Assigning people to shifts is the core of scheduling. It is also one of the most important features of Soon. One that helps you create a great schedule for your team.
In this document, you will find how to create a new event, add people to it, and how you add people to existing events.
Adding users to new events
You can create a new event by hitting the + icon in any of the day lanes on the Board. Follow the steps in the new event creation flow, when you get to the Add People part you will see the Select People modal that lets you add people to the event.
Use the keyboard arrows to quickly navigate through the list of users and hit enter to add the highlighted person to your event.
Users
The first thing you will notice is a distinction between Role Assigned and Role Not Assigned. In case you added a role, your teammates are categorized based on the role you selected in the previous step of the event creation process.
The colored dot in front of the user avatar is a quick availability indicator based on the event time. A green dot indicates a full 100% availability, red indicates 0% availability, and yellow means the user is partially available, which corresponds to a value anywhere between 100% and 0%.
If the user has any conflicts if they were to be assigned to this event, a conflict icon will show behind their name. A blue icon indicates a soft conflict like the user already having an event on that same day. A red icon indicates a hard conflict, which for example could mean the user is contractually not available that day.
On the far right behind each person’s name, you will see a number. This number shows the remaining contract hours this person still has. In other words the amount of time they still need to be scheduled for the week you create the event for.
Using the various filters, search functionality and sort options helps you to quickly find the ideal candidate for the event.
When you hover over a user, more details are shown on the right about things like their availability, conflicts, and hours.
If a user is not shown in the list without having any active filters, it could have one of the following reasons; 1) the user might already be added to the event, 2) the user is set to Not Visible for the board, 3) the user has the Deactivated status, or 4) the user is not added to the board yet.
Hours
When hovering over a user with your cursor you will see a breakdown of the scheduled, contract and remaining hours for that person in relation to the event you are creating.
Scheduled
The scheduled hours are the sum of all the hours that the user has already been scheduled for that week. The scheduled hours include unpublished and published events. And also events that are not necessarily on the board you are scheduling currently.
The scheduled hours are based on the user's updated actual/expected hours (if set). The potential break time is excluded for this value so it becomes a sum of clean contract hours.
Contract
The contract hours can be set or changed in the User Profile. You can open a user's profile by either going to the Users page from the main navigation panel and opening the Team tab or through the Board Settings and opening the Users tab.
Remaining
The remaining hours are a calculation of the contract hours minus the scheduled hours. The remaining hours become negative when the contract hours are either set to 0 or the set contract value is exceeded. This way the user list is accurately sorted when multiple users' contract hours have been exceeded.
Availability
On the right side of the people selector, a visualization of a person’s availability is shown when you hover over a specific user.
The horizontal line shows the 24-hour period in which the event takes place. If the event passes midnight this will be a 48-hour period.
In blue, you see the event duration span
In green, you see the person’s available time
The time labels indicate the user's availability input. This could either be an available or unavailable time input. The time labels are always shown in the event time zone.
The availability score is shown in the top left corner as a percentage. This helps you get a quick understanding of the match between the event time and availability when the person is partially available for this shift.
If the user's time zone differs from the event, a time zone abbreviation indicator is shown in the top right corner
Time zones – If your team works across different time zones. Soon automatically takes everything into account when it comes to availability and assigning people to shifts. You can always update your display time zone or your availability time zone in your Profile.
Conflicts
The conflicts section will appear in case there are any special remarks to be aware of. Here you will be notified of strong violations in red and less severe warnings in blue. The following conflicts exist:
Scheduled events; a user has one or more scheduled events for this same day
Overlapping events; the new event overlaps with an event the user is already on
Hour limit; the user's contract hours are exceeded
Contract day; it is not a user's contract day
Pending leave; a pending leave request overlaps with the event time
Approved leave; an approved leave request overlaps with the event time
Filter, sort, and search
Use these superpowers to find the most ideal person to add to your shift.
Filtering
You can filter users based on Availability, Assigned Role, and No Conflicts. These filters can also work in combination with each other. Applying filters quickly removes people you don’t want to consider adding to the event.
Sorting
To sort the list of people in a specific order, you can go to More Options by clicking on the ⋯ icon where you can sort by First name, Available users or Remaining hours.
Searching
Simply type the name of the person you want to on the Add people field in the new event modal.
Adding people to existing events
To add people to an event you already created, you simply click on the event on the board. The event details will open up and you see the Add People button.
Selecting a role
In the footer of the Add Users modal you can select the role that needs to be applied. When selected you will also see which users are associated with it.
The filters, sorting and search work in the same way as when adding users to new events. Only the More Options icon now indicated with ⋮, here you can select your preferred sorting method.
Adding a user to a group
When an event has multiple groups, it is now also possible to directly add a person to the group you want them to be in. Simply select the group you want to put the user in at the bottom of the modal.