Our aim is to provide maximum satisfaction for employees. The module provides an online interface for employees where they can check their shifts, request holiday days off and brakes or ask for overtime. Employees can also make changes to their shifts with this application. And of course current labor laws are integrated into our system to ensure legal violations are not a concern.

There are two web-apps: one is for supervisors and one is for operators/agents

Daily maintenance of the schedule

Shift Wizard allows you to maintain and modify the schedules created by RoStar on a daily basis.
The system allows you to manage shift swaps, reassignments, late arrivals, postponements, overtime as well as to hunt for leave from annual leave limits. It also provides the ability to bid for shift start preferences for the next scheduling period, and to create and manage offline or real-time break schedules. In addition, you can generate reports that can be automatically sent to the target area, manage permission roles and maintain the stored employee attributes (skill matrix).

Shift swap

The first step in the swap is to find out who you want to swap with. The swap window will already narrow down the list of people to search for based on shift activity, location and length.

If the schedules of both workers involved in the swap remain correct after the swap (!), a positive feedback is given and the swap is made and registered in the schedules of both workers.
In the opposite case, if the schedule of either of the two exchange partners becomes invalid, an error message is received and the swapping process is aborted. In this case, we have to find another swap partner (another shift) or report it to the administrators as a modification request.

Leave swaps: Leave swaps are only possible for shifts. In this case, the program will make other pre-selections, for example, a holiday can only be exchanged for a same-day shift.

You can check your previous swaps in the Csere áttekintő (Swap overview) window. Whether you are the initiator or the acceptor of a shift swap, it will be displayed here.

Overtime

The Túlóra áttekintő (Overtime overview) window lists all your overtime in a given period, including overtime earned by application and overtime ordered by the administrator.

When applying, you can see the overtime quotas created by the administrators. The list only lists the frames available based on a particular employee’s primary activity.

To apply from an overtime frame, after selecting the frame, you must specify the start date and the number of hours of overtime you would like to work within the frame’s options.

As with the swap function, you can check in advance whether this overtime would be in accordance with the labour regulations by pressing the „Szabályellenőrzés” (Rule check) button. If it is invalid, the program will display the reason for the error.

The program will, of course, check the validity of the overtime during the saving process, regardless of whether you have done so beforehand or not.

Break management

There are two main options:

• offline: the breaks are scheduled together with shifts at planning time
• real time: The breaks are determined in real business situation based on agent’s demand, length of waiting queue and the labour regulations. (In the case of agent status monitoring)

Break management: offline, online using break groups for easier controlling

Dynamic Break controlling is also a key point

This module is a server program running on a central computer, which is responsible for controlling the number of operators who are on break.

Record and display

• the number of people on break
• the timing of breaks
• the number of operators allowed to go out
• warns the supervisor when the operators are absent.

The application can perform a break of multiple groups at the same time, so the number of operators in a separate group can be independently controlled.

The image below shows the “break matrix” window. By setting different filter conditions, you can see the range of workers in a single window, their shifts, and the short and long breaks in the shifts.

Read more about the algorithm behind break scheduling:
A break scheduling algorithm based on the principle of „least frequent break pattern”

Holiday hunting

The holiday hunter module allows employees to manage their own annual leave with as little administrative intervention as possible.
Employees can submit their leave requests against their legally mandated days off, subject to other criteria and limits set by the employer (e.g. min/max number of groups per day/month).

The submitted leave requests can be evaluated individually (“grant/reject”), but Shift Wizard also includes an automatic leave evaluation function. In this case, the software decides whether or not to grant each of the 100 or more leave requests, taking into account the daily employee limits, monthly/daily group limits, and the proportional leave quantity per period.

The image shows a heatmap of absences, where you can visually see which periods are the most and least frequent in terms of holidays.

Preference Bidding

Each employee has a certain number of points for each shift period, which they can allocate to the start of shifts during the bids. Scores vary per worker, based on incentive system, worker qualifications, etc.

In this window, the worker can indicate their work preference for the period before the rostering. This means that they can ‘bid’ for the desired shift start for each day they are scheduled, when it would be most convenient for them to start work that day.

The system shows how many working days there will be in the current bidding period, so it is advisable to adjust the bidding accordingly. The sum of the planned fixed shifts, absences, and the total number of shifts (shifts only, excluding rest day bids) that have been bid so far is displayed. The number of public holiday bids per worker is displayed in the recommended public holiday field to evenly distribute the number of public holiday bids per worker. Finally, the score field shows the monthly bid score for that month.

Shift bid: The daily bid interface can be opened by clicking on to the left of the date. The interface displays the shift start times required by the optimal shift schedule for the selected day. Above each date is a graph showing the number of workers expected for the shift in magenta, with the number of bids placed so far displayed next to it. The three numbers below the date show the minimum, maximum and average number of bids placed so far for that shift.

Click on the start date to start the bidding. In the window that appears, you must enter the desired weight of the bid, which is automatically displayed as a bid score between square brackets.

Before pressing the OK button, the system recalculates and updates the points posted for all shifts, so you can see how the bid points posted for other days change before they are recorded. If you want to plan in advance how many points you will put on each shift, it is a good idea to make a plan before bidding, allocating all available points to the desired bids.

Bidding on rest days: It is also possible to bid on rest days. Any day (except absences and fixed shifts) can be marked as a rest day. In the window that pops up afterwards, you can specify the weight of the bid. The points thus placed are also charged against the monthly bidding point limit. These days are perceived by the system as the days where the bidder would prefer to work the least. Bidding on a rest day is not mandatory, and it is worth considering the number of bids for which the monthly bidding point is divided.