Create a Schedule in Five Steps

You can create schedules in your account in five easy steps to effectively plan and manage employees across various positions and shifts, ensuring adequate coverage at all times. In any organisation, efficiently managing employee schedules is crucial for maintaining operational smoothness and meeting customer needs. Whether you are an administrator or supervisor, the uAttend scheduling feature allows you to set up schedules directly from the landing page of the scheduling tab. Before creating a new schedule, make sure you have added, edited, and updated positions and shift templates as needed to reflect your current workforce requirements. For optimal scheduling, take a look at our Guide to Scheduling for a deeper understanding of the Scheduling feature.

1. Create your new schedule

To get started, navigate to the Scheduling tab in the uAttend cloud portal and click the Create Schedule button.

You will be prompted to select the start and end dates for the new schedule, with the option to choose up to one month. After setting the dates, click Continue to name your schedule. This name will be used to quickly reference your schedule in the future. Many find it helpful to name the schedule after the date range and the name field will auto-populate as such for your convenience. Click Continue to generate the schedule, which will automatically include all active shift templates from your account. 

2. Navigate the schedule

Shifts are displayed in chronological order by day, then by time, then by position in alphabetical order.

Shifts are organised into weekly blocks, running from Sunday to Saturday. For example, if your schedule begins on a Tuesday, the first block will cover Tuesday through Saturday. Use the side navigation panel to expand or minimise each weekly block and easily move between shifts. The left side panel also allows you to filter shifts by Complete shifts, Incomplete shifts, or both.

3. Assign employees to shifts

To assign employees, click the Assign Employees icon for each shift and choose from available or unavailable employees for the position. The number of employees needed for each shift is displayed in the upper right. 

Check the boxes next to the names of the employees you want to assign to the shift and click Confirm once complete. If you assign an unavailable employee, you will receive a Shift Conflict notification and must confirm the changes. The system will allow you to leave the shift understaffed if you do not fill all the fields, so be sure you have assigned enough employees to cover the expected workload. Move through the shift templates by clicking Next Shift Template. After completing each Shift Template in the one-week block, you will automatically move to the next one-week block.

4. Adjust shifts as needed

Edit, add, or remove shifts as needed to adjust to your business needs. To edit or remove a shift, navigate to the shift and click the Edit icon to edit or the Delete icon to delete. You can also click the Add Shift button to insert a new shift. These adjustments will only affect this schedule, not the shift templates. For more information on editing the Shift, click here.

5. Save and Preview your schedule

Once you have finished assigning all of the employees to all of the shifts, click Save and Preview to review the schedule. The preview displays shifts in order by time and position in alphabetical order. You can filter the preview by Position or Status. Click on a shift to view additional details or make edits directly from the preview page.

Navigate away from the schedule at any time to save it,  or click Publish to finalise and share the schedule. For detailed publishing options, please click here.