Patterns are a great solution if you have employees doing repeating shifts or if you have locations that need to be covered at all times.

Instead of creating shifts individually, patterns offer you a workflow in which you can perform various actions related to shifts in one go. You can later Edit or Extend a pattern.

To access the pattern page, hover over Schedule from the main menu And click on Pattern.

To add a pattern, click on “Add New Pattern” on the listing page. Or, if you are on the schedule page, click on the “New Pattern” button above the calendar.

A 3-step form will appear in a dialogue box. To create the pattern, follow these steps:

Insert pattern name, search and insert business unit, client contact person, and insert any additional instructions in the notes section.

You can also add internal notes. These notes are not shown to staff.

Set up a time range, and select the frequency of shifts. Whether you want to repeat every week or every second week, and so on. The first week of the month, the second week of the month, and so on. Click on the table to create shifts.

The table is divided into the number of working hours per day and days of the week. Each hour is divided into 4 small columns of 15-minute slots.

As shown in the example below, if you want to create a shift on Wednesday starting at 9:00 am, you will click the 9:00 am column in the Wednesday row. It will add a shift on Wednesday starting from 9:00 am, you can later on adjust the time.

Keep an eye on the calendar, as it will give you an overview of the shifts we've created in real time.

Shifts can only be created on future dates. The date range is important as it will not allow you to create shifts outside the time range. When you create a shift on a date, it will be shown in the calendar with a red border.

If you create a shift that is outside the time range, the date on the calendar will not get a red border indicating that the shift on this date cannot be added.

Irrespective of what repetition frequency you choose, the End date in the date range is very significant. The pattern will be finished automatically at the end date.

Tick the checkbox Do not apply on bank holidays if you want the pattern to skip bank holidays. You can also add specific dates on which the shift will not be created. To do so, click on Add Exclusive Dates. Insert start date and end date.

Each time you click on the table against a time and a day, a shift row is added. Select a job position.

You can also add the number of positions available. If several staff are required for a shift, you can adjust the number of positions accordingly. You can adjust the start and end times. You can also add breaks in minutes.

As you can see in the example, the pattern starts from 24 on Saturday and ends on Thursday 29th February. Friday is outside the date range, so you will not be able to create a shift on Friday in this pattern. When you click on Next with a shift on Friday, it will give you an error.

Everything is set up in step 2. Click on Next.

You cannot only overview the shifts, but you can also adjust them if you want. To make any changes, check the Expand view checkbox to see shifts in more detail, and it will also allow you to assign staff, or you can decide whether it is an open shift or an empty shift.

In the third step, you get various options to perform actions on the shifts.

The filters on the left sidebar are important. It helps in narrowing down and matching jobs with candidates. Two filters – Only Available and Match Position are selected by default.

Only Available checks if the staff is available on these dates.

Match Position will match the shift position with the employee position in the profile.

At the end of every shift row, there is a “Copy to Week” checkbox. This option will be available after you assign the shift to an employee from the staff field. Select the checkbox to copy the shift to the whole week.