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Overview

The Rostering feature helps manage staff and volunteers for different positions at different times. The Crisisworks web based rostering module uses modern drag and drop features to make its use intuitive and fast and can be used by multiple people at the same time in different locations.

The Rostering feature has the following functionality:

Availability - this allows users to enter what dates, times and shifts they are available to be rostered on for.
Roster Groups - Administrators can create one or more roster groups which contain roles/positions which allows for a set number of roles to fill.
Schedule - this is where Administrators can check what users are available to be rostered on for a position for a certain date and optional shift. They can then drag and drop any available users onto the schedule for the appropriate dates.

When a new deployment is required an announcement can be sent from Crisisworks to users to update their availability records for the upcoming event.

The roster is flexible, you can create roster groups based on location or based on shifts or a combination of both.

Rostering Availability

Managing Rostering Availability

To manage rostering availability, users can go to their user menu and choose Manage Rostering Availability.

Alternatively, from the Dashboard, there is a Roster Availability Periods counter which will take you to the Availability Period datagrid.

Administrators can view staff's availability records from the rostering screen by using the View Staff Availability button at the bottom of the screen.

Entering Roster Availability data (web)

Users need to enter when they are available in order to be scheduled onto the roster. They can also enter when they are unavailable to ensure they are not rostered on for these dates.

There are two ways to add a new availability record

From the Availability Periods datagrid (accessed via either of the two methods above), click on the blue New Roster Availability Period button.
From most other screens in Crisisworks, select the down arrow on the blue "New.." button and choose the "New Roster Availability Period" option

Users will be presented with a form where they can enter the dates they are available or unavailable. They must also select the Shift (a default shift of Main will come with Crisisworks. Administrators see below for how to add a new shift).

To choose that they are unavailable, users can select the Unavailable option from the Availability drop down list.

Administrators can also enter availability periods for users, to do this they will need to select the user from the User drop down list. To find a user quickly, you can start typing the user’s name and the list will be refined.

Note: Most users will only be allowed to enter availability data for themselves, as such the user name will automatically bet set for them.

If the user is available for the day shift or “Main” shift, but is not available for night shift, they will need to create two records for the period, one for each shift.

If a user is available for three months except for one week, they can create one “available” record for three months and one “unavailable” record for one week in the middle, the system will figure our the rest for you!

Entering Roster Availability data (app)

Entering your availability data on the Crisisworks app is the same once you are in the data entry form, however you access it differently. There are two ways to create a new availability record using the mobile app:

Option A: Select “Roster Availability Period” from the green drop down list of options (see image below)
- This green menu is the same as the Blue “New” button on the web, the colour is green for more contrast on the mobile device
Option B: Select the “Roster Availability Period” register from the list of registers for the event, then press the green “+” button on the next screen
- See image below

You can create your data offline, it will sync later when you are online.

Rostering Availability Periods Datagrid

By default the Roster Availability Periods datagrid only displays records that are less than 30 days old. These are automatically viewed via the Active counter. To view older availability records, click on the Total counter.

For Administrators that can view other user's Availability Data, to view your own availability records, you can click on the "Mine" counter.

Exporting Availability Data

To export data from the Availability Periods datagrid, press the “Export to report” button, this will send the selected records to the reporting engine.

Note:

If no records are selected then all records in the current list will be exported.
You can apply a filter (or search) to limit the set of records using the magnifying glass
To export a selection of records, select the specific records you want by individually ticking the boxes to the left of each record.

Once the report has been generated on screen, you have the option to export the report to CSV. To do this, click on the CSV button. This CSV file will be compatible with the Crisisworks Import feature allowing you to make changes and update records and import them into Crisisworks (see below).

Importing Availability Data

To help get started with rostering you can import availability data from other sources via the Crisisworks Import Feature. Only Crisisworks Administrators can import data.

Note: Rostering Availability is stored in a global event called “Roster Availability” so it is accessible in all events.

To access the Roster Availability import feature, select “Settings” from the “Administration” menu

Select “Import Data” from the left had side
From the "What do you want to import" drop down list, select "Availability Periods from “CSV”
Select the “Roster Availability” global event from the event field pick list
Select your CSV file
- To see what fields are required in your CSV file, you can click on the View what field mappings are required in your import data link
- It will be similar to "yoursite”.crisisworks.com/admin/import/field-mappings
Press import
1. If this is your first time doing this use the “Test Only” option which will report any errors but will not import the data

Read further information about Importing data into Crisisworks

Accessing the Rostering screen

To access Rostering, navigate to Administration from the top menu and select “Rostering”

Before being able to roster users you need to set up roster groups with the necessary positions to be rostered on (see below on Roster Groups Usage) and create some availability records.

Figure: Team rosters are managed using an easy to use drag/drop calendar

The smart scheduler finds users based on user's position(s) and availability or non availability for selected dates, so before you start scheduling you need to have availability records created. See above on Rostering Availability.

When you visually select a date range in the calendar area the default filter options on the left show “Any” shift and the Availability of “Free” as the default to show who is available in the position for the specified date range. The image above is filtering for “Any” Availability during the date range of 12/06/2017 through to 14/06/2017 who have the matching position or competency. Colours are used to indicate users level of availability, this is explained in the section “Filling a role within a roster below".

