Scheduling: Shift Preferences

Overview

Shift Preferences lets employees tell you when they would prefer to work, with those preferences appearing directly in Scheduling. Preferences are set by the employee in MySchedules and are visible to managers when they build the schedule, so availability no longer has to be tracked separately or remembered.

Employees Set Preferences in MySchedules

A Shift Preferences screen in MySchedules lets an employee record the specific times they would prefer to work, or would prefer not to work, across the week.

• Preferences can be set as a Default weekly pattern that repeats, and then Overridden for individual weeks where the employee's availability changes
• The Prefer not to work option lets an employee flag times they would rather avoid, without submitting a formal time off request
• The Apply To button copies a preference across several days at once, so a repeating pattern can be set up in a few clicks

Preferences Are Visible While Scheduling

Once an employee has set their preferences, managers can see them in Scheduling in the following places:

• In the scheduling grid, alongside the employee's shifts
• In a new Shift Preferences section of the employee detailed view — collapsed on the weekly view, and expanded on the daily view for the day being scheduled

Preferences and Auto Scheduling

For customers using Fourth's Auto Scheduling Solution:

Shift preference data is also passed to auto scheduling, so automatically generated schedules take employee preferences into account.

Enabling Shift Preferences

Shift Preferences is controlled by a new setting at location level.

• When enabled for a location, the matching setting is enabled in MySchedules for that location
• Where the setting is switched off, the Shift Preferences options stay hidden in both MySchedules and Scheduling, so there is no change for those locations

Please contact your Fourth representative or Customer Support if you would like Shift Preferences enabled for your locations.