More powerful and more flexible rules
One of the consequence of our AI-based roster building tools is that it places more demands on rules to guide the AI on how it should build a roster and assign individuals. This has inspired us to make some significant improvements in that area.
For a while now, well before our AI was developed, we have had two main types of rules that users can define and edit at any time from our powerful administrative pages:
Shift conflict rules for the interaction between specific shifts. For instance that users cannot do an on-call shift within 5 days of another on-call shift, or cannot do a daytime clinical allocation after a night shift.
Work rules to limit over-working. Examples are specifying that someone cannot work more than 80 hours per payroll period, or no more than 2 weekends in a month.
In the last few releases we have made improvements to our flexible rules that you can use for your normal day-to-day rostering, or to give our AI solver more guidance.
New ‘user conflict’ rules
There is now a third type of rule that can be used to prevent individuals or types of staff being assigned at the same time or on the same day. A common request we have had is that the roster administrator knows that Dr Smith and Dr Jones are married with small children and so they should not be staffed on night shifts together. Or it might be that you want a rule to prevent more than one intern at a time being assigned to a particular clinical area. Administrators can now build, manage and delete these sorts of rules quickly and easily.
Breaks between sequences of shifts
A consequence of saying, for instance, that you need a 5 day break between night shifts is that it prevents you from staffing a night shift 3 nights in a row, a common rostering practice when assigning trainees. Now you can specify the break (‘5 days between blocks of night shifts…’) separately from the allowable sequence of shifts (‘…but allow up to 3 night shifts in a row’).
Roster rule names and simple descriptions
HosPortal will always show the various rules you are breaking when you mouse over the alert icon shown on the screen. Previously HosPortal would describe the rule in full, which can result in long and not-helpful names, particularly if the rule is nuanced and complex. Now administrators can optionally name any rule with a simpler and more intuitive name. So instead of mousing over a conflict to have to read a paragraph of text, HosPortal can show instead something like ‘Night break’ or ‘Weekend over-work’.
Improved rules management tools
All of these changes have gone hand-in-hand with improved user interfaces to make it easier for administrators to build and edit all these rules quickly and intuitively.
If you want to see any of these in action then please get in touch via our contact page.
