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Auto-Scheduling

Let ShiftFlex automatically generate your team's schedule based on availability, required skills, and weekly hour constraints — saving you hours of manual planning each week.

What Auto-Scheduling Does

Auto-scheduling analyzes your open shifts and your team's availability data to suggest the best employee assignments. It considers:

  • Each employee's stated availability windows
  • Required skills for each shift — only qualified employees are considered
  • Weekly hour limits — avoids assigning employees who are approaching 40 hours
  • Rest period rules — ensures sufficient time between consecutive shifts
  • Performance scores — can prioritize reliable employees

How to Run Auto-Scheduling

  1. 1

    Make Sure Shifts Are Posted

    Auto-scheduling works on Open shifts. Ensure you've already created the shifts you want to fill for the target date range.

  2. 2

    Open Auto-Schedule

    Navigate to Shifts → Auto-Schedule. Select the date range you want to schedule for (e.g., next 7 days).

  3. 3

    Configure Constraints

    Set your scheduling preferences: maximum weekly hours per employee, minimum rest between shifts, and whether to prioritize by performance score or equal distribution.

  4. 4

    Generate Schedule

    Tap Generate Schedule. ShiftFlex will compute the optimal assignments and show you a preview of the proposed schedule.

  5. 5

    Review & Publish

    Review the proposed assignments. You can manually adjust any assignment before publishing. When you're satisfied, tap Publish Schedule — assigned employees are notified via push notification.

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Employee availability must be set

Auto-scheduling relies on employees having their availability set in their profile. If an employee hasn't configured their availability, they may not appear as eligible for auto-assignment. Remind your team to set their availability.

How Employees Are Selected

For each open shift, ShiftFlex applies the following selection logic in order:

  1. Skill filter — only employees with matching required skills are considered
  2. Availability filter — only employees available during the shift window are included
  3. Hours filter — employees who would exceed 40h/week if assigned are excluded
  4. Rest period filter — employees with overlapping or too-close shifts are excluded
  5. Assignment preference — from remaining candidates, ShiftFlex selects based on your chosen rule: performance score (highest first), or round-robin equal distribution

After Publishing

Once published, each assigned employee receives a push notification with the shift details. Assignments behave the same as manually claimed shifts — employees can view them in their My Shifts tab and check in normally on shift day.

If a published shift needs to change, you can cancel it and re-run auto-schedule, or manually reassign via the shift detail screen.

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Auto-schedule vs. manual posting

Auto-schedule is best for recurring schedules with a consistent team. For ad-hoc shifts or roles that require specific individuals, manual posting gives you more direct control.