Period presence

In this section of the manual, we will discuss one of the optional segments of the New schedule input form.

This segment allows you to specify, - more precisely - how your employee's individual needs (regarding their cycles between work and free-time), are to affect the conditions under which they will enter and leave work.

The decision-tree structure of the "Period presence" section(image below) of the New schedule input form, is furnished for your comprehensive, easy-to-read and convenient specification of all the special requests that you might have on behalf of individual employees.

Everything you enter, applies to the entire duration of the schedule (e.g. 2 months).

In the first step of the decision process, you will select one or more employees for whom you want to arrange a common set of interrelations between their on and off-periods. Then proceed to fill in all the following stages, down to as fine a level of detail as the operation of your outfit requires. The thus moderated on-off switching of your employees will coerce WoShi's solver algorithm into creating a more employee-friendly schedule.

The following are the steps that the decision-tree-form will impose on you - subsequent your specification of which subset of workers you are considering for a given set of special conditions which they are to have in common:

• • The number of times that you want the desired "manually softened" sequence to replace what WoShi's otherwise broader -by some accounts perhaps slightly less employee-friendly - default perspective would otherwise come up with.

  • The first line in the Days/Offset column must always be one or more weekdays, to which the rest of the request is to pertain. In the following lines (speaking for the same "Workers" and "Days"), you will list - for the aforementioned days - all the "x days from thence" statements, through which steps to designate each day that is to have, - some form or another - of modified progression, as induced by the influence of the day(s) that kick off the manualy moderated sequence(s).

  • Whether the employee/employees should work on those days, or whether you would rather have WoShi see to it, that those employees get some rest on those days.

  • The hours of the day to which the previous to-work-or-not-to-work-? applies to.

  • Finally, in the "How" column, you will determine which shifts are to be allowed to pass through the filter, and which are not. More on this below.

The button "Period info" allows you to toggle help.

The red numbers will offer you tips, on how specific parts of the decision tree, - those that you had left on your trail as you went through the steps that the form imposed on you - will affect WoShi's final solution of your scheduling problem.

• Anatoly, Barbara, Claudia, Erna

  • • The employees are to spend no less then 2, and no more then 4 - of the sum of all the Saturdays, Sundays and Holidays - on duty. Also on those days, they are only allowed to work shifts that are contained entirely inside midnight(00:00 - 00:00) beginning and midnight(00:00 - 00:00) ending that day.

    • Those same employees are to be free on one of the weekends. (This is expressed by way of "Suturday and one succeeding day(that being Sunday) are to be days-off.") OUT means that all the night shifts that would either beggin or end on one of those days are also not an option on that free weekend.

    • On the first succeeding day, they are to be free, as expressed by the number 1 - Which means 1 subsequent day.

• Lopez

• • This person will never be put on duty on either a Saturday, a Sunday or a Monday, on the 8-16 shift. In other words: In case he or she worked on Saturday or Sunday, he or she will be guaranteed to have the following Monday's morning shift off.

  • eleven employees

    • These are to have the following arrangement 1 x in the entire span of the schedule: One of the weekends on which they will be on duty, is to be guaranteed to be followed by a free weekend.

The final column/branch is headed by the word "How". The following is the meaning of the options that you can choose from in the drop-down menu of this final decision, that the form will ask you to fill.

• • OUT black and orange on the image below - The period designated in the FROM - TO field, is filled entirely by the shift, whereas the shift, need not necessarily begin and/or end inside of the time period in the FROM - TO field.

  • IN green and orange on the image below - In this case, the shift must be entirely contained inside the FROM - TO period (The shift must begin and/or end, either inside or simultaneously as the period).

  • EXACTLY orange in the image below - The shift and the period, must both be of common duration.

Let us also remember, however, what we said in the LINK section of this manual. We established that all time-spans exclude the upper boundary. Therefore, both time ranges in the example given (the designated period and the corresponding shift), exclude the time 14:00. Thus, the 8 - 14 shift in fact falls into all the following categories simultaneously: the OUT, the IN and the EXACTLY.

The final column/branch is headed by the word "How" (after 1.2.2017):

• • OVER

    • black and orange - the shift occupies the entirety of the period declared in the FROM-TO fields.

  • INSIDE

    • green and orange - the shift must either be of the same time-span as the FROM-TO, or must at leas be entirely contained in the FROM-TO.

  • EXACTLY

    • orange - the shif and the FROM-TO must overlap each-other exactly.

  • CONTAIN

  • vse barve, razen rjave - turnusi, ki kakorkoli segajo v obdobje OD - DO

    • is descriptive of all the examples above, except for the one in brown - this category includes all the shifts, that reach into the FROM-TO.

Keep in mind, again, that the period in the TO field does not contain the minimal-time-interval that starts at 14:00 - the minute/quarter-hour/half-hour/hour... that begins at the time signature 14:00, belongs not to the shift, but already to whatever follows that shift (In other words, 14:00 is the moment the 8 - 14 shift ends, and the next one begins). It is evident thereby, that the 8 - 14 shift, in this case, fits into all of the - OVER, INSIDE, EXACTLY and CONTAIN- conditions.