Objective: From the basic rota, create a rota for a specific period:

For efficiency: Before you create a specific rota, you should check your basic rota is up to date.

Action: Select New rota from basic in the Your rotas menu.

Action: Use the drop down lists to set the Start date for your new rota.

Action: Use the drop down list to set the First day of the week.

Action: Press the Create new rota from basic >> button.

Result 6a: A new menu item appears on the Your rotas menu. It shows the (start) date of the rota you have just created, and selects your new specific rota. It has already been selected for you so your new rota is now visible.

Your specific rota looks almost the same as your basic rota. It is a copy with the following changes:

Above the rota are the same menu items that the basic rota has.

Result 6b: You can see in the specific rota your fixed shift patterns (from Lesson 5 "Set some fixed shifts") including those using your new symbol definitions (from Lesson 4 "Define your symbols").

Once created, a specific rota is independent of the basic rota and any other specific rotas. Changes to one will not affect any of the others. If you edit the Symbol entries for one rota, the corresponding symbols shown on that rota will change to match, but no other rotas' symbols will change.

Note: Changes to group information are independent of all the rotas in the group, but can affect their use. If you change a user's Full name in the group information, the Name entries in the rotas for that group will not be affected. That user will be able to self-roster only the rota rows whose Name entries match exactly the new Full name value.

If you have temporary members of staff for one period only, you can add them to your specific rota by using the Edit staff menu item. Similarly if any of the Target hours are different for this period only, you can use Edit staff to change them. For this tutorial, you need exactly the staff you have already set up, but you need to alter the target hours for one staff member

Exercise 6.1: Check that:

If any do not match, change them in this specific rota by using the Edit staff menu item. Finally, set Target hrs for Anne Adams to 80, assuming Anne will leave the team half way through the rota period. Be sure you save your changes.

Objective: Add shifts to your specific rota:

Action: At the top of your specific rota, select the menu item called Edit shifts.

Action: Enter the symbols E, D, N, Dr, L, N, E and S descending in the first column, making sure you type lower case and uppercase characters appropriately.

Note: The Key at the bottom of the table lists the symbols you can use, and their meanings. If you enter symbols that are not in the key, they will disappear when you press the Save shift edits button.

Action: In the second column enter the symbols Nr, D, N, Er, L, Nr, T and D.

Note: The Other column can be used to enter the number of hours spent on other activities, or just used to make adjustments.

Action: For just the first member of staff, Gail Good, enter 10 in the Other column and for both Gail and the last staff member, Anne Adams make sure all but the first two shift columns are blank.

Note: The row for Gail Good, the first member of staff has the X in the S column, this indicates that Gail is a supernumerary member of staff (one whose shifts are not counted). An inexperienced member of staff might not be counted until they have "learned the ropes". A supervisor might not be counted because they don't actually do anything other than supervise!

Action: Press the Save shift edits button.

Note: Not all symbols are counted. Here, no cover is counted for T or S.

Result 6c: At the bottom of the columns the shifts have been counted for each day, excluding the first member of staff, who is supernumerary. No twilight (W) shifts have been worked, and there are are two counts for each of the other three shifts. In each of Early, Late and Night, the staff in grades F, G and H are counted separately from all the other grades. You can see that, in the first two days, the daytime shifts are each covered by 1 member of staff from the F, G and H grades and 2 members of staff of other grades, while at night the cover level is 1 of each.

Result 6d: Gail's row also shows that an E (early) shift of 7 hours and an Nr (night requested) shift of 11 hours plus an Other value of 10 hours come to a Total of 28 hours compared to a Target of 160 hours leaving a Diff (difference) of -132 hours (still to be planned).

Result 6e: The row for Anne Adams, the last member of staff shows that an S (sickness) shift that counts no hours with a D (day) shift of 11 hours come to a Total of 11 hours compared to a Target of 80 hours leaving a Diff of -69 hours.

Exercise 6.2: Now continue to enter shifts of your own choice using symbols defined in the Key. Frequently press the Save shift edits button so you can check the shift counts and the Diff column. You will find you need to reduce the levels of cover from those you achieved for the first two days. You need to keep the staff the same ready for lesson 7 "Use symbol clusters".

When planning your specific rota you might start by filling in all the shifts that your staff have requested using symbols with a trailing "r". Then you would press the Save shift edits button to inspect the resulting shift counts and hour totals. You could then continue planning using single capital letters to balance the counts and totals, trying not to change any symbol with a trailing "r" that represented a requested shift.

Action: When you have finished entering shifts, in the Approval Status field alter the selection from Draft to Self-Roster. In the text box to the right you can say more about the approval Status. If you have set the status to Self-Roster you might say until a date, or if you chose Approved you might add by The Boss. Then press the Save shift edits button.

Result 6f: Finally, when you select the View rota item at the top of the rota, you see all your changes have been saved as intended.

Note: At the bottom of the rota you can see who last edited the rota, when they edited it (British Standard Time), and the approval state.