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Otipo’s Online Scheduling Service – Features

Otipo’s various options and capabilities will help you to easily and efficiently prepare your shift-based schedule.

Use of our shift scheduling service centralizes all of the information you need in a single location and does most of the work for you.  

This page lists the full features of Otipo's on-line scheduling service.  

Links to our blog will lead you to additional information on how to use these features. 
Your requests, suggestions and ideas are always welcome! Contact us. 

 

Collecting Employees’ info and Scheduling Requests

  • Create employees' profilles with info such as birthday, gender, home address, and work start date (Read more!)

  • Online submission of requests in less than a minute – each employee submits his own availability independently 

  • Update of the employee's availability options from the manager interface – the manager has the option of updating employees’ availability for them

  • Availability can be submitted via employee’s smartphones, via a customized website (a great mobile application – coming soon)

  • Employees can define their own  recurring availability for a shift (for up to 32 weeks)

  • Easy login to the system using social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Google or Yahoo (Read more!)

  • Messages can be automatically sent to employees’ via email or SMS reminding them to submit their availability

  • Definition of rules for the submission of availability, for example, minimum number of shifts, weekend shifts, and so on; Employees who do not meet the rule conditions can be set an automatic message advising them accordingly (Read more!)

  • Special requests from staff can be concentrated in a simple report (Read more!)

 


Preparing the Schedule

 

The shift-based schedule is prepared using a sophisticated scheduling algorithm that takes your organization’s business policies into consideration, including:

 

  • Assigning the desired or defined number of shifts to each employee

  • Avoidance of double-shifts (although, if necessary, the possibility does exist)

  • Rest hours/periods between shifts and over the course of the week

  • Labor law enforcement infrastructure (Read More)

  • Comparing your required staffing needs with your employees’ personal contracts, and easily identifying possible gaps between them (Read more!)

  • Rotation of the problematic/undesirable shifts and good/desirable shifts (Read more!)

  • Definition of different levels for each role, for example, to enable the scheduling of more experienced employees or those with special skills to more difficult shifts

  • Ability to filter the view to show shifts for specific roles or hours (Read more!)

  • Ability to manually schedule employees and then allow the automatic scheduling process to complete the process and fill in the gaps

  • Re-running the automated schedule guarantees scheduling results optimization (Read more!)

  • Generation of alerts regarding the shifts for which insufficient staff is available both before and after running the automatic scheduling process 

  • Ability to manually update the schedule after it is generated After publishing – you can see who is scheduled for shift, who else is willing to work it, and who is scheduled for back-to-back  or overlapping shifts (Read more!) 

  • Total control of the schedule! If necessary, it is possible to selectively schedule exceptions to the scheduling rules you defined in the system (Read more!)

  • Prioritizing shifts for automatic scheduling, indicating which shifts are high priority and which are low priority (Read more!)

  • Easy adaptation of the scheduling to changing weekly demands (adding/removing shifts, changing the number of employees required, changing shift titles)

  • Modification of different shift hours for each day of the week (Read More!)

 

Displaying the Schedule

  • Easy to view and easy to print (no need to copy it) Read more! 

  • Ability to add a photo of each staff member, and publish the schedule including the staff photos (Read more!)

  • Weekly or monthly views of the schedule (Read more!)

  • Ability to display shift roster according to your preferences (Read more!) 

  • Viewing and printing of several environments (for example, different branches) on a single screen (Read more!) 

 

Publishing the Schedule

  • Publishing of the schedule on the Internet – with each staff member able to access the site with a personal username and password

  • Viewing the published schedule on the Internet – without requiring a password – using an external link, which can be sent to staff members and others. This option requires configuration and is fully controlled by shift schedule manager (Read more!)

  • Sending the schedule to employees by email (the entire schedule or each employee’s individual schedule only) Read more!

  • when changes are made to the schedule after it is published, it is possible to send updates to those employees whose shifts have been changed (Read more!)

  • Published schedule can include staff photos

  • Ability to publish shifts to popular calendar services (such as Google Calendar), enabling employees to view their shifts on their personal calendars (when such integration is supported) Read more!

  • Importing staff shifts into the manager’s on-line calendar (Read more!)

  • Ability to add comments to the published calendar, such as general remarks and notes for specific shifts, for each week (Read more!)  

   

Reporting

  • Weekly and periodic reports for the calculation of wages and statistical purposes – data on total number of hours/shifts, by shift type, including breakdown for special shifts (nights, weekends) Read More! 

  • Employee's availability report shows the precentage of availability for each employee Read More!

  • Definition of different types of working hours – nights, overtime, and so on – and production of reports by type

  • Monitoring of implementation – how many employees actually worked each shift

  • Dashboard that displays interesting data – which employees are most available, who works the most hours, the average number of hours worked per week, and more

  • Define shifts as “off hours” so they won’t count as working hours (Read more!) 

  

Contacting Employees

  • Employee contact sheet, including email, telephone and, if desired, employee photos (optional) Read more! 

  • Ability to send SMS and email messages to all employees, groups of employees, or individual employees

  • Automatic SMS reminders for employees who tend to be late for their shifts

  • When new employees are added, welcome message sent by email, including explanation on how to use the system

 

Shift Scheduling for Multiple Branches of an Organization

  • Unique interface for network management

  • Centralized view and of schedules for several branches at the same time (Read more!)

  • Easy import of employee details from a Microsoft Excel spreadshee

  • Synchronizing employee’s data with an organizational database (by API), importing this data (by employee) into Otipo’s staff list.   
  • Easily import employees’ details from one branch into another (For a business with several branches) Read more!

  • Ability to schedule the same employee to work shifts in different branches

  • Add data fields in the employees’ info page according to your business policy 

 

Monitoring and Security