The calendar is viewed by one month, or three months. Each entry in the calendar can be dragged to a new position or you can drag the start or end of the shift to make quick visual edits.

Please note, as of release 4.17, a new 12 month view option will be available.

When viewing in three months or 12 months, the current date will be shown in yellow.

After setting up roster groups and creating some availability records you will be ready to do the scheduling see the “Rostering Usage" section below.

Roster Groups Usage

You can access Roster Groups from the rostering screen or from the event management screen. Roster Groups are basically headings to group your positions on the roster. Roster Groups are flexible and you can give them any name that helps you with your schedule. You can add as many as you like but you need to add at leat one Roster Group to be able to use the roster. You can create them based on location or based on shifts or a combination of both, some examples are below:

North West Depot
QLD Office
Field Inspection Team
Security Team After Hours
On Duty Day Shift & On Duty Night Shift
On Duty Shift A , On Duty Shift B & On Duty Shift C

To access the roster group management screen, select “Rostering” from the Administration menu

Select the “Manage Roster Positions” button at the bottom; or
Click on an existing roster group name within the actual rostering screen

Adding a Roster Group

Once in the roster groups screen, you can add roster groups and add roles within that group. You can expand and collapse the roster groups by selecting the ">" on the left of the name.

To add a roster group press the "Manage Roster Positions" button at the bottom of the screen. (step 1 in image below) then press the save icon at the end of the row ().

You must remember to click on the Save icon at the end of the row otherwise your Roster Group will not be saved

Adding a Roster Position

To add a role/position to a roster group

Expand the roster group you want to edit by pressing the ">" on the left of the roster group name.
Press the “Add Roster Position“ button located under the last of the Roster group's Roles (see number two in the image below)
Select an existing Crisisworks position/competency in the left hand column
1. This position combined with the user's availability will be used to filter the correct users in the scheduling screen
2. The available list of positions to select from are all of the positions associated with the current event
3. If you need more than one person in a role at the same time, you can add the same position twice. Creating the extra role helps visualise gaps in the schedule such as Operator 1 & Operator 2
4. See the discussion on Implementation ideas below
Enter the description for the roster position, this can be the same or different to the Crisisworks position.
Press the save icon ()

Note, as of release 4.17, a new feature has been added allowing you to add a sort order on the Roster Group Positions. This allows you to determine what order you would like the positions to be displayed in on your roster.

To enter a sort order, when you click the "Add Roster Position" button, there is now an additional column called Sort Order. Enter a sort order number in here and click Save. If adding a few positions with ordering, we recommend you increase the sort order numbers by 10. For example, 10, 20, 30 (instead of 1,2,3). This will then give you flexibility to add positions later that you may want to display in between existing positions allowing you to enter a sort order number in between existing ones. The image below shows an example of this - the RO position (with the sort order of 15), will display on the roster in between the MERC and MERO positions.

Rostering Usage

The rostering screen can have one or more rosters, or roster groups, you can expand and collapse the roster groups to help you focus on the one your are working on.

Once the roster groups are set up as outlined above, it is time to start adding people to the roster(s). If you need to edit the roster group at any time, simply click on the name of the roster group.

Having availability records pre-entered for the date range before filling roles into the rosters will help, especially when learning how to use it for the first time.

Filling a role within a roster

The scheduling screen supports drag and drop and visual selections to make adding users to the roster quick and easy.

Firstly, you need to find matching staff based on the roster position and date you are wanting to roster someone on for. You can do this by clicking onto the calendar roster area with your cursor.

On the calendar area, click on a start date on the same row as the position you are wanting to search for. In the example image above, you can click in the box with the row of Operator 2 and the date of June Sat 10. Click and hold the drag out to the date you want to search until. You will notice that this will automatically set the values of the boxes on the lefthand side.
You can also set these parameter manually, in the left hand boxes.

You can use date shortcuts like +4d and today. Clicking on the “?” link will show what shortcuts are available.

Once you have defined your filter you will see a list of available people that have a matching position and availability data. The list is sorted alphabetically on Surname

The default option for the Availability drop down list is set to "Free" which means available users so if there are no matching availability records, you won't see any results. You can change “Free” to. “Any” to see all users with matching positions and their colour codes relating to the defined date range.

Matching Staff Colours Explained

When you search the scheduler, matching staff will appear in various highlighted colours. Below is a list of what each colour means:

Dark Green = Fully Available. The user is fully available for the selected criteria.

Light Green = Partially Free. The user is partially free for the selected criteria. This could mean they are not available for all shifts, or not available for all dates with in the selected date range

Orange = Partially Unavailable. The user is partially unavailable for the selected criteria. This means that the user has entered some unavailability data for the selected criteria.

Red = Unavailable. The user is unavailable for the selected criteria

Grey = Unknown. The user's availability is unknown for the selected criteria. This is mainly due to the user not having entered an availability record for the specified date range.

