Prepare a schedule for Auto-Assign

1. Make sure there is staffing demand

• Create the dated shifts or recurring Shift Templates that should exist in the period.
• Set the required headcount or location/template minimums. A shift with no staffing demand gives Auto-Assign nothing to fill.
• If you use locations, verify each location/template requirement instead of relying on an overall shift total.

2. Check employee eligibility inputs

• Confirm the employees are active in the correct organization or department.
• Review weekly-hour modes and explicit limits.
• Record leave for the dates employees cannot work.
• Review shift and weekday likes/dislikes, remembering that disliked choices block Auto-Assign.
• Review location settings, remembering that a non-empty liked-location set restricts Auto-Assign to those locations.
• Check work patterns and anchor dates, especially synchronized employees using the same cycle.
• Review organization rest rules and shift-transition rules.

3. Understand Avoid consecutive days

Settings → Schedules & Templates includes an Avoid consecutive days scheduling rule. When it is enabled, Auto-Assign will not place an employee without an active work pattern on adjacent days.

Employees with an active work pattern follow their configured work/rest cycle instead. Consecutive working days required by that pattern are not blocked by this setting.

When Avoid consecutive days is off, adjacent days are allowed for employees without a work pattern. Auto-Assign can still prefer a non-adjacent option when otherwise comparable employees are available.

4. Use Work Pattern guidance before changing the cycle

When a confirmed shortage is caused by synchronized Work Pattern rest days, ElShift can offer Find a better anchor date. That action opens the affected employee and runs the same scheduling dry run used by the employee's Suggest anchor date control. The recommendation remains read-only until a user with write access explicitly applies it.

ElShift keeps different causes separate. A rotation mismatch means the required Shift Template does not match the employee's current rotation slot; it is not presented as a synchronization problem. If total eligible staffing cannot meet the required headcount, the guidance recommends adding staff or reducing required coverage instead of pretending an anchor change can fix the shortage.

• Synchronized rest-day shortage: test a better anchor phase.
• Single employee on a pattern rest day: review that employee's anchor and intended working day.
• Rotation mismatch: review Shift Template rotation and cycle alignment.
• Insufficient total staffing: add capacity or reduce the requirement.

5. Treat work-pattern rest days as unavailable

A work-pattern rest day is not a weak preference. Auto-Assign cannot assign that employee on that date.

If everyone who can cover the demand shares the same pattern phase, they can all become unavailable together. For five employees on a 3-on/2-off pattern, the most even setup is five consecutive historical anchor dates, one for each position in the five-day cycle.

Also make sure the anchor is not after the date you are trying to schedule: dates before an employee's anchor are outside the active cycle and are rejected by Auto-Assign.

6. Choose the date range deliberately

Auto-Assign runs against the selected dates. If the chosen period is not aligned Monday through Sunday, ElShift asks whether to use the exact selected dates or expand to full weeks. Choose based on the planning period you actually intend to change and review.

7. Review coverage before committing

Use the coverage preview to find obvious shortages before saving assignments. A shortage can be caused by insufficient headcount, an unfillable location, leave, weekly limits, work-pattern dates, rest rules or transition rules.

8. Existing assignments are preserved

Auto-Assign fills remaining demand without replacing existing assignments. If you want the engine to reconsider a person who is already assigned, clear that assignment first.

9. Confirm the organization timezone before Auto-Assign

Auto-Assign requires a saved organization scheduling timezone. If ElShift reports that the organization timezone is required, open Settings → Workspace, select the correct IANA timezone and save it before running Auto-Assign again.

10. Refresh a long-lived browser tab when ElShift says the scheduler is outdated

ElShift rejects an Auto-Assign plan produced by an obsolete browser scheduling bundle instead of applying it. Refresh the browser tab so it loads the current scheduler, then run Auto-Assign again.

11. Check Work Patterns, leave and Days off

Before running Auto-Assign, check each employee's Work Pattern and First working day, approved leave and manager-set Days off. These can all make an employee unavailable on a date even when the employee would otherwise be suitable.

12. One employee gets at most one shift per schedule date

Auto-Assign will not place the same employee on two shifts that share the same schedule date, even when one shift starts exactly when the other ends.

If an older automatic schedule contains this kind of duplicate, rerunning Auto-Assign can repair the automatic assignment. Conflicting manual assignments are left for a manager to review rather than being removed silently.

13. Include approved Cannot work requests

An approved Cannot work request keeps the employee unavailable on the affected date. Check recent request decisions before Auto-Assign if you expected that employee to appear as available.

14. Remember overnight shifts at week boundaries

A review of the selected period still accounts for an overnight shift that starts inside the period and finishes the next day or week. A shift that started before the selected period is not pulled into it only because it ends inside the period.