Support Row/Supporting Shifts

May 11, 2021

942

A common occurrence in scheduling scenarios is having someone from one group work a shift in another group. Perhaps a Day Shift officer picks up an Evening shift as well to cover a staffing shortage, or just stays a couple hours late on his/her day shift to cover a partial staffing shortage.

We need a good way to organize these supporting shifts, a way that indicates that they are not someone who is usually in that group, but due to the aforementioned circumstances, they are helping out for the day. In comes our "Support Row" feature.

General Functionality

By default, each Group on the Calendar will have its very own "Support" row. This row is light-green in color, and is displayed at the bottom of each group.

This feature has a couple settings that can be switched on or off, however by default this row will ALWAYS display on the group, even if no supporting shifts exist in the calendar period.

The Support Row shows any people that are working shifts that "support" the group in question. These cells actually update on-the-fly, just like minimum staffing rows do. As supporting shifts are added, the respective group and support cell will reflect how many supporting shifts are being worked.

If only a single supporting shifts exists for that group/day combo, then the initials of the supporting person will display in the cell.
If MORE than one supporting shift exists for that group/day combo, a count will be shown instead, indicating the number of supporting shifts.
Any time there are supporting shifts, you can right-click that particular support cell, and you will be shown a breakdown of who the supporting people are, and what shifts/times they are working.

Keep in mind that a supporting shift will not necessarily be a "full" shift (8hr, 10hr, 12 hr, etc.), it could be something like a holdover from a user in a neighboring shift. This is where that right-click breakdown menu will prove very useful.

What Qualifies as a "Supporting" Shift?

NOTE: No matter what happens, a person's normal/regular schedule will always update with any new shifts/changes, it's just a question of whether or not a shift is ALSO considered a supporting shift.

Extra Shifts from a different group

By default, any "Extra Shifts" that are claimed/assigned to someone outside of the group those Extra Shifts exist in, will be considered a supporting shift.

e.g. If I create Extra Shifts in the Day Shift Group, and someone from the Night Shift receives one of those shifts, then that person would be considered a "Supporting Shift" in the Day Shift Group.
On the other hand, if someone from the Day Shift Group receives that shift, they will NOT be considered a Supporting Shift, as they are already a part of the Day Shift Group.

Shifts that contribute towards a group's minimum staffing level

By default, this behavior is disabled, but it can be enabled by visiting a Group's respective "Edit" page here (Admin Tab -> Groups & Schedules -> Groups)

Once enabled, this method not only counts Extra Shifts from different groups as "Supporting", but also counts any shift that affects the minimum staffing level for that group. This means things like holdovers, miscellaneous shifts that appear now and then, and basically any shifts that overlaps with a group, will be considered Supporting Shifts.

e.g. If an officer from the Day Shift (0600-1400) stays a couple hours late (1600), then he/she would be considered a supporting shift in the Afternoon Shift (1400-2200) group for those final 2 hours (1400-1600).
Keep in mind that you site's minimum staffing rules will need to be in place for this to meet your expectations. If, for example, a payroll employee were to stay late and work 1400-1600, they would not count towards the patrol minimum staffing, as the Patrol staffing rule is likely not set to count payroll personnel. This is probably obvious to most, but this is an extreme example to help convey the point that minimum staffing settings play a large role here.

Enabling/Disabling Supporting Shifts

Each Group has its own set of Supporting Shift settings that can be toggled on and off. To begin, go here (Admin Tab -> Groups & Schedules -> Groups).

Here, you will see a table (aka "index") of your site's various Groups. You can see right away that most of these groups have one of the "Support" settings enabled, and the other "Support" setting disabled. Click "Edit" next to the relevant group. I'll pick the Day Shift Group for this example.

You should now see all of the various settings for this Group, including the two settings relevant to Supporting Shifts.

Show Extra Support

Show an extra row called the Support Row. This row includes any people who are not part of the group, but who are either working an Extra Shift for the group, or who count towards the manpower count of the group.
The checkbox for "Include Outside Contributions to Manpower in Support Row" must be enabled below for this latter behavior to apply.

Include Outside Contributions to Manpower in Support Row

This is only relevant if the Support Row is enabled above. If checked, the Support Row will always include any people who are not part of the group, but who contribute towards the manpower count for the group, even if they weren't added via the Extra Shift row.
If your department only has users helping out in other shifts a handful of times per day, and your shifts don't overlap or only overlap by 15 or 30 minutes, you'll probably want to leave this setting disabled. If your department has lots of overlapping shifts, and people move around constantly to help shortages on other shifts, then you may want to enable this setting, since adding those shift via the "Extra Shift" feature may be inefficient in those cases.