To add a user to the roster, drag the appropriate user’s name from under the Matching Staff area onto the roster row within the appropriate position and date range.

You can then edit the new entry you just added by either:

Dragging the start and end times, or you can drag the user onto another row into another position.
Clicking on the user's name on the roster to edit the record. This will pop up a new window allowing you to change the role or the dates. You also have the option of changing the activity to “Rest”, “Travel”, “training” or “On-Duty”. These icons will appear on the schedule. You can also delete the user from the roster by clicking on the Delete button.

Rostering Datagrid

The main rostering screen with drag and drop is the main area you will work in, however you may need to get access to the rostered data in list view or you may want to export the data. To help with these tasks and more you can enter the rostering Datagrid by pressing the grid icon at the top right of the screen (highlighted in next image)

Once you have entered the datagrid you will notice that the date filter has been set automatically to match the view from the previous screen, you can clear or change the date range or add additional search parameters such as user or position.

Rostering Bulk Actions

In the rostering datagrid (see image above) you can select multiple records by ticking the boxes to the left of the IDs in the list or you can press the gold coloured tick at the top of the grid to select all records. If you use the select all button it will select all records in the filter not just the records on the page you are looking at.

After you have selected your records press the button at the bottom of the grid to perform the action you need, such as Delete or Duplicate.

This image below shows the duplicate menu which allow you to add the specified number of days to the duplicated records, this feature is helpful for repeating rosters, where you can duplicate the records then edit the duplicated data.

NOTE: if you can’t see the new duplicated records you may need to change the date range in your filter to see them, or you can return to the rostering screen to see the data visually.

When you are looking at the new duplicated records the colours of each user will change to reflect the availability data, so you can easily identify the changes you need to make.

Exporting Rostering Data

Exporting the rostering data is similar to other datagrids in Crisisworks, the selected records are sent to the reporting engine where you can also choose extra parameters to filter on. You can also choose the fields you want to export, choose the sort order or field to group by. Once the report has run you can export the data to CSV or Excel.

Rostering Reports

To access the roster reports:

Select “Reports” form the “overview” menu
Select “Rostering Reports” Folder group on the left hand side of the reports datagrid.
Select the report you wish to run

- Availability Periods - A report listing user’s availability periods.
- Schedule 14 Day Report- A report listing the schedule for 14 days from a specified start date.
- Schedule Report - A report listing the schedule for a given period.
These reports have extra filter options to select date ranges, events, specific users, and fields to include and sort by etc

Scheduling Projector / Full Screen Mode

When you select the projector mode icon as shown in the image below, the filter from the left hand side will be hidden and the screen will refresh every two minutes. This may be useful if you want to project the roster onto a TV screen in an operations centre.

When in projector mode you can also print the screen or print as a PDF using your computers built in print features, reducing the size by 50% may help fit the whole roster on a single A4 page

How to add a new shift

Shifts are used to help manage users availability, the main use case is for rostering all year round when managing people’s availability for day time or night time. As people may be available during business hours, but not at night due to family commitments during the year.

When defining shift names consider more generic names that apply for most roster groups now and in the future as they are system wide.

To add or change the list of shifts a Crisisworks administrator can do this in the “Lookups” section of Crisisworks. Lookups allow customers to manage the options of certain drop down list in different areas of the site.

The shift names you add now will be in all events now and in the future.

From the Administration menu select Settings and click the Lookups link on the left hand side.

This will display a long list of existing Crisisworks lookups which are not all related the the Roster Availability Shifts. To view the existing lookups which relate to shifts you can apply a filter.

Press the Magnifying glass located on the left hand side near the Lookups heading
In the Category list, select “Roster Availability Shifts” and click Apply.

By default “Main” is the only option that comes out of the box with Crisisworks. You can add a new shift by selecting the “New Lookup” button on the right hand side.

Set the Category to “Roster Availability Shifts”
Enter the name for the shift. The name of this shift will appear when users are entering availability data and will also appear when filtering the roster screen.

Use a name that suits most roster groups such as “Night Shift” or “Emergency Day shift”, "Emergency Night Shift”
Enter a unique “value” which is the lookup ID. There should be no spaces for the value and it usually matches the name of the shift (such as "night" or "emergency-night"). This may match an ID you have in an internal system. Note - this value cannot be changed once it's been added.
Click Save

After the new lookup is created, other people will see it after they login, for you to see it straight away in the other screens you may need to try one or both of these options

Select “Reload Form Definitions” form your own user menu, then refresh the screen
Logout and login again (If the previous step doesn’t work)

Implementation Ideas

To assist with the rostering, you can create additional positions/competencies in Crisisworks which you can assign to groups of people which will help you with the rostering. As users can have many positions/competencies you can create a few to help with rostering. Some examples are “Senior field officer” or “Junior field officer”, were the same person may have both “Junior Field officer” (for rostering) but have “Field Inspector” as their proper organisation Position and Crisisworks position.

“Field Inspector" would be set up with the appropriate access and permissions for all of the field officers.
The Junior “Feld Inspector” may be a positions/competency with no security settings

As always if you have any questions, please speak to Datalink about the best practices for implementation.

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