Versaschedule

What is a Task?

Tasks are basically shifts of work. Suppose you run a small store that has a morning shift and an afternoon shift, each staffed by one person. In this case you would create a task called "Morning shift" and one called "Afternoon shift". Versaschedule will then create a schedule with these two tasks by assigning eligible employees to staff each task when required. Here are some examples:

A restaurant might have tasks such as: "Server 9am-5pm", "Server 10am-6pm", "Server 11am-7pm", "Server 4pm-8pm", "Server 5pm-close", "Host 9am-5pm", "Bartender 4pm-8pm", "Bus 9am-5pm", "Bus 5pm-close"

An orthopedic residency program may have rotations such as: "SICU", "Night float", "Trauma", "Peds", "MSK", "Podiatry", "Tumor", "Spine", "Vascular"and "Plastics"

A radiology department may have shifts such as: "CT", "US", "MRI", "Mammo", "Biopsy", "Flouro", "MR", and "Call"

A pharmacy may have multiple rotations that need to be staffed each day, such as "A shift", "B shift", "H shift", "G shift", and "J shift". "A shift" might represent the employees staffing the inpatient pharmacy from 8a-8pm, while "H shift" may represent the staff assigned to delivering medications from 7a-5p and so on.

Task duration

For each specific task, you need to specify the duration of the task. In most cases, you'll use a task duration of 1 day if you want staff to be able to do something different each day. However, some schedules are designed on a weekly basis such that if someone is assigned to "Task A", then they perform "Task A" for everyday of the week or a duration of 5 days. For a task that lasts the entire week, set the duration to 7 days.

Task start and end times

You can specify when the task starts and when it ends; however, these times are only used to describe the task in the schedule and are not used to specifically allocate staffing.

How many staff per task?

Specify the number of preferred staffing for each task. For example, if you need 2 employees on "Task A", set the "Pref # of Staff" to 2. Minimum and maxiumum staffing number can also be set, but Versaschedule will always attempt to create your schedule with the Preferred Staffing #.

Minimum Time Between Assignments

In many cases, staff prefer not to be assigned to the same task day after day. Set the minimum time between assignments for each particular tasks in terms of days or months.

Task Tally Options

Versaschedule will try to allocate work as evenly as possible between employees. Include a task in the tally if you would like this task to be counted towards the total work. For example, you may have some accessory tasks that need to be staffed, but do not necessary count as work, such as a particular meeting an employee is responsible for attending. By default, every task is included in the tally.

Each task can also have a tally weight. By default, all tasks should be set to 1 and therefore will be of equal weight. If you are assigned to Task A for one day and I am assigned to Task B for one day, then at the end of the day we both will have performed the same amount of work. However, there are some complex schedules that require different weights to be assigned to different tasks because not all tasks are considered equal work. In this case, you can change the "Tally Method" in Employer Settings to "Customize by Tally Weight" and then adjust the Tally weight for each task as you see fit.

When is the task active?

You'll need to tell us which days of the week each task is active on and requires staffing. Also, if this task needs coverage on a holiday, you'll need to check of the "Holidays" checkbox. In most cases, you'll have every task requiring coverage on every weekdays and a few tasks needing staffing only on weekends and holidays.

For tasks that have a duration of more than one day, this setting also serves to specify the first day that someone can be assigned to this task. For example, if you have a task that has a duration of 5 days starting on Mondays, then you should only select Monday. If you were to select Monday and Tuesday, then you have staff assigned to this task from Mon-Fri and from Tues-Sat.