available to use.
      • The Skills & Certifications requirement is only considered if all assigned locations and jobs are selected within the Schedule Planner.

      Note: This setting has no impact on the Batch Processing behavior.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.solver.SmallScope

    Specifies the strategy to use when there is a small number of employees to schedule.

    • True = The engine automatically applies a strategy dedicated to small scopes if the number of employees being scheduled is less than 30 and the number of jobs is less than 5. If the number of employees is more than 30, the current engine algorithm is applied.
    • False (default) = Do not use strategy dedicated to small scopes.

      • When using this setting, the following must also be configured:

      • Workload must be defined by zone or by forecasting
      • Strategy must use shift profiles, not shift templates
      • The site.scheduling.schedGen.solver.EmployeePreferenceHandlingStrategy setting must be set to Combined Preferences.
  • site.scheduling.schedGen.solver.TransferDetails.RetainAttributes

    Maintains transfer attributes in the first segment of the initial shift and apply to the specified value after shift content optimization:

    • None (default)

    • First segment: Takes transfer attributes for work rule, labor category, and cost center from the first segment of the original shift and applies them to the first segment of the optimized shifts.

    • All segments: Takes transfer attributes for work rule, labor category, and cost center from the first segment of the original shift and applies them to all segments of the optimized shifts.

The following settings control how schedule generation prioritizes employee assignments. Example: These settings control how employees are sorted by seniority.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.EmployeeDivider.MaxLevelSize:Maximum number of priority levels optimized together.
    • Enter the maximum number of priority levels.
    • Default = 2

    This parameter is not considered when site.scheduling.schedGen.solver.EmployeePreferenceHandlingStrategy is set to Individual Preferences.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.priorityByEmployeeOrJob: Emphasizes employee and/or job priorities. Choose what you want to prioritize:

    • None: Do not emphasis priority on employee or jobs.

    • Employees: Prioritize the employee’s preferences.

    • Jobs: Prioritize the job coverage.

    • EmployeesThenJobs: Prioritize the employee’s preferences and then the job coverage.

    • JobsThenEmployees: Prioritize the job coverage and then the employee’s preferences.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.rules.controlledaccount.ExponentialFactor: Sets the relative importance between the priorities of employees (1 - 99). 

    Enter the relative importance between two consecutive priority levels.

    • Default = 95

    • Range = 1 - 99

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.rules.controlledaccount.PriorityLevelFactor: Emphasis factor on the gap between consecutive priority satisfactions.
    • Enter the level of discrimination between two consecutive priority levels.
    • Default = 1
  • site.scheduling.schedGen.solver.EmployeePreferenceHandlingStrategy: Maximum number of priority levels optimized together.

    Determines how schedules of prioritized employees are compared with respect to the configured preferences. Employee priorities are configured using one or both of the Custom Field for Employee Priority and Worker Type Priority options. Preferences are configured using the percentages from the schedule generation engine strategy or employee setup.

    • Combined Preferences (default) = When this option is selected, the existing schedule generation strategy for handling employee preferences is used, as follows:

      The combined satisfaction of all the configured preferences of a given employee should not be lower than those of less senior employees. The preference percentages are used as multiplication factors when combining preference satisfactions. As a result, it is possible that schedules with high satisfaction regarding a given preference and poor satisfaction regarding other preferences may be generated, inducing satisfaction imbalances across preference types.

    • Individual Preferences = In general, this option should be used only in a prioritized (seniority) context because it could induce a strong discrimination between employees. This is a delicate setting with a behavior that is not always predictable.
    • When possible:
      • The satisfactions are balanced to avoid any inversion.
      • The most senior employees receive the longest shift, the earliest shift, or the most hours per week than less senior employees. The most hours preference remains implicitly an important criterion.

      Satisfaction refers to how the overall quality of an employee's schedule is measured based on configured preferences. Inversions occur when a less senior employee is given a shift that would have been attributed to a more senior employee.

      Schedule generation evaluates seniority order between employees who have the same primary job and are scheduled to work the same job. Some employees may still be scheduled out of seniority order due to coverage needed, employee availability, and schedule rules. In that case, the preferences with the higher percentage are the last to be inverted.

The horizon is the time interval of the entire schedule. Schedule generation decomposes the horizon into sub-horizons that each represent the time interval of a sub-schedule. Control the horizon-decomposition scheme with the following system settings:

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.HorizonDivider.Reference: Sets the reference day for iterations. Select Default to use the system start day of week.
    • This value must match the definition of the week that is used by the organization.
    • In North America, the typical value is Sunday.
    • In Europe, the typical value is Monday.

    This parameter concerns the period decomposition scheme. To maximize the periodic rules handling, it is recommended to keep this parameter in sync with them.

