How to read the generation preview#
For: Manager You’ll need: The ‘Create shift skeletons’ preview open.
The preview is the whole point of the feature: it prices the week before a single shift is written. Read it before you click ‘Next: Create shifts’.
The headline figures#
Figure |
What it means |
|---|---|
‘Shifts’ |
How many draft shifts would be created. |
‘People’ |
How many people those shifts add up to across the week. |
‘Overstaffing (h)’ |
Paid hours beyond what the forecast asks for — the cost of shifts having to be a sensible length. |
‘Minimums (h)’ |
Hours your own position minimums add on top of the forecast. Not waste — required staffing. |
‘Replaced’ |
Earlier generated drafts that would be rewritten. |
‘Left alone’ |
Existing shifts that would be untouched — published ones and anything you edited. |
‘Unstaffed (h)’ |
Demand no available shape can reach. |
‘Overstaffing (h)’ and ‘Minimums (h)’ are kept apart on purpose. Overstaffing is the price of shift shapes not matching a demand curve exactly. Minimums are the price of your own rules — a position that needs two people whenever it’s open gets two even in a quiet hour. Separating them tells you which lever to pull.
The per-profile table#
Below the headline, one row per shape used: ‘Profile’, ‘Shifts’, ‘People’, ‘Idle (h)’. This is where an expensive shape shows itself — a profile producing a lot of idle hours is either the wrong length or scoped too widely.
Demand no profile covers#
If your catalog can’t reach some hours, they are listed by day:
Sun 24 May, 08:00–11:00 — Barista, 2 short
Those hours stay unstaffed. Either create a shift profile that reaches them, or staff them by hand. Generation will not invent a shape to fill them — that is what having a catalog means.
The shortest-shift selector#
When shapes are derived from your work policy (not from profiles), a ‘Shortest shift’ selector appears. Change it and the whole preview re-runs live, so you can see what a three-hour floor costs versus a six-hour one.
Longer shifts are better for your people and cost more idle hours.
The selector is hidden only when every demand curve was covered by a profile. In mixed mode — some curves covered by profiles, the rest derived — it still shows, with the note “Only the derived days change — a shift profile states its own length.”
Verify it worked#
You have a number for every column above before anything is written. If ‘Unstaffed (h)’ is larger than you can live with, close the preview and fix the catalog first — nothing has been created yet.