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Contract priority

Contract priority tells the scheduler whom to use first. A typical team has core staff on full contracts and temporary or part-time staff who should only get the shifts the core team cannot take. Without a priority, the scheduler balances the workload and spreads shifts evenly across everybody; with it, core staff are filled up first and the others are used for what is left.

How it works

Each contract has a Scheduling priority:

Option Meaning
1 – core staff, used first Employees on this contract get shifts until their hour limits, availability or skills stop them.
2 – when core staff are full Get shifts only once priority 1 has no room left.
3 – used last Get shifts only once priorities 1 and 2 have no room left.

Smart Schedule and Fill gaps both follow it.

A shift is still given to a lower priority rather than left empty - the priority decides who goes first, not who may work at all. Coverage always wins.

Set it on a contract

  1. Go to People > Contracts and open (or create) a contract.
  2. In Scheduling priority, choose 1, 2 or 3.
  3. Click Save.

All existing contracts start on 1 – core staff, used first, so nothing changes in your plans until you move some contracts to 2 or 3.

The Contract Priority weight

The priority only takes effect when the Contract Priority weight in the Solver Profile is above 0.

The rule works against Balance Workload, which wants the temporary employee to get as many hours as the core one. To win, Contract Priority has to be about 30 times the Balance Workload weight of the same profile. Every existing profile was given exactly that (at most 3000). If you change Balance Workload in a profile, adjust Contract Priority with it.

Note

A profile with a very high Balance Workload weight cannot also hold a strict priority - there, balance wins.

Notes

  • Several contracts: a person with more than one contract takes the best (lowest) priority of them. A core employee with a side agreement is still core staff.
  • On-call contracts (Emergency contract on) are ignored when the priority is worked out, and the field is not available on them - see Emergency Shifts.
  • Priority does not override hour limits, skills, time off or rest periods. Those are checked first.