    For more information, see the site.forecasting.multipleStartDayOfWeek — Enables using different start days of the week for different locations. setting.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.HorizonDivider.Step: Sets the offset (in days) between consecutive iterations.
    • Enter the number of days to separate the start of two consecutive sub-horizons.
    • Must be greater than or equal to 1, and never greater than the value of HorizonDivider.Length.
    • Default = 7 days

    This parameter concerns the period decomposition scheme. Using a value lower than the HorizonDivider.Length could negatively impact the performance.

    This parameter is not considered when site.scheduling.schedGen.solver.EmployeePreferenceHandlingStrategy is set to Individual Preferences. In this case, the possible use of this feature is not controllable by the end user.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.HorizonDivider.Length: Sets the number of days to process in each iteration.
    • Enter the maximum length of each sub-horizon, in days.
    • Must be greater than or equal to 1
    • Default = 7 days
    • Lengthen the sub-horizon to improve the solution quality, but you reduce the system performance.

    This parameter concerns the period decomposition scheme. This parameter should not be lower than the HorizonDivider.Step. Using a value greater than the HorizonDivider.Step could negatively impact the performance.

    This parameter is not considered when site.scheduling.schedGen.solver.EmployeePreferenceHandlingStrategy is set to Individual Preferences.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.engine.ExcludeExternalEmployees: Restricts or allows selection of transferred employees.

    Controls the scheduling of eligible external employees

    • True = The engine schedules only employees whose primary jobs are in the optimization scope, meaning the jobs that are selected in the Schedule Planner or those jobs specified in the parameter string of the batch task, if the engine is run via batch.
    • False = The engine considers:
      • Employees whose primary jobs are within the optimization scope, and
      • Employees whose primary jobs are outside the optimization scope (external employees), but have been scheduled to work at least one of the jobs in the scope during the loaded period, 2 weeks before the loaded period, or 2 weeks after the loaded period.

        • Example: If the schedule is loading the current schedule period A repeating span of days in the schedule that is defined for administrative purposes, such as pay periods. for a location selection that includes Job X, an employee whose primary job is different from Job X but was transferred to Job X in the previous schedule period will be considered by the schedule generation engine strategy.

      Note: When this setting is False, the behavior is in line with the default behavior of the Schedule Planner when the View transfer set employees setting is not selected in the Schedule Planner configuration.

      This behavior limits clashes when the Schedule Generation engine is run in parallel for multiple locations, either manually or via batch.

Schedule stability is a feature which encourages similar shift start times between off days. It applies to all shifts that are scheduled between off days and does not carry over from one week to the next.

There are two different ways to calculate the stability. Only one way can be chosen or a combination of both.

  • Number of unstable occurrences: An unstable occurrence is counted for two consecutive shifts with deviation in start times greater than the tolerance.

  • Number of unstable minutes: Minutes are cumulated for each deviation between two consecutive shift starts. Note that this sub-objective does not consider the tolerance setting.

The Stable Strategy Weight parameter gives the weight associated with the schedule stability.

  • A weight equal to zero means that the schedule stability is not considered.

  • A weight greater than 0 is shared between two sub-objectives, each one associated with a way to calculate the schedule stability.

The site.scheduling.schedGen.business.protocol.StabilityTolerance setting is the maximum deviation in minutes between two consecutive shift starts to consider an occurrence as a stable occurrence.

The site.scheduling.schedGen.business.protocol.StabilityRelativeWeight setting indicates how to share the weight between the two sub-objectives.

It gives the percentage of weight to consider in the sub-objective based on unstable occurrences. The remaining percentage if applied to the sub-objective based on the unstable minutes.

Example:

Suppose Stable Strategy Weight = 1000 in the strategy and suppose site.scheduling.schedGen.business.protocol.StabilityRelativeWeight = 80 in the system setting.

This Stable Strategy Weight is shared as following.

• Weight for the unstable occurrences: (80% of 1000) = 800

• Weight for the unstable minutes: (20% of 1000) = 200

StabilityRelativeWeight = 100 means that only the unstable occurrences are considered.

StabilityRelativeWeight = 0 means that only the unstable minutes are considered.

  • site.scheduling.schedGen.business.protocol.StabilityTolerance: Threshold in minutes for the unstable occurrences sub-objective.
  • site.scheduling.schedGen.business.protocol.StabilityRelativeWeight: Percentage of weight considered in the sub-objective based on unstable occurrences. Remaining percentage of weight is for the sub-objective based on the deviation in minutes between the shift starts.
  • • site.scheduling.schedGen.rules.emphasizeMinHours: Sets the offset (in days) between consecutive iterations.
    • None (default) = Setting is not enabled.

    • Weekly Hours = Emphasize the minimum hours per week rules.

    • Period Hours = Emphasize the minimum period hours rules.

    • All = Emphasize minimum hours per week and minimum period hours rules.

      • Note: The enablement of this parameter can have significant impact on the overcoverage. It can also be inconsistent with a limited budget. In this case, the minimum hours rules may not be respected. Moreover, the achievement of the minimum hours cannot be done at the expense of violating hard rules.