As a manager who dispatches and distributes shifts on a day-to-day basis, having the schedule customized, and filled with all the relevant information is key. Using layers in Connecteam's job schedule allows dispatchers to add additional information to users' shifts and is essential for the effective management of resources. Layers ensure smooth operations, by providing managers with an overview and full control of how all their resources are allocated. Managers can easily identify potential conflicts or gaps in coverage and make adjustments without affecting the entire schedule. This flexibility is particularly important in industries that rely on specific resources to operate their business (such as delivery) or where schedules often change due to unexpected events or last-minute adjustments. Finally, layers allow for clear and organized communication between different teams and shifts. With all your company resources allocated correctly, you can ensure that everyone is on the same page and knows what their allocated resources and responsibilities are.
In this article we are going to go over:
Common Examples of Using Layers
Delivery Company - you can create a layer called trucks and schedule your delivery workers according to the number of trucks you have available. This ensures that you don't book more deliveries than you can handle or miss out on jobs you could have taken if your schedule was more organized.
Construction Company - A construction company that needs to keep track of tools, can create layers based on their day-to-day usage of tools. Then you can know exactly which tools are found at which jobs and schedule things accordingly.
Healthcare Company - If you have x amount of rooms where you can see patients you can schedule each employee a room, easily you can know if you have room to handle more patients or not. The same is true for iPads or important hospital equipment, you can easily manage all this by creating a year for iPads or equipment.
Managers - If you want to keep track of your managers, you can create a layer called "manager" as you can monitor and track the managers.
There are many more examples of how layers could be used which might be unique to your company!
How to Create and Add Layers
Enter your schedule, and on the top right click on "Jobs"
Press on the "Add layer" tab while adding a name and icon to the relevant layer
Decide if you want this layer visible for users on the mobile by enabling the "visible on the mobile app"
Add sub-layers into the created layer by pressing on "Add" ( for example, if the layer you created is called " trucks", this is where you will insert the number or names of your trucks ).
Once the layers are all set up to your satisfaction, navigate to the schedule and click on "add shift" or the + button. Then add the layer to the relevant shifts. The layers will appear in the shift details between the Jobs and Users. You can see how this looks below where you can see the layer trucks can be added to a shift.
How to View and Utilize Layers in the Schedule
Now, that you have created layers let's understand how you can use these to get an overview of your allocated resources and ensure smooth operations. In case you forgot the schedule can be viewed in different ways. Below we will go over how to utilize layers in each of these views
View By Layers
To view your schedule by the layer itself, navigate to the schedule and click on view option in the left-hand corner then select view by. In the example below you can see ours is View By Trucks.
Now you'll be able to view your schedule with the layers as the left-hand column (rather than jobs or users) You can easily see if there are any conflicts or if you haven't utilized some of your resources.
View by Users & View by Job
Regardless of whether you are viewing your schedule by job or user, you can easily use the filter to find shifts assigned to a specific layer. Simply click on the filter and filter for your layer and then select the layer you want to view buy.
The List View
You can get a more in-depth analysis of how you delegated your resources you can also view by layers in the list view. To view by list, click on view by list and then view by your layer, in our case trucks. You can see that you get a list how of all the shifts by layer.
💡Tip: Did you know you can also import shifts to the schedule while including layers? They then appear directly into the schedule saving you loads of time. To learn more about importing shifts, click here.
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