The representation of a person inside an organization. Also known in other systems as an 'employee record' or a 'staff profile', the associate holds all the scheduling and access information for a person that relates to an organization. Note that associates can remain unlinked from a user to be able to schedule people who do not access Mesh AI.

In medical education, trainees spend time working in different clinical areas like surgery, internal medicine, or emergency medicine on a set schedule of 'blocks' throughout the academic year. The block schedule defines which rotation each associate is doing for each block. When a block schedule is published, each rotation in each block for each associate will create tours of duty in the appropriate teams with scheduling characteristics like job qualifications or positions defined for that rotation. An organization or group may have multiple overlapping block schedules as needed to schedule various groups of trainees (e.g. for different post-graduate cohorts).

A group of functionally linked shifts for easy planning. When defining a template, some template rows may be clustered together. In a draft schedule, selecting one clustered shift will immediately select all the shifts in the cluster. As well, when autoscheduling, the autoscheduler will ensure that it always assigns the same associate to all shifts in each cluster. Clustered shifts can be identified by a 'chain link' icon on them in draft schedules. Similarly colored chain link icons identify one cluster. Note that clusters do not function or display outside draft schedules.

A deal is a potential transfer of one or more shifts between associates or from an empty to an associate. Deals can come in two types:

Deals do not affect shifts or who is responsible for the shift until the deal is fully completed. A deal is fully completed when all the participants agree to the deal, an administrator has agreed to the deal. Note that associates without a user are assumed to implicitly agree to a deal since they have no one to make decisions for them. Teams may be configured so that administrator approval is not necessary.

A group is a collection of teams within an organization. Groups are used to organize teams that work closely together, share a functional relationship, or need to be viewed or planned as a unit. Note that teams can belong to multiple groups for a variety of organizational structures. Each group may have its own block schedules, and associates may be given permissions for a group that cascade down to all the teams in that group.

The title of the specific role, duty, or task performed by an associate for the duration of a shift. Associates may be qualified to do a job by setting their job qualifications in a tour of duty.

A short text communication that is sent out by mobile popup and/or SMS message and/or email to let users know that important events or changes have been made on Mesh AI. The types of notifications and delivery methods that users wish to receive can be chosen by users in their User Settings page.

An organization is a collection of teams and associates that all fall under one hierarchical structure. This may be a single hospital, an independent clinic, a cross-hospital health network, etc.

The abilities that an associate has within a team, group, or organization. A 'viewer' permission will let the associate see the entity and its published schedules, but will not allow the associate to modify its settings or manage its schedules in any way. An 'admin' permission will give the associate full control over the entity. Note that permissions cascade. So viewer permission in a group will convey implicit viewer permission for teams under the group, and admin permission in an organization will allow that associate to administrate any group or team in the organization.

A useful label or tag on a tour of duty that can convey job qualifications to an associate for that period, display badges on shifts and requests, and be used to filter calendars, report graphs or rules applied to a team.

A collection of graphs and analyses in a team that can be applied to a period of time to analyse the shifts and requests in that team. From the Reports page in a team, the reports only analyse the current published shifts. However, reports can be viewed in the quick analytics sidebar of draft schedules to analyse the unpublished shifts in that schedule as well.

A period of time for which that one associate indicates a preference for or against work. Requests each have a request type (e.g. prefer off, or vacation). Requests can apply to zero or more teams at once in the following ways:

Requests normally only are considered in scheduling if they are approved. Each application of a request to a team has a separate approval state for that particular team. organization administrators or team administrators should approve or deny requests in each team they appear in. However, depending on the request type settings, the request may not be considered until it has full approval across all teams. Check the request type to see.

A named area of work or study used in a block schedule to define where an associate will work for that block. The rotation definition contains job qualifications and positions for one or more teams. When the block schedule is published, the rotation creates tours of duty for its associate with those parameters in the appropriate teams whose start and end match the block that the rotation was assigned.

A configurable instruction that guides how schedules are filled by the autoscheduler and how associates are recommended for shifts. Each rule defines a specific goal or constraint—like fairness, preferences, or workload limits—that the system tries to follow when assigning shifts. Rules may be linked to custom scheduling data where necessary. Rules can be 'hard', where they will show red flags on shifts that break the rules, or medium/soft that only encourage scenarios in the schedule but do not have a broken state.

A collection of shifts in a team that are created for a specific period of time from one or more templates. Schedule starts as drafts that are unpublished, meaning the shifts in the schedule are not viewable on published calendars, cannot be seen or traded by members, and changes to those shifts are not logged or reported through notifications. Mesh AI supports creating multiple overlapping schedules for the same periods of time if necessary.

A piece of work that a single associate does for a defined period of time. Each shift has a job that describes what the associate is doing for that period of time. Shifts may also contain other information about that period such as notes about the work period, or configurable extra data.

A group of associates and their shifts that are scheduled together, typically working the same sets of shifts with coordinated or interdependent schedules. A team is defined by scheduling inter-relation rather than organizational hierarchy and may not align with departments or other structural units. Each team belongs to a specific organization.

A predefined collection of recurring shift definitions that govern how shifts will be generated when a schedule is created.

A period of time during which an associate is schedulable in a team, along with all the scheduling characteristics of the associate for that period of time in that team, like job qualifications or preferred days of the week. This can range from a single tour of duty for staff physicians that spans their entire employment period with a hospital, to residents having many tours of duty, one for each block of their residency in the different teams they join and leave.

A real person in the world who has an account on Mesh AI. Users may be associated with one or more organizations through an associate record in that organization. Users own their account on Mesh AI and are responsible for determining their preferences about contact information, notifications, and other ways they interact with Mesh AI.