Shift Pattern
A shift pattern is the repeating cycle a crew works: four days on, two off, and which shift each of those days is. You build the cycle once here, and the Shift Roster then hangs it on real dates for real people.
What it is for
Clients ask this first: "other systems just have a shift field on the employee, why do I need a pattern?"
A shift field works only while a man always works the same shift. The moment a crew rotates, a shift field cannot say what you mean. Your spinning department works four days on general shift and then two days off, and the cycle keeps rolling whatever the day of the week is. A shift field has nowhere to put the rolling. The only way to express it with a shift field is to type a shift against every man for every date, and at five hundred people that is fifteen thousand entries a month, re-typed every month, by hand.
A pattern is the cycle itself. You say the cycle is six days long, and then you say what each of the six days is: day one morning shift, day two morning shift, day three morning shift, day four morning shift, day five off, day six off. That is six lines, typed once, and it never has to be typed again. The pattern does not grow when the crew grows, and it does not grow when the month changes.
Nothing in this screen names a person or a date. That is deliberate and it is the whole point. The pattern is the fixed part. Who is on it and from when is the Shift Roster, and that is one record for a whole crew, not one per man per day.
One pattern per shift arrangement. Count the client's arrangements, not their shifts and not their crews. A factory with three rotating crews on the same four on two off cycle needs one pattern, used three times on three rosters that start on three different days. A factory whose maintenance team works five days on general shift and whose production works the rotating six day cycle needs two patterns.
The Day column is a position, not a weekday
This is the single thing people misread. The Day column does not say Monday. It says "day one of the cycle", "day two of the cycle". Day numbering starts at 0, so a six day cycle is numbered 0 to 5.
Which calendar date day 0 lands on is decided later, by the Cycle Start Date on the Shift Roster. That is what lets you take one pattern and stagger three crews off it: the first crew starts its cycle on the 1st, the second on the 3rd, the third on the 5th, and they rotate against each other out of a single pattern.
So a cycle whose length is 7 does line up with the week, because 7 days and a week are the same length. A cycle whose length is 6 does not, and should not. That is what a rolling cycle means.
Every field, in plain words
Header
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shift Pattern | The short code for this cycle. | SPIN-6D | Required. Two patterns cannot share a code. |
| Description | What the cycle is called in words. | Spinning 4 on 2 off rotating | Required. |
| Cycle Length (Days) | How many days there are in the cycle before it starts again. | 6 | Required. Must be at least 1. A five day working week with the weekend off is 7, not 5, because the two off days are part of the cycle. |
Details
One line per day of the cycle. A six day cycle normally has six lines.
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Line # | The line number. | Fills itself. Leave it. | |
| Day | Which day of the cycle this line describes, counted from 0. Not a day of the week. | 0 | Required. Must be between 0 and one less than the cycle length. |
| Time Template | The shift worked on that day of the cycle: its start and end times, its break, its grace and its late rules. | GEN-A | Pick it from the list. Required unless the day is marked off. |
| Name | The name of that shift. | General Shift A | Fills itself from the time template. Leave it. |
| Off Day | Tick it when this day of the cycle is a rest day. | Ticked on days 4 and 5 | A day marked off must not also carry a time template, and a day not marked off must carry one. |
| Segment | Which part of a split day this line is. | 1 | Leave it blank on an ordinary day and it is stored as 1. Use 2 for the second half of a split shift, which is the only reason to enter the same day twice. |
| Required Headcount | How many people this shift needs on this day of the cycle. | 24 | Leave it blank when the shift is not planned by headcount. Filled in, it is what the coverage figures compare the rostered and attending numbers against. |
The split shift
A security gate manned 06:00 to 10:00 and again 18:00 to 22:00 is one day with two shifts on it. Enter the day twice, same Day number, Segment 1 on the first line and Segment 2 on the second, with a different time template on each. That is the only case where the same Day number appears twice. Any other repeat is rejected.
How to configure it
- Make sure every shift you are about to name exists on the Time Template screen, with its times, its break and its grace and late rules.
- Write the cycle out on paper first, in the client's words: four days general shift, then two days off, repeating.
- Count the days including the off days. That is your Cycle Length. Four on and two off is 6.
- Open the screen. Type a Shift Pattern code, a Description and the Cycle Length, for example
SPIN-6D, Spinning 4 on 2 off rotating, 6. - Add one Details line per day. Day 0 with time template
GEN-A. Day 1, 2 and 3 the same. Day 4 with Off Day ticked and no time template. Day 5 the same. - Fill Required Headcount only if the client plans the shift by numbers, for example 24 on each working day.
- Save, then go to the Shift Roster and put the pattern on a crew with a Cycle Start Date.
Scenarios
"Our factory runs a six day week but the office runs five"
Two arrangements, so two patterns.
| What you set | Factory | Office |
|---|---|---|
| Cycle Length | 7 | 7 |
| Working days in the cycle | 6, Monday to Saturday | 5, Monday to Friday |
| Off days in the cycle | 1 | 2 |
| Cycle Start Date on the roster | A Monday | A Monday |
Both are 7 long because both repeat weekly. Set the Cycle Start Date on each roster to a Monday and day 0 is Monday for ever after.
"Three crews rotate against each other, A then B then C"
One pattern, three rosters. Build the pattern once, say six days long with the shift on days 0 to 3 and off on days 4 and 5. Then create three rosters on that same pattern, one per crew, with Cycle Start Dates two days apart. The pattern is never copied and never edited to make a crew different.
"Our gate is manned morning and evening, nobody works the middle of the day"
One pattern, with the working day entered twice. Day 0 Segment 1 on the 06:00 to 10:00 template, Day 0 Segment 2 on the 18:00 to 22:00 template. Repeat for every working day of the cycle.
"We have two shifts and anybody can turn up for either one"
Then nothing here binds a man to a shift, and that is a valid setup. Build the two shifts as time templates and leave the pattern and the roster alone. The attendance engine then has no rostered shift for the day and the man's attendance is judged against the shift his calendar gives him. What this client usually wants is a month end count of how many times each man came on each shift, and that comes from the attendance reports, not from this screen. The opposite client, who wants a man tied to one shift and a request raised whenever it changes, needs the Shift Roster plus the Shift Change Request.
What it is connected to
- Every day line names a Time Template. The times, the grace, the late and half day rules and the short hours slabs all come from there, never from here.
- The Shift Roster is what puts this pattern on real people over real dates.
- Employee Attandance judges each day against the shift the roster resolves out of this pattern.
- Changing a pattern changes every roster already using it, including past dates. If a client changes their rotation from January, build a new pattern and a new roster rather than editing this one.
If something looks wrong
- "It will not let me save, it says Day must be between 0 and 5" - the Day column counts from 0, so a six day cycle runs 0 to 5. There is no day 6.
- "It says the day is entered more than once" - two lines carry the same Day and the same Segment. If you meant a split shift, put 1 on one line and 2 on the other. If not, delete the duplicate.
- "It says an off day cannot also carry a time template" - clear the time template on the line you ticked as off.
- "It says a shift pattern needs at least one day" - the Details grid is empty. Add a line per day of the cycle.
- "The rotation is a day out for one crew" - the pattern is right and the Cycle Start Date on that crew's roster is wrong. Fix it there.