Auto-Assign
Understand Auto-Assign diagnostics
Identify the rule or shortage that prevented coverage.
1. What diagnostics show
For each uncovered shift, diagnostics show required and filled positions, location shortages and why candidate employees could not be used.
2. Common causes
- The employee is on leave.
- The assignment would overlap another shift.
- The employee reached a weekly-hours limit.
- A work-pattern or shift-transition rule excludes the date.
- Required rest would be violated.
- The employee cannot satisfy the required location.
- There are not enough active employees for the requested headcount.
3. When diagnostics say the work pattern blocks coverage
Work pattern rest days block coverage means the employee is not merely lower priority: Auto-Assign is not allowed to assign that employee on that date under the work pattern.
If the shortage repeats on the same dates, compare employee phases and anchors. Identical anchors synchronize rest days, and anchors separated by a whole cycle length can also represent the same phase.
If the shared rest days were not intentional, first stagger historical anchors across different cycle positions. Do not reduce a genuine rest requirement merely to silence the warning.
Template rotation order blocks coverage is different: the employee is on a pattern working day, but the current rotation block expects a different Shift Template.
4. Resolve a shortage
Correct the underlying data, reduce or move demand, or assign an employee manually when you have reviewed the warning. Rerun Auto-Assign for the affected range and compare the new diagnostics.
5. Use the same blocker evidence across Auto-Assign reports
Auto-Assign can explain applicable coverage blockers including leave, availability, employee preferences, Work Patterns, locations, rest rules, weekly caps and shift transitions.
The same evidence is carried into the Auto-Assign result dialog, saved Schedule Logs, dry-run preview and issue PDF so a shortage can be investigated from the same underlying reasons.
6. Refresh Scheduling Issues explicitly
Settings → Scheduling Issues performs its multi-pass feasibility assessment only when you choose Refresh. If you change organization, department or scheduling inputs, refresh again for the new scope.
If the background assessment cannot start or its worker fails, ElShift returns a retryable Scheduling Issues error instead of running the expensive assessment on the browser UI thread. Retry the refresh after the browser is stable.
Caution groups explain causes and may overlap. Use Uncovered positions and Affected dates as the staffing totals; do not add cause-group counts together.
7. Refresh Scheduling Issues when you need a new check
Scheduling Issues does not recalculate every time you open Settings or make an edit. Select Refresh when you want a current check of the schedule inputs.
- 1.Select Refresh.
- 2.If you change scheduling inputs afterward, refresh again before relying on the previous result.
- 3.Open Details or download the PDF after a successful refresh.
If the check fails, ElShift keeps the failure visible instead of showing an empty result.
8. Read the Scheduling Issues totals correctly
The summary separates Caution groups, Uncovered positions and Affected dates. Uncovered positions is the staffing shortage total. Affected dates tells you how many dates contain at least one shortage.
Caution groups explain why shortages may be happening. One shortage can appear under more than one cause, so do not add the cause counts together to calculate staffing need.