Working with Shifts in Workflows

Following blocks supporting Shifts are available in Workflows:

How shifts triggers and actions in Workflows work?

Open Shift Claimed Trigger

Open Shift Claimed trigger allows to start a workflow whenever an employee claims a shift without an assignee. It can be very useful to ensure open shifts are staffed properly.

As an example let’s setup a workflow where an employee claims an open shift, an approval task is created for a manager to verify if employee is eligible to claim the shift.

1. Add a trigger “Open shift claimed” - this trigger requires no input. In following steps you’ll get access to all the details of a claimed open shift as magic variables.

2. Add “Retrieve user profile data” action - based on user ID from previous step, grab profile field of an employee claiming the shift.

3. Add “Send Request and Branch on Approval” branching node - simply assign a task to a person who’s responsible for scheduling. If it’s employees manager then grab manager's user ID from previous step. Fill out all the required content for the approval. Consider specifying due date that is before shifts start time.

4. Branch on “Rejected” - as a default open shifts are assigned to an employee, without the need of managers approval. What you can do in workflows is reflect on that default behaviour, and reject such a claim. Approval does not change anything in employees claim.

5. Add “Update a shift” action - when manager decides to reject an open shift claim, update a shift that triggered this workflow, by removing assignee from it. Thanks to that, shift will be re-added to the pool of “open shifts”.

 

Example of a workflow with an “Open shift claimed” trigger and “Update a shift action”

New Open Shift Added Trigger

New Open Shift Added trigger allows to launch a workflow whenever a shift without an assignee is added to a schedule or an existing shift becomes an open shift (assignee is removed from a shift). Let’s consider a workflow example where you want to inform employees about new work opportunity by sending a campaign to them.

1. Add a trigger “New Open Shift Added” - this trigger requires no input. In following steps you’ll get access to all the details of this open shift as magic variables.

2. Add “Send a campaign” action - when configuring campaign make sure you send it to people who can claim an open shift. Target group of a campaign must match schedule members (locations and groups added to a schedule).

Consider client's specific situation. If a schedule upload contains multiple open shifts, each such shift will trigger this workflow, possibly spamming all schedule members with a campaign.

 

Add a shift Action

“Add a shift” action allows to add a new shift to a schedule. Let’s consider a workflow where form submissions are converted to shifts. This way, whenever you need to make some add-hoc changes to a schedule, you do not have to go through the whole schedule upload process using Beekeeper Excel Add-on or Shift Template.

1. Create a form that will capture all the necessary information needed for a shift.

2. Add “Form submitted” trigger and select a form defined in the first step.

3. Add “Add a shift” action - create a shift based on the form submission. Either use magic variables or fixed values.

Please have a look at general remarks on creating shifts in Beekeeper below.

Shift creation in Beekeeper - general remarks

To create a shift in Beekeeper you need at least:

• schedule Id (this can be mapped in workflows)

• shift date

• title for a shift

• userId (while optional, if it’s not provided, an open shift will be added to a schedule)

Shifts can contain much more information that can be useful for managers and employees. Consider expanding form or workflow to add this information to a shift:

• start and end times - if not provided a whole day shift will be created

• icon or colour - visually highlights shifts of certain type

• labels - adds context to a shift

• location - a label indicating where a shift takes place

• type - additional customisable information about shift usually used to reflect time of the day when shift takes place without the need to specify exact start end times, example: morning, afternoon, evening, night

• description of a shift - text describing details of a shift

• shiftManagersIds - while not visible in the Shifts Calendar View, you can add manager information when creating a shift. This can be useful for contacting them about any changes to the shifts they manage.

Shift dates, start and end times

There are few important caveats on how dates, start and end times for shifts work. How you collect that information will impact workflows complexity and an end result.

“Add a shift” and “Update a shift” action nodes allow to specify date, start or end time of a shift, where only date is required.

It’s a different approach comparing to our API where we require both start and end date times. Approach with split date, start time and end time makes it easier to address real-life scenarios where:

• start and end times are irrelevant, because employees always work the same hours, so they only need information about when they work. By providing only date we’ll create a whole day shift in Beekeeper;

• by providing start time and end times we ensure flexibility needed by frontline managers and employees around properly staffing throughout the day. By providing this information we’ll create a shift with a specific start and end time.

Note: If you provide start and end times in workflows, and the end time is earlier than the start time, this shift will be an overnight shift. It begins at the start time and ends at the end time the following day.

If you collect information about a shift from a form consider if you ask about end times or duration of a shift. If you go with duration then you need to perform calculations in workflow to convert duration to an actual end time formatted as HH:MM.

Update a shift Action

You use workflows to update already existing shifts. To do that you’ll need a pair of ID’s:

• Shift User - Id of a user who is assigned to a shift

• Shift ID - Id of a shift a user is assigned to

 

 

You can update shift fields like:

• User - if you’d like to change assignee of a user or make the shift open by removing an assignee

• Start - start date time of a shift

• End - end date time of a shift

• Title

• Description

• Location

• Type

 

 

 

This node allows to either update or clear value of a single shift attribute. If you’d like to update more than one attribute of a shift, you’ll need to add multiple “Update a shift” nodes.

Not all shift attributes are required (for example, a shift without an assignee is an open shift). If you’d like to clear a value of a field that is required workflow will fail (for example clearing a Title).

Bare in mind limitations for each type attribute, for example length of title cannot be longer than 80 characters.

As an example let’s setup a workflow where an employee claims an open shift, an approval task is created for a manager to verify if employee is eligible to claim the shift.

1. Add a trigger “Open shift claimed” - this trigger requires no input. In following steps you’ll get access to all the details of a claimed open shift as magic variables.

2. Add “Retrive user profile data” action - based on user ID from previous step, grab profile field of an employee claiming the shift.

3. Add “Send Request and Branch on Approval” branching node - simply assign a task to a person who’s responsible for scheduling. If it’s employees manager then grab managers user ID from previous step. Fill out all the required content for the approval. Consider specifying due date that is before shifts start time.

4. Branch on “Rejected” - as a default open shifts are assigned to an employee, without the need of managers approval. What you can do in workflows is reflect on that default behaviour, and reject such a claim. Approval does not change anything in employees claim.

5. Add “Update a shift” action - when manager decides to reject an open shift claim, update a shift that triggered this workflow, by removing assignee from it. Thanks to that, the shift will be re-added to the pool of “open shifts”.