Why can’t I see other departments or staff members?

You will not be able to see another department if you are not associated with that department, according to your department settings. To be able to see a department, the position to which you are assigned must be associated with that department OR you must be assigned to that department (you can manage a department without working in the department).

For example, if you are a “Craft Manager” (position) in “Crafts” (department), and all “Craft Managers” are assigned to the “Crafts” department, then you will be unable to see what’s going on in the “Produce” department, unless you assign “Craft Managers” to “Crafts” and “Produce”. If you don’t want to assign all of the employees associated with that position to a department, you can add them individually. So, if you only want a specific “Craft Manager” to work in “Produce”, you can assign just the employee you want without assigning all the other “Craft Managers” to “Produce”. Below are instructions for reassigning department positions.

Go to Departments

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Navigate to Set Up and click on Departments

Select a Department

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Click on the department that you would like to be in.

Go to Positions

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Go to the Positions tab and click on the certain positions that are wanted in the department.
Click save!

Finish Editing Department Information

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This question pops up because you already have these positions in a different department. Choose one of the following and click Next.

Choose Department While Managing Attendance

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When managing time and attendance shifts, you can also choose the department that the employee is working in (note, the Department column is only shown if the position and employee can be assigned to more than one department).

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How do I build a sub-Department?

You may want sub departments if your business needs them to track sales or labor needs. An example of a sub-department would be if a sporting goods retailer had a “Marketing” department, and the marketing department had a “Television Advertising” department. Sub departments mostly apply to businesses with an established departmental hierarchy.

Go to Departments

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To build a sub department, navigate to the Set Up tab and click on Departments.

Select a Department

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Choose the department that you would like to have the sub department filed under. Click on that department’s title.

Create Sub Department

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Type the name of the sub department into the Name field, then select which department this sub department will report to by clicking on the drop down box.

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How Do I Create Daily Labor Templates By Employee?

Schedule Templates are 24-hour periods of time that reflect a single day of a schedule. In some industries, these are called “Master Schedules“, or “Master Work Schedules“.

You can use templates to organize your staffing requirements in advance of making the actual schedule, allowing you to easily and quickly build a staff schedule. Templates can be created for any number of scenarios, and there are no limits on the number of templates in your account.

Templates allow you to rapidly build a schedule by spending some time in advance, thinking about your labor requirements.

In this lesson, we will build schedule templates for two staff members, and then use these templates to build a schedule.

Navigate to the Schedules Tab

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To manage templates, navigate to the Schedules tab, and then the Templates sub-tab, where you will see a list of templates for your location and/or departments.

Edit Schedule Templates

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Choose the Edit Schedule Templates link.

Add a New Schedule Template

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You can add a new template by clicking on the “Add a New Schedule Template” button, and then enter a name or description, and click “Save” to continue.

Add Shifts to the Daily Template

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Editing a template is similar to working with a staff schedule in the TimeForge Daily View.

Select the start time, end time, and position for each shift, and then choose the employee you would like to have work the shift. Just like the schedule Daily View, templates can be built by position or by employee, based on your business needs.

You can also build Templates using Work Periods (commonly called Day Parts), if you would like, by clicking on the Work Period icon, next to the start time.

Employee Staffing with Schedule Templates

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Shifts on a template can be assigned to an employee, to the TimeForge AutoScheduler, or as a Bid or Open shift.

- AutoSchedule shifts allow the TimeForge AutoScheduler to choose the best fitting staff member, and will replace the AutoSchedule employee with the best fitting staff member when building the schedule.
- Open shifts will allow a manager to specify the assigned employee when building the schedule.
- Bid shifts can be requested by multiple employees, and the manager can choose the best staff member for the job.

There are several options that can be chosen for each shift by clicking on the Properties link, the small pencil, next to the shift. Options include whether the staff member is an Extra or is On Call, the Skill Level necessary to work the shift, and the number of staff members required for the shift.

In this case, we have built a very simple template with a single shift.

