Availability within Auto schedule
Updated
by
Leigh Hutchens
Within the Quinyx Auto schedule solution, we are able to consider the availabilities provided by the employees, through the Availability function, to indicate when they are available to work. Please read more about the availability function in the mobile app here.
Scheduling according to availability within our Auto schedule solution can be considered a hard requirement or a soft requirement.
Availability is considered a hard requirement
If the availability provided by the employees is considered a hard requirement, it means that the Quinyx Auto schedule solution should not schedule shifts that cannot be worked due to a lack of suitably provided availability.
The availability provided is considered a constraint by the Quinyx Auto schedule solution within two scenarios:
- The availability provided on a single day determines how many employees can be scheduled within that day such that no more shifts are created than the availability provided. This ensures that the shifts created are workable by the available workforce.
- The availability provided per each time slot determines how many employees can be scheduled within that time slot. This ensures that shifts are not created for a time period for which no availability is provided.
Availability is by default seen as a hard requirement, so no additional rule configuration is needed to handle an availability as a hard requirement provided that you already use Quinyx Auto schedule within your business. However, you do need to reach out to Quinyx to enable availability to be used within the algorithm solutions. Without enabling it, availability will not be considered.
Risks of setting availability as a hard requirement
Whenever you consider availability as a hard requirement there is a risk that the availability provided and the hours demanded do not match. That means that you might expect to see created shifts at a certain day or time period because of existing demand, but the outcome of the Auto Schedule results in little or no shifts due to the lack of availability.
This holds true for cases where:
- The availability provided are fewer hours than the required hours on a specific day or time period.
- The availability provided are added on times where there are no required hours on specific days or time periods.
In both of these cases, no sufficient number of shifts would be created by the Quinyx Auto schedule solution. Therefore, please make sure that the shifts actually can be created within the provided availability before contacting Quinyx support when seeing fewer shifts on specific days or time periods than you expected to see.
Availability is considered a preferential requirement
Whenever availability is considered a preferential requirement, then no constraints are set on the Quinyx Auto schedule solution and shifts will simply be created matching demand and the workforce.
