Scheduling glossary
Terms used consistently across this site. Where a term has several meanings in practice, the definition says which one is meant here.
Rules and constraints
Hard rule. A constraint that must never be violated. The generator will not produce a schedule that breaks one, and a swap or claim that would break one is refused. Minimum rest, maximum consecutive days and eligibility are typical.
Soft preference. A constraint satisfied where possible and reported where not. "Prefers not to work Mondays" is one. The distinction from a hard rule is the single most important thing to get right when configuring a department.
Eligibility. Whether a given person may work a given shift, determined by their staff category and the shift template's requirements.
Minimum rest. The required interval between the end of one assignment and the start of the next, for one person, across every site and unit they work in.
Consecutive days. The number of days worked in an unbroken run. A multi-day shift contributes its real span.
Fairness
Counted burden. Something whose distribution is tracked — call nights, weekends, holidays, night shifts, picked-up open shifts. Each is counted separately, because averaging them hides concentration.
Share. A person's expected proportion of a counted burden. A full-time clinician's share is the group average; someone at 0.6 has 0.6 of it. Fairness is measured as the gap between actual and expected, not as a raw count.
Tally. The record of each person's actual counts against their share, over a window. Visible to staff for themselves and to administrators for the group.
Tally window. The period over which fairness is measured. Short windows cannot see the drift they are meant to prevent: holidays need years, weekends about a year.
Carried balance. The effect of a tally window longer than one schedule period — somebody who took more than their share last period takes less this one, automatically.
Spread. The gap between the most- and least-burdened person on a counted burden. One number per burden per window, and the one most worth watching over time.
Structure
Site. An organisational unit with its own staff, shift templates, categories and rules. Usually a hospital, practice or clinic.
Unit. A subdivision of a site with its own shifts and staffing requirements. A ward, a service, a clinic within a practice.
Staff category. A label a site defines for a kind of staff member, used to set eligibility. Not a system role, and not a fixed list — the software ships with none.
Shift template. A recurring kind of shift: a name, a start, an end, and which categories may work it. The thing that gets instantiated into assignments.
Assignment. One person on one shift on one date — or across one span, for a multi-day shift.
Multi-day shift. A shift longer than a calendar day, held as a single span with one start and one end rather than as consecutive single-day slots.
Process
Schedule period. A block of time a schedule is generated for. Moves through three states: draft, published, archived.
Draft. A period only the scheduler can see. Exists so a schedule can be generated, inspected and regenerated without the department reacting to a version that was never going to ship.
Published. The live schedule. Visible to staff, synced to their calendars, and the thing swaps and claims operate against.
Archived. A completed period, kept because long-window tallies are computed from history and because "what was the schedule in March" gets asked.
Request period. A window during which staff submit preferences and leave requests for a future schedule period. Opens, closes, and the generator runs on what it collected.
Coverage gap. A shift with nobody assigned, in a schedule being treated as complete. Visible on the calendar while still a draft, and requiring explicit acknowledgement to publish.
Open shift. A shift deliberately offered for anyone eligible to claim, first-come.