We will Save this template, and create a new template for another staff member.

Build a Schedule Template for Another Staff Member

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Just like the previous template, we are creating a template with a single shift for another staff member.

Save this template, and then go build an actual schedule.

Navigate to the Schedules Page

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Go to the Schedules page and build a schedule.

Create a New Schedule

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Click on “Add A New Schedule“.

Choose Dates for the Schedule

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Choose the date range for the Schedule, and name the schedule to continue.

Choose One or More Schedule Templates

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When building your schedule, you can choose one or more schedule templates for each day.

In this case, we have chosen to schedule Anthony and Daniel on Sunday, using the templates we built previously.

When we are ready to have TimeForge build the schedule for us, simply click on Assign Employees. TimeForge will then copy the shifts inside of your templates to the schedule, and will assign staff members to work if necessary.

Posted in Schedules Tab / No Comments.

How Do I use Weekly Templates?

After creating several templates, you can choose to group templates into weekly templates to mirror your labor needs for any given week.

Use Schedule Templates to quickly and easily manage your workforce, and reduce the amount of time that you must spend changing the schedule on a weekly basis.

Navigate to the Schedules Tab

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To manage weekly templates, navigate to the Schedules tab, and then the Weekly Templates sub-tab, where you will see a list of applicable Weekly Templates.

Choose Edit Weekly Templates

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Choose Edit weekly templates to access the weekly templates.

Add or Modify a Weekly Schedule Template

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You can add a new Weekly template by clicking on “Add New Weekly Template“.

Changing the Weekly Template Information

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Enter an applicable Description, and then choose the appropriate template for each day of the week.

When you are done, click on Save.

Using Weekly Schedule Templates with Departments

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If you are using TimeForge Departments, you will notice that weekly templates are separated into departments.

This allows you to create weekly templates for each department, without worrying about positions and staff members that are not in your department.

Posted in Schedules Tab / No Comments.

How Do I Create Daily Labor Templates?

Schedule Templates are 24-hour periods of time that reflect a single day of a schedule. You can use a template to organize your labor requirements in advance of the actual schedule, allowing you to easily anticipate upcoming staffing needs.

Templates allow you to rapidly build a schedule, if you will simply spend some time in advance thinking about your labor needs.

For example, you might create a template for Monday through Thursday, and then separate templates for Friday and Saturday. Or, you might create templates for each day of the week, with templates for Monday night football, holidays, or other special occasions. There are no limits on the number of templates that you can have.

Navigate to the Schedules Tab

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To manage templates, navigate to the Schedules tab, and then the Templates sub-tab, where you will see a list of applicable templates.

Choose to Edit Schedule Templates

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Choose the Edit Schedule Templates link.

Add a New Schedule Template

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You can add a new template by clicking on “Add a New Schedule Template”, then enter an applicable name or description, and click “Save” to continue.

Add Shifts to the Daily Template

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Editing a template is similar to working with a work schedule in the Daily View.

You select a start time and end time for the shift, an applicable position, and then choose an employee. Just like in the scheduling Daily View, you can build the template by position or employee, based on your business needs.

You can build Templates using Day Parts, or Work Periods, if you would like, by clicking on the Work Period icon.

Labor Staffing Options with Schedule Templates

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Also, just like the TimeForge schedules, each shift can be assigned directly to an employee, or to the TimeForge AutoScheduler. When building the actual schedule using this template, the AutoScheduler will find the best fit for your schedule, and will replace the “AutoSchedule” employee with the best fitting staff member for that time period.

Alternatively, you can choose to leave the shift Open, meaning that a manager will later choose the appropriate employee, or you can set the shift to be a Bid shift. Bid shifts allow multiple staff members to try to pick up a single shift, allowing management to choose the best fitting staff member.

There are several options that can be chosen for each shift by clicking on the Properties link, the small pencil, next to the shift. Options include whether the staff member is an Extra or is On Call, the Skill Level necessary to work the shift, and if the shift requires more than one employee to come in, then you can change how many staff members are needed to work.

