Generate a Custom Scheduling Calendars

You may want to generate a calendar that has events that occur periodically, or where working hours respect a particular shift pattern, for example, where every second Thursday has a different number of working hours for the next 30 years.

To do this manually would be extremely tedious. You can easily generate calendar entries using the Generate Custom Calendars screen.

You can either generate a fixed shift pattern that is repeated on specific days of the week, or define a varying shift pattern that is repeated for a period of time.

Fixed Shift Patterns

To generate a fixed shift pattern on specific weekdays:

Display the Generate Custom Calendars screen and enter Start and End Dates (or occurrences).
Select the Fixed Shift Pattern tab.
Choose the frequency period of events, either Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Yearly.
- If defining a Daily pattern, choose the interval between days (for example, Every 3 day(s)), or choose Every weekday.
- For a Weekly pattern, choose the recurrence pattern (for example, Every 2 week(s) on) and then choose the day or days of the week where calendar events are applied.
- For Monthly pattern, pick either;
  - the Day of the month on which the event starts and the recurrence pattern by month (say, of every 2 month(s)), or;
  - choose The First or Last occurence of a weekday and the monthly recurrence pattern. For example, if you wanted a shift pattern to repeat on the final Friday of each alternate month, use The Last Friday of every 2 month(s).
- For a Yearly repeating fixed shift, say to set up an end of year event on the 31st December each year, specify the following:
  - Recur every 1 year(s).
  - On December 31.
Enter up to 4 shifts in the grid, specifying a Shift start and Shift end in the format hh:mm.
Choose what event you are going to apply to the calendar, that is, what does the 'shift' represent:
- Apply work periods to selected days.
- Change selected days to holidays. In this case, the date(s) for holidays are added to the Holidays/Exceptions screen.
- Set all selected days to default to override the shift selection (the shifts specified in the grid) and set all selected days to take on the default shift pattern specified in the main Scheduling Calendars screen.
Click Generate.

The selected calendar is updated and Generate Custom Calendar screen closes.

Varying Shift Patterns

To generate a varying shift pattern:

Display the Generate Custom Calendars screen and enter Start and End Dates (or occurrences).
Select the Varying Shift Pattern tab.
In the grid select the Type of day (Default, Non-work, Holiday).
1. If Non-work, the date(s) are added to the Holidays/Exceptions screen with Holiday unchecked.
2. If Holiday, the date(s) are added to the Holidays/Exceptions screen with Holiday checked.
Specify the No. Days for which this shift pattern will apply.
Click in the Shifts cell, then click on the button on the right-hand side of the cell to display the Shifts screen where you can enter up to 4 shifts in the grid, specifying a start and end time in the format hh:mm.
Repeat the above steps until you have entered all the different types of day that make up the repeating pattern.
Click Generate.

The selected calendar is updated and Generate Custom Calendar screen closes.

Fixed Size Months

Use the Fixed Size Month tab to choose the number of days in each month of the scheduling calendar. By default, this is 28 days. As most months are longer, this creates an excess of days. You can choose how they are handled, by either disabling them at the Start of month, End of month or Spread over month.