Apply a rotation plan to a job. You select the previously configured Rotation Plans from the drop-down list.

Apply a rotation plan to the assignments in the job. You select the previously configured Rotation Plans from the drop-down list.

If selected, the software attempts to schedule the same number of hours for all employees. This feature can be useful during slower periods when you want to keep all employees on the schedule. The software divides the total labor requirements by the number of employees and schedules all of them for the same number of hours.

Determine what criteria is used to prioritize scheduling.

• By Job Schedule Order—Schedules the employee's home job first and then schedules other jobs they are authorized to work. The order is determined in Employee Maintenance.

• By Seniority—Schedules the employees by seniority.

• By Employee Set—This option is only used by specific clients and should only be chosen if directed to do so by your System Administrator.

Control how the Job Date and Job Rank sort orders behave. If selected, the software finds and uses the earliest date or lowest rank of any job in the same department. If cleared, the software looks at and uses the individual job seniority dates or ranks. 

Determine how to schedule if you have too few employees to cover the projected work.

• Flat—Creates a schedule with an equal number of hours. For example, if you have 560 hours of available staff but your forecast is for 700 hours, RMS will schedule 80 hours per day as opposed to the 100 hours needed (560 ÷ 7 = 80).

• Percent—Creates a schedule based on volume. This selection lets you provide optimum staffing for both high-volume and low-volume days based on percentages. For example, if you only have staff to cover 80% of your work requirement, RMS will schedule up to 80% of forecast hours for each day.

Determine how the shifts are sorted before scheduling occurs. Each of the methods produce a different weekly schedule. Your selection is important if the job is typically understaffed.

• Default—Creates a schedule that starts at the beginning of the week (which you specified when configuring the Property General screen). If there are not enough available employees, you will be short-staffed at the end of the week. Select this option when there is a sufficient number of employees to schedule.

• Peak—Creates a schedule with more hours on high-volume days and fewer hours on low-volume days. The result might be that high-volume days are covered well, but low-volume days are not. This option is often used when there is a shortage of employees to schedule.

• Modified Peak—Prioritizes scheduling of the days that are hardest to fill. For example, you might have several employee restrictions on Tuesdays, therefore, fewer employees available on that day. Tuesdays would be scheduled before any other days, even though Tuesdays might not be your busiest days.

• Cascade—Begins each iteration of the schedule on successive days of the week. For example, if your schedule week starts on Sunday, the first schedule pass will cover Sunday through Saturday, the second schedule pass will cover Monday through Sunday, and so on.

• By Day—Creates a schedule that starts on the day you specify and at the top of the list of employees. If you select By Day, you have access to the Day Order list. This scheduling method is similar to Peak; however, you choose the day order rather than having the software automatically order the days.

  • Day Order—Prioritize which days get scheduled first. By default, Sunday is the start of the workweek. Use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to place the days of the week in the priority order you want. Select this option if you are short-staffed but want to be sure that certain days are fully staffed. Note that this option is only available if you chose By Day as the Scheduling Method.

Opens the Employee Sort Order dialog box, where you define the scheduling order for this job. The top-to-bottom order determines which employees get scheduled first and how they are chosen. Click and drag (  ) options to the desired order.

If you have two employees with the same Hire Date, RMS goes through the order you specified until it finds a difference and creates the schedule accordingly. If all criteria for two employees are exactly the same, RMS will look at the full-time status of the employees and schedule them before part-time employees. If there are no differences found, RMS will ultimately default to an alphabetical sort order. 

• Full-time—Schedules full-time employees in this job first and part-time employees second.

• Job Rank—Schedules employees in this job by skill level. Higher-skilled employees (1 being the highest and 100 being the lowest) are scheduled first.

  Note: Skill is the most common Sort Order and gives the most hours to the most highly-skilled employees.

• Job Date—Schedules employees in this job by the date on which the employee was trained for the job. Employees who have worked in this job the longest will be scheduled first.

• Hire Date—Schedules employees in this job by hire date/seniority. Employees employed the longest will be scheduled first.

• Alpha—Schedules employees in this job alphabetically. Seniority issues are disregarded.

• Assignment Rank—Schedules employees in this assignment by skill level.

• Employee Type—Schedules employees by Employee Type during the scheduling process.

Minimum number of hours an employee must have off between shifts. If you enter "8" here and the employee is scheduled from 14:00 to 22:00, the employee will not be scheduled again until 06:00 the next morning. If there is no minimum time off between shifts, enter "0".

Minimum number of consecutive days an employee must have off between shifts. If your policy is to give two consecutive days off, enter "2" in this field so that an employee who is scheduled Thursday through Monday will not be scheduled again until Thursday. If you do not have a policy on consecutive days off between shifts, enter "0".