Labor Scheduling Templates with Departments

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If you are using TimeForge Departments, you will notice that templates are separated into departments. This allows you to create specific templates for each department, without worrying about positions and staff members that are not in your department.

You can also make a copy of the template by choosing “Make Copy“.

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What is a Schedule Template?

To quickly build employee schedules, many TimeForge managers rely on the TimeForge AutoScheduler and schedule forecasts, or build schedules by hand (one shift at a time). Other managers pre-build days on the schedule using collections of shifts, called templates.

Each TimeForge template contains one or more shifts, and can be used to quickly generate schedules for staff members. Each location (or store) can have many different templates (as many as are needed), and templates can be used to build new schedules.

Some examples of templates:
- Friday server / waiter template
- Monday night football template
- Summer weekend lifeguard template
- Christmas retail template

Templates can be grouped together to create Weekly Templates, for one-click schedule creation.

Employee Schedule Templates

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Employee schedule templates can be built one shift at a time, or can be copied from other templates. Additionally, a template can be created from a pre-existing schedule, and if departments are enabled, each department will have individual schedule templates.

There are no limits to the number of schedule templates that can be created at a location.

Weekly Templates can be created from Daily Templates

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Several schedule templates can be combined together into weekly templates, and supervisors and managers can use weekly templates to build entire schedules with a single click.

Templates can be assembled in different orders to handle labor scheduling across different seasonalities, holidays, or business requirements.

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What is a Department?

TimeForge departments provide larger organizations with the ability to partition, or assign, groups of employees to individual managers.

Each department can have a number of positions (positions can even overlap departments, if necessary), employees, supervisors, and managers. Employees may belong to more than one department, if necessary.

Examples of departments include:
- A restaurant could have a front of house, back of house, and bar department.
- A grocery store might have many departments, including cashier, meat counter, bakery, and other departments.
- A cinema or movie complex might have departments for the ticket counter, concessions, and floor.

Departments are created at the Corporate Level – all locations (or stores) within a single corporation share departments.

Please note: Enabling departments within TimeForge will change the TimeForge interface to accommodate the many new department features. For example, schedule forecasts, sales, and positions are all linked to departments.

Enabling Departments inside of TimeForge

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Departments, while powerful, should only be enabled by organizations needing them.

Adding or Editing Departments

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Each Department can have one, or more, positions assigned to it. Assigning positions will ensure that staff members, supervisors, and managers are not distracted or confused by other departments that are using TimeForge.

Employees can be assigned to Departments

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Each staff member can be assigned to one or more departments. Employees cannot belong to a position unless the position is assigned to one of the employee’s departments.

Schedules can be created on a department basis

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Each schedule can be assigned to a department, providing very fast reporting and schedule building on a per-department basis.

Additionally, schedule templates and weekly templates are assigned to departments, providing one-click scheduling for each department.

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heartWhat some of our clients have to say ...

We are one year into it now, well past being enamored with the newness. We are married to TimeForge. It's as essential to us now as any of our management tools today, and we very happy about that.- Steve @ Hermosa Cyclery
We really like the program so far. I know that it is geared towards restaurants, but we are a real estate company and we love it because it is inexpensive and it is so easy to use.- Nicole @ Exit Premier Realty
The Timeforge scheduling system has not only increased our efficiency tremendously; decreased the errors in what is normally an error prone environment; it has also saved us ten times what it costs us each month.- Michael @ Tiara Cafe
I would highly recommend TimeForge to anyone making work schedules. ... What used to take 1-2 hours, now takes 15 minutes. The reports section is comprehensive and useful.- Lawrence Payne @ Mid Pacific Country Club
I've been really pleased with this latest version of TimeForge. I'm really getting familiar with this program and its become a great time saver! Keep up the good work!- Loren @ Fresh Produce
Before using TimeForge, creating a schedule took 2 hours. With TimeForge, it takes less than 10 minutes.- Gail @ Kerr Drug

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