Cross Schedule Conflicts

Understanding how to smoothly manage several job schedules

Shoshana Fleischmann avatar
Written by Shoshana Fleischmann
Updated this week

Connecteam allows you to assign a user to more than one job schedule at once,

but it can create conflicts with overlapping events. This occurs if a user is scheduled to a shift on two schedules at the same time, or a user is marked as unavailable in one schedule but assigned to a shift in another. Connecteam wants you to be able to view all these possible problems most conveniently. For this reason, we created the cross-schedule events capability.

If you’re not familiar with the job schedule, first check out our Starting Guide To the Job Scheduler.

What are Cross-Schedule Conflicts?

Cross-schedule conflicts allow you to view all the overlapping shifts, unavailability, and time off across multiple schedules. This option helps you, as an admin, to manage all schedules accordingly, avoid unnecessary complaints, and manage your team’s schedule flawlessly.

Now, let us dive deeper into activating this capability step by step.

To enable this capability, go to the job schedule’s settings, to the “Limitations” tab, and click on "Enable conflicts with other schedules". You will need to enable this setting on each of your job schedules.

When this setting is enabled, the option will appear in your View options to toggle on the Cross-schedule events view. Toggle this view on to see all cross-schedule events on your schedule.

When these settings are enabled, you'll see a notification if a user is already scheduled for a shift, marked as unavailable, or on time off on another schedule.

See below an example of how a notification looks for when a user is on a shift in another schedule:

To get further details about the shift, click on this notification “on another schedule,” and the shift details will automatically appear to the right of the shift.

Take a look at how this looks below. Notice how once I click on “on another schedule” inside of the shift details, I am automatically redirected from the Main Street Branch schedule to the Park Avenue Branch schedule:

How Do Cross-Schedule Conflicts Look?

Now that you can view cross-schedule events, let's toggle on the Conflicts view as well in the View options menu.

In the schedule, conflicts are displayed by a red flag with an exclamation point in the upper right corner of the shift. When hovering over the exclamation point, a pop-up with information regarding the conflict will appear.

Another way to view all conflicts is by clicking the exclamation mark on the top right corner of your screen, which will lead you to the Conflicts tab.

When opening the Conflicts tab you will see all upcoming conflicts as well as a history of conflicts. If you click on View, you will also be taken to that specific conflict so that you can directly take action.

If you still wish to assign a shift to this user, regardless of the notification, we won't prevent you from doing this. However, this action can create a cross-schedule conflict.

As seen in the example below, I assigned a shift to a user that is already assigned a shift in another schedule.

How Do We Solve These Conflicts?

Simply click the three dots which appear when hovering over the shift, and click on “delete”, as shown below.

Now that we know what Cross-Schedule Events look like and how to solve them, let's take a look at a few common examples.

Common Use Cases of Cross-Schedule Conflicts

Unavailability

A user marked as unavailable can still be assigned a shift on the same day and hours, but this creates a conflict.

Not familiar with our unavailability capability? Check out our Starting Guide to Unavailability.

How do we solve this conflict?

Go to the schedule in which this unavailability was added, hover over it, and click on the garbage icon in order to delete it:

Another way to solve this conflict is by deleting the overlapping shift. Do this by accessing the job schedule in which this overlapping shift was published and clicking on the three dots that appear on the right side of the shift. Click on "Delete".

Please note: Once inside the schedule containing the shift, the conflicting unavailability or time off is displayed by a flag notification in the bottom right corner. If you’d like to learn more about the different schedule views, have a look at our article on Viewing Options In the Schedule. To learn more about conflicts, check out this article.

Time Off

When a user is on time off, the dates and type of time off will automatically appear on their schedule. If we assign them to a shift on another schedule on the same day, it will create a cross-schedule conflict.

In the schedule, the time off conflicts will be shown by a red flag with an exclamation point and when hovering over it we will see that “the user is unavailable at this time” and the details of the shift that was assigned to him regardless of the absence of the user.

Please note: Time Off will only appear on the Job Schedule if the Job Schedule is synced with the Time Clock.

How do we solve this type of conflict?

The first option would be to delete the overlapping shift that was created, as shown

above. Another way to solve this conflict is through the user's timesheet by rejecting their time off which is creating the conflict.

Let's go over how to do this step by step:

Step 1: Go over to the Time Clock and enter the timesheets tab.

Step 2: Click on the relevant user to enter their timesheets.

Step 3: Click on the row of the time off entry, click on the three dots that appear on the time off request information, and change the request to "Reject".

To learn more about approving and rejecting time off requests, take a look at this article.

*Cross Schedule Conflicts are available from the Operations Expert plan*

Need more guidance? 🙋 Our LIVE support team (at the bottom right corner of your screen) replies to ANY question.

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