Smart Scheduling Overview

Smart Scheduling is Humanforce's AI-powered rostering add-on for Workforce Management. It forecasts the labour you will need, generates shifts to match that demand, and fills those shifts with the right employees, so you have the right people in the right place at the right time.

Instead of building rosters by hand from experience and spreadsheets, Smart Scheduling analyses your historical demand (such as sales, bookings or attendance) alongside your past rosters to find patterns. The result is a forecast, and a roster, that reflects how your business actually behaves.

Who it's for

Smart Scheduling is designed for businesses with dynamic, demand-driven rostering, where staffing needs rise and fall with a measurable driver such as sales, occupancy, bookings, attendance or events. It is used mainly by Roster Managers and rostering administrators. Typical industries include:

• Retail: match staffing to sales patterns across trading hours.

• Hospitality: staff to covers, bookings and busy service periods.

• Events and entertainment: forecast staffing for specific events and venues.

• Aged care and childcare: keep rosters aligned to occupancy and attendance.

Why it matters

Under- and over-staffing are both costly. Too few staff hurts service and burns out your team; too many inflates labour cost. Smart Scheduling gives you an objective, data-driven view of demand compared with the headcount you currently have rostered, and removes much of the manual effort of building and balancing rosters.

Demand forecasting

Forecast the demand for a location and department over a chosen date range, then compare the forecast against your current rostered headcount on a graph. You can see at a glance where you are overstaffed or understaffed.

Benefit: instant insight into the health of your roster, before you publish it.

Shift generation

From a forecast, Smart Scheduling can generate the shifts needed to meet demand. It works out your operating hours from your historical timesheets, and applies your roles and your award and break rules. You choose where the generated shifts go:

• Live Roster: straight onto the roster, ready to edit, assign and publish.

• Demand Template: into a staging area, where you can review the shifts against the forecast and make adjustments before committing them to a live roster.

Benefit: a demand-matched starting roster in minutes rather than hours, with a safe way to test it first.

Autofill

Autofill assigns suitable employees to unassigned shifts, taking into account availability, leave, contracted hours and your award and break rules. You can run it as part of a forecast, or on its own against shifts that already exist on your roster.

Benefit: faster, fairer, more compliant shift fulfilment with less manual matching.

How it fits together

1. Set up your inputs. A demand feed and a Demand Profile, together with your historical demand and worked timesheets, tell Smart Scheduling how your business works. See Configuring Smart Scheduling.

2. Create a forecast. Choose a location, department and date range, and optionally generate shifts and autofill. See Creating a forecast.

3. Review and refine. View the forecast against your roster in Roster Manager and adjust as needed (described below).

4. Test before you commit (optional). Send generated shifts to a Demand Template to check them against the forecast and adjust them first. When you're happy, import them to the live roster. See Demand Templates.

Viewing a forecast in Roster Manager

Once a forecast has been created, Roster Manager shows it alongside your actual roster so you can compare demand and headcount in context.

The Smart Scheduling menu

When Smart Scheduling is enabled for you, a Smart Scheduling button (marked with a sparkle icon) appears in the Roster Manager toolbar. Its menu offers:

• Create Forecast: opens the Create Forