Job Scheduler: Understanding Jobs and How to Use Them

Jobs provide another layer to your shift information. Jobs can signify different things depending on how you run your business. Jobs may represent roles such as manager/waiter/hostess/cook. These may be customers, or job types, such as cleaning, roofing, or delivery. They can be worksites or projects. Creating jobs and using them while scheduling ensures that your users know and complete their appropriate responsibilities in a timely manner. Using jobs will also help you track where your resources are spent and allow you to make better scheduling decisions.

Now that we know why jobs are so important, let's start scheduling them!

In this article, we'll go over the following:

Jobs

Sub-Jobs

To add a new job, first enter the Job Scheduler and click on the Jobs button at the top right of the schedule.

To add a new job, click 'Add job'.

You now have two options: choose from unassigned jobs or choose to create a new job. Unassigned jobs are jobs that have already been created but not yet assigned to this time clock. Creating a new job enables you to create an entirely new job.

If you need to create a new job, fill out the job details, choose which users are qualified, and which time clocks and job schedulers to assign the job to.

Through the Jobs button, you can edit an existing job and control the job settings. Click on the Settings icon to edit the job details.

Please note: Editing the job here will affect other Time Clocks and Job Schedulers this job is assigned to.

💡 Tip: When adding a job be sure to set the Qualified Users, these will be the users who are able or “qualified” for this job. For example, if I am running a hospital and I create the job of Nurse, I can either select all my nurses from the drop-down list of users or if I have created a smart group for my nurses I can select that group.

Now that we have created jobs, let's take a look at how to add a job to a shift. To schedule a shift use either the Add Shift button in the top right corner of the schedule, or use the + Quick Action inside the schedule itself.

Once you have created the shift, choose the relevant job from the drop-down menu. In the example below you can see I have assigned the job of RN to Sue. If the job has sub-jobs, please note that you are required to select a sub-job when scheduling the shift.

To learn more about schedule quick actions, check out this article.

💡 Tip: If you add a location to the job settings, it will auto-populate the shift's location based on the job associated with the shift. This is especially useful if you are using jobs as work sites.

Once you have set up your jobs and built your schedule, you may want to see things from the Job point of view. This can give you more information about how many shifts and users you have scheduled for each job, allowing you to see exactly where your resources are allocated.

To view by job, simply change the View options to view by jobs. Now, instead of having users to the left, we now have our shifts ordered by the different jobs.

💡 Tip: For more ways to view your schedule, please check out our article on Viewing Options in the Job Scheduler.

Now that we have some of the basics down about Jobs, let's dive deeper into the Job capabilities, by talking about sub-jobs!

When a job is no longer needed, you can either unassign or delete it.

To unassign a job from the Job Schedule, access the Jobs, hover over the relevant job, click on the three dots, and choose Delete.

Sub-jobs give you the option to create jobs that are aligned and connected to the main job, making your scheduling process more detailed and accurate. Sub-jobs can be created inside the parent job and can be used in a variety of ways.

For example, if you have a job that is a client with multiple locations the sub-jobs can be this location. The options are endless.

To set up sub-jobs, enter the Job Scheduler and add a job as done above. While creating the job, scroll down, click on 'Add sub-job' and add the relevant sub-jobs.

When creating sub-jobs it is important to make sure you qualify the relevant users. The default option for the sub-job settings is to be the same as the parent job. This means that the users who are qualified for the parent job will also be qualified for the sub-job. You can change this by un-checking the option 'Use same settings as parent job' and selecting the relevant qualified users or smart groups.

💡 Tip: Sub-jobs can't be added to existing jobs. They can only be added when creating a new job.

In the example below you can see I created a Job that is a parent job named Grocery and then I created the sub-jobs First Street, Maple Street, and Washington Street. These serve as the locations of the parent job Grocery. Now I will be able to see which location my users are working at.

To add a sub-job to the shift, first create a shift and add a job, just as you did above. Then if there is a sub-job you attached to the Job, you will have the option to add it.

Take a look at how this looks below, where I assign the job Grocery, and the sub-job First Street to the user Carl.

All sub-jobs will appear under the parent job on the schedule. In the schedules there are three views we can use to view the jobs, these are Users, Jobs, and List Views. Let's go over how the sub-jobs look in each one.

View by Users: In the user’s view you will see the job title and then an arrow with the sub-job following. In the example below you can see that Carl is assigned the Job Grocery, with the sub-job 'First Street'.

View by Jobs: Switch to the jobs view by going to the view by button and switching to view by jobs as done above. On the left, the jobs will appear instead of the users. Under each job, the sub-jobs will appear, and there is the option to expand or collapse the sub-job view.

💡 Tip: Even when the sub-jobs are collapsed you will always know how many shifts and users are allocated to the sub-jobs. The number of hours allocated in the schedule per job is the sum of the shifts scheduled in all the sub-jobs. Take a look at how this looks below.

List View: This view allows you to gain insights and an overview of your scheduling statistics. To view by list, click on View Options and choose 'List View'.

Similar to the other views, you will also have the option to view by User and Job, as well as Date and Shift title. In each view, the Job will appear with the sub-job following.

In the example below we are in the Job View, where we can see the sub-job right after the job itself.

To learn more about the List View, click here.

💡 Tip: If you want these jobs and sub-jobs to appear for users when clocking in without needing to recreate them in the time clock, then make sure your time clock and job schedules are synced.

The Jobs Tab

Job Scheduler: Qualifying Users to Jobs

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