RosterApps Shift Leveling Bids - Part 1

Overview and Setup

Shift Leveling in RosterApps is a function that was designed to facilitate employee users moving themselves from overstaffed situations to understaffed situations. This is accomplished by way of a Shift Leveling Bid in coordination with a Minimum Staffing Plan.

There are two types of Shift Leveling Bids: ‘Exchanging for an Open Shift’ and ‘Open Shift Bidding’. The exchange version requires a relevant Minimum Staffing Plan, but the Open Shift type does not. Of the two, the Open Shift type of Shift Leveling Bid is much more straightforward, so we will cover that first.
Open Shift Bidding types of Shift Leveling bids are created the same way as the other type.

Open Shift Bidding Type Shift Leveling Bids

The first thing we do is make sure that Shift Leveling is enabled for the Location in question. You can check for this at the Company Admin level, Edit the Settings for the Location in question:

 
You won’t see the Shift Leveling tab for a given Supervisor unless the Location in question has Display Shift Leveling enabled at the Company Admin level.
 
We can start by acting as a Supervisor user to the Shift Leveling tab. Next, click on the ‘Create New Shift Leveling Bid’ link. (Note that unlike other bids, such as Shift Bids or Vacation Bids, that Shift Leveling Bids are initiated by a Supervisor user.)

On the Create New Shift Leveling Bid page, you will be configuring your Shift Leveling Bid. The Name field can be whatever you like, but should be unique if possible to save confusion among those doing the bidding. You will need to specify which of Shift Leveling Type bid you are going to create, either the Exchange type or the Open Shift Bid type. Then you will want to set the Bid Process Type. There are three options here:

• First Come First Served will process preferences by timestamp of selections
• Round Robin will make awards per seniority ranking
• Strict seniority will award the most senior participant all preferences up to the users’ specified maximum before moving on to the next-most senior user

You will also need to specify the Seniority Rank Rule you want to utilize for the bid, and you will see whichever Seniority Rank Rules are established for the given Company here. You need to enter a default maximum award per employee, though this can be changed for specific employees later if you choose. You will then need to enter the minimum time before a given shift start to finalize the results of the bid. Lastly, you can select the bidding window open and close dates. Best process here is to finish everything up with the configuration of any bid, before you set the Bidding Window to open. This insures you have everything ready to go, and each participant has the same opportunities as their co-workers.

 
When you have completed your selections, click on the blue ‘Create’ button. Once you have done that, RosterApps will present you with a pop-up:


You can add bid items by clicking ‘Yes’. This can also be done later, but we will click ‘Yes’ for now.
 
On the next page is where you select the shifts you want to include. You should see something like this:

 
At first, you will want to either Show All, or set the filter to only show a specific work group, or range of shifts, or shift types.

Shift Types will enable you to include only established ShiftObjects, or to include placeholder shifts from Open Bid Lines. (These are the placeholder shifts from the ‘Days in Advance to Show Shifts from Open Bid Lines’ setting in a standard Shift Bid package. These shifts are automatically generated for the Supervisor’s Shift Management screen, but unless/until something is done to them (i.e. a shift action is taken on them), they aren’t ShiftObjects yet. This is done for purposes of helping the management fill the schedule for a bidline that doesn’t have anyone currently assigned to it. Once an open bidline has an employee assigned to it, the placeholder shifts will disappear from the date that bidline is filled, but not the ShiftObjects that may have been generated from it.)


So, once we’ve filtered our results, we see the shifts we want to include in our Shift Leveling Bid. We select the ones desired, and the ‘Update Selections’ to add them to our bid.

Next, we will want to establish the Participants. You can go to the Shift Leveling bid you just created, and click on the ‘Select Participants’ link. You should then be taken to a page that looks something like the following:


You can select by clicking the checkbox in the ‘Can Bid’ column to enable that user to be able to bid for this Shift Leveling Bid. You can also affect individually, if you wish to have a different value for the Maximum Awards Possible for each employee, than the default number you entered previously.
Once you have completed checking off those employees you want to be able to bid, click on the blue ‘Update Selections’ button to save your choices. From here you can verify your selections of included shifts, and double-check your list of participants and their maximum awards, and then put in values for the Bidding Window start/stop times and open your bid to the participants.
As people go about making bid preferences, this Shift Leveling Bid History will keep track of users and their selections. Once the bidding window has closed, you can Run the Award, then View and Approve Awards to finalize.
In the event that there are Bid Items (open shifts) left after the bid has been awarded, you can use the last link on the Shift Leveling Bid page to Transfer Items/Participants to a New Shift Leveling Bid.

(Please refer to the Part 2 article for more information)