FAQ
What is the process for writing the staff schedule?
Check the employee master data: Are the qualifications and availability maintained? Is the MEO and the minimum staffing correct? Are absences already planned?
Employees → Master Data → Availability / Qualifications
Settings → Local Settings → Planning → MEO / Minimum Staffing
If necessary, create a shift framework: If there are shifts that always and regularly take place, you can create these as recurring shifts and optionally assign employees. If you want to schedule employees on a specific day, you can create single shifts.
Generate the shift proposals: If you have created a shift framework, you should now regenerate the shift proposals to avoid overstaffing. Nesto will now plan including your manually created shifts and suggest shifts to you.
Settings → Local Settings → Automatic Staff Scheduling → “Generate Shift Proposals”
Use the Automatic Planning Assistant to fill the shift proposals with employees: With just a few clicks, you can now have the shift proposals filled with employees.
Monthly Planner → Automatic Planning Assistant → Select Positions → Select Period → Plan Automatically Now
The shift proposals don’t look good. What could be the reason?
It’s best to look at the affected days in the day analysis and ask yourself the following questions:
Does the sales forecast match my expectations? If not:
→ Manually adjust the daily sales or the sales in the respective hours if there is a reason for an unusually high or low sales volume
→ For systematic or recurring problems (e.g. forecast is always too low on weekends), send an email with screenshots and a description of the problem to data.science@nesto-software.de
Does the personnel requirement, i.e. the boxes shown in the day analysis, fit? If not:
Adjust the MEO, e.g. change sales corridors in the dynamic MEO or add entries to the static MEO
Check the shift proposals based on the guiding questions from the onboarding guide.
→ Strict conditions can be adjusted in the local position settings.
→ Changes to the fine-tuning can be made by the Data Science team. For this, please send an email with a screenshot of the automatic shift proposals in the day analysis and a screenshot with the desired shift proposals (manually adjusted beforehand) to data.science@nesto-software.de. Then we can check which setting changes need to be made.
The shift proposals have not adapted to a changed forecast or MEO.
The shift proposal algorithm is very computationally intensive and therefore runs overnight. Only unfilled shift slots that have not been manually adjusted are overwritten. To have the shift proposals automatically adjusted, employees must be removed from the respective shifts and, ideally, the unfilled shifts deleted directly. Both can be done via the trash can icon in the monthly planner.
If you don’t want to wait a whole night, the shift proposals can also be recalculated immediately via the “Regenerate Shift Proposals” button in Local Settings / Automatic Staff Scheduling.
Why is a certain employee not assigned?
The following checklist might help, as the reason is often that the planning-relevant master data has not been fully maintained:
Does the employee have a valid contract?
Is the contract valid for the planning period? (If not, the employee will not be considered for shifts in this planning period)
Are the availabilities correctly maintained?
Often the availabilities are set too narrowly. All shift proposals outside the availabilities are not considered for the respective employee.
Are the position qualifications correctly maintained?
Has a minimum or maximum shift length been entered?
Does the employee have the correct qualification? → If the qualification levels are assigned very strictly, it may be that no employee is considered qualified enough to be assigned to these shifts. It can help to set the qualification levels a bit higher.
Why are there red shifts in the monthly planner after automatic planning?
Was the absence already created and approved before starting the automatic assignment?
The algorithm only considers absences that were approved before the start of the assignment. If this was not the case, the automatic assignment can be removed in the monthly planner and then restarted. In this new run, the subsequently added information will be considered.
Were there already assigned shifts at the start of the automatic assignment?
The automatic staff scheduling does not change shifts that have already been assigned to employees. This means that even if an existing schedule becomes invalid due to subsequently changed availabilities or absences, the algorithm will not change it automatically; the shifts must be reset beforehand. This can be done directly in the automatic planning assistent.
If an actually invalid assignment (i.e. red display in the monthly planner) was created by the algorithm (i.e. the red shift was not there before starting, but appears immediately after the calculation ends), please send an email with a screenshot from the monthly planner, a screenshot from the day analysis, and the time when the automatic planning was started to data.science@nesto-software.de.
Many shifts remain unfilled. What could be the reason?
Too few employees have the qualification for the respective position
Only employees with the qualification for the respective positions are considered for shifts
If the qualification for opening and closing is activated, enough employees must have this qualification. If not enough employees are available, no employees will be assigned to the first or last shift.
Can employees be scheduled on two different positions in one day?
Yes, this is possible. Prerequisite: the required qualifications and availabilities are present and the labor law conditions (maximum working time, rest periods, etc.) are observed.
Can I also schedule a minimum or maximum shift length?
Yes! To read how to set shift lengths, click here. If Nesto schedules shifts that are too short or too long, it may be that the shift settings need to be adjusted. If you do not have access to these settings, please contact your supervisor or Frage@nesto-software.de.
How can I schedule shifts in which no sales are generated?
For example, for preparation time in the kitchen or the cleaning staff at night, you can make special settings. These fall under the area of minimum staffing.
What is a tenant? How do I know what my tenant is?
The tenant identifies your company.