Configure shift templates

Shift templates define a standard shift with common characteristics for one or many employees. You can then assign the shift to an employee or to many employees without needing to specify any characteristics.

Use shift templates when any of the following apply:

  • The organization uses standard shifts to assign to employees.
  • Multiple employees work the same shift.
  • Employees use Employee Self-Service (ESS) to create and manage their own schedules.

Example: Most employees in a department work from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Create a shift template that contains the start and end times, and segments for breaks and lunch. Then, assign this shift template to the employees.

  1. From the Main Menu, select Administration > Application Setup Scheduler Setup > Shift Templates.
  2. Click New to create a new shift template.
  3. Enter a Shift Name and (optionally) a Label.
  4. Enter the data in the row for the first shift segment. A shift can have one segment, or more than one segment.
    • Type— Select the shift segment type: Regular, Transfer, or Break.
    • Day— Select the day when the shift segment starts (always day 1 for the first segment in a shift). Select 2 if a subsequent segment begins after the day divide (typically midnight).
    • Start Time— Enter the start time of the shift or segment.
    • Day— Enter the day when the segment ends. Enter 1 to indicate that the shift ends on the same day as it starts. Enter 2 to indicate that it ends the following day.
    • End Time— Enter the end time of the segment.
    • Tags— Select a shift tag to assign to the template.
    • Skills and Certs— Select one or more Skill and Certification profiles to assign to the template.
    • Transfer— If the segment is a transfer, select a labor account, job, or work rule transfer. A transfer is not valid for the Break segment type.
  5. To enter another segment, click Insert Row and repeat step 4.
  6. To delete a segment, click Remove Row .
  7. Click Save.
  8. Add the shift template to a Data Access Profile. See Add a shift template to a Data Access Profile for more information.

Add a shift template to a Data Access Profile

Once you have created a shift template, you need to add it to one or more Data Access Profiles to make the shift template available to employees.

Note: You can configure Open Shift and Self-Scheduling request subtypes to filter open shifts based on whether or not the shift matches attributes specified in a shift template. See the Using shift templates to filter requests for open shifts section below for more information.
  1. From the Main Menu, select Administration > Application Setup > Access Profiles > Data Access Profiles > Shift Templates.
  2. Select a profile and click Edit.
  3. Select the shift templates you want to add to the profile from Available Shift Templates and click the right arrow to display them in Selected Shift Templates.
  4. Click Save & Return.

Search for a shift template

You can use the Search functionality to find an existing shift template. Search is case-insensitive.

  1. In Search, enter either the exact shift template name or a partial name using wildcards:
    • Use an asterisk to substitute for multiple characters.

      Examples: Enter *12 to find any name that ends in 12, such as D12, E12, or N12. Enter day*.* to find any name that starts with day and includes a ".", such as Day3.30 or Day7.30. Enter D* to find all shifts that start with D.

    • Use ? to find one character.

      Example: Enter day? to find any name that starts with day, followed by one character, such as Day7 or Day9.

    • Use more than one ? to find multiple characters.

      Examples: Enter day?? to find any name that starts with day followed by two characters, such as Day12 or Day36. Enter J??n to find any names that begin with J, contain two unknown letters, and end with n.
  2. Click Tap Search.

    If there is no match for the search criteria, no results are shown.
  3. To display the full list of shift templates, either clear the search criteria or enter a * in Search, then click Search.

Edit a shift template

Note: After shifts are assigned to employees or groups, edits to the template do not change the assigned shifts.
  1. Select the shift template you want to edit.

    To locate an existing shift template, see Search for a shift template.
  2. Click Edit.

    The Shift Templates page appears, with the shift template you selected for editing displayed.
  3. Change the shift template attributes as needed.
  4. Save your changes.

Duplicate a shift template

Duplicate a shift template when you want to use an existing shift template to create a new shift template with modifications to the original shift template's segments.

Note: When you duplicate a shift template, it is given the default name of "Copy of <source shift template name>".
  1. Select the shift template you want to duplicate.

    To locate an existing shift template, see Search for a shift template.
  2. Click Duplicate.

    The Shift Templates page appears, with the newly duplicated shift template displayed.
  3. Change the shift template name and any other attributes of the new shift template as needed.
  4. Save your changes.

Delete a shift template

Note: If you delete a shift template, shifts from that template that are currently assigned to employees or groups are not affected.
  1. Select a shift template.

    To locate an existing shift template, see Search for a shift template.
  2. Click Delete.
  3. Review the Confirm message and click Yes or No. Deleting a template removes it from view but does not affect employees who are already assigned to it.

Hide Shift Breaks from Employee Displays

You can choose to hide shift breaks where shift segments are displayed to employees:

  • My Schedule tile (shift information)
  • My Timecard page (shift information in the Schedule column)
  • My Calendar page (shift information on the Events and Requests tabs)
  • Cover, open, self-schedule, and swap shift requests (shift information)

When you hide breaks from the employee's display, the displayed shift retains its original length, but the end of the first shift segment or the start of the second shift segment is increased by the duration of the break configured for the shift. For example, given a shift comprised of regular and transfer segments with a 30-minute break such as this:

  • 7:00am-12:00pm Regular
  • 12:00pm-12:30pm Break
  • 12:30pm-5:00pm Transfer

The adjusted segments displayed to the employee will be either this:

  • 7:00am-12:30pm Regular
  • 12:30pm-5:00pm Transfer

or this:

  • 7:00am-12:00pm Regular
  • 12:00pm-5:00pm Transfer

This behavior also applies to shifts that are comprised of two transfer segments, each of which has different properties.

When the original shift has two regular segments and a break, the resulting shift is displayed as a single regular segment.

Settings to hide breaks

You use two settings to hide breaks from the employee's display:

  • The Hide Shift Breaks Access Control Point (ACP). If set to Allowed, shift breaks are hidden from the employee's view wherever shift information is displayed. See Employee ACPs for more information.
  • The global.hiddenBreaks.transferSegmentBehaviour system setting determines which segment will be extended to account for the break's duration. See Global Values System Settings for more information.
Note: These settings do not affect the display of breaks in areas of the application accessible to managers and administrators, such as the Schedule Planner. They affect only the employee's display.

Using shift templates to filter requests for open shifts

By default, shifts displayed to employees submitting an open shift request are those that match the Location Filtering and Scheduling Contexts attributes of the Open Shift or Self-Scheduling request subtypes used to submit the request. If you choose, you can also configure these request subtypes to display only those requests that also match these shift template attributes:

  • Label (if a label is not specified, the name is used for matching purposes)
  • Type (used for matching only if Break is specified)
  • Start Time
  • End Time
  • Skills and Certifications
  • Work Rules
  • Labor Categories
  • Organization/Job (used for matching only if specified)

The segment tag specified in the shift template is not used for matching purposes.

For a shift to be displayed to an employee, the values in the shift must match the values of all shift template attributes used for matching.

Note: This feature is supported only for Self-Scheduling request subtypes configured for Open Shifts; it has no effect on Self-Scheduling request subtypes configured for Shift Templates.

Example: The administrator adds these open shifts to the schedule:

  • Label: Day
  • Start Time: 8:00AM
  • End Time: 5:30PM
  • Organization/Job: Nurse

  • Label: Night
  • Start Time: 6:00PM
  • End Time: 2:30AM
  • Organization/Job: Nurse

If the employee was assigned a shift template profile with a shift template whose Label was Morning, or whose start time was 7:30AM, or for which a different job was specified, neither of these shifts would be displayed to the employee.

To configure this functionality, you must:

  • Enable the Use Shift Template Profile to Filter Open Shifts setting on either or both Open Shift and Self-Scheduling request subtypes. See Configure Open Shift Requests and Configure Self-Schedule Requests for more information.
  • Create shift templates with the desired attributes, as described earlier in this topic.
  • Add the desired shift templates to a shift template profile, as described earlier in this topic.
  • Assign that shift template profile to the desired employees in People Information > Scheduling > Scheduler. See Scheduler for more information.