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Assign Turns

Once a roster is created and the turns added they can be assigned to staff. There are two methods of doing this: 1. Using the drop-down box, accessible by the red arrow on the roster, to pick a member of staff from the list. When assigning a particular turn, a list is given of all the members of the department. Any turn can be allocated to any member of the department, regardless of their competence or availability. Depending on the configuration of the department, it may be possible to assign turns to staff who aren't members of the department. (The reason for allowing turns to be allocated to those who are unavailable or not competent is to allow for occasions when a person is training, or when a person who has previously put themselves as not available verbally agrees to cover the turn, to allow the Roster Clerk to override the original 'not available'). By default, the list of staff is sorted in the order fairness in which the turn should be allocated. The top person is the person to whom it would be fairest to allocate the turn. There is a link to [Sort Alphabetically] if that is preferred. Your selection will be remembered for next time. Where rows are coloured, they are done so to show - Who already owns the turns, if anyone; - If a person is already engaged in another or the same department on that day. Note; The system WILL allow a turn to be allocated to a person who is already engaged in another turn on the same day. This may be necessary to allow a person to do one job in the morning and another job in the afternoon. The purpose of the colouring is to prevent this happening when not intended or for overlapping turns. The order of fairness is calculated in the following way: Those who are available are at the top of the list. Those who are not available are second down and those who did not reply are at the bottom. Within each of those categories, those who are competent are at the top of the category, those who are not competent are at the bottom. (The level of competence has no bearing, simply whether or not the person is competent to carry out the role.) Within each category further, the staff are sorted out by the number of turns they have been allocated, divided by the number of turns it is fair to allocate them (see later). The first column is the person's name. The second column shows whether or not the person is competent for this turn, and then, in parentheses, their actual level of competence. The third colum is their availability, as input by the user, for this turn, in this department, on this date. The following two columns are used to show information about how much the user wants to work and how much we are already using them. It is important not to overwork volunteers and also important not to let them get too bored. Mousing over any of these statistics produces a screen-tip reminder. The Notes column shows if a user 'BUSY', which means s/he already has a turn on this date. The final column shows the 'Assign' button, which, when pressed, allocates the the turn to that person. If it is already allocated to someone else then it is taken away from them and given to the new person. At the very bottom of the page is an 'Unassign' button, which removes whoever the turns is currently allocated to and leaves it vacant.

2. Using the Assign Turns function on the Roster Operations tab. Turns will be assigned to users in the most economical way the system can work out, based on everyone's availability and competence.

HOPS is continually being developed and updated. Sometimes the screen shots in these help files might lag behind the most up-to-date views of the screens. Generally, however, the functionality of the page will be the same, albeit with a slightly different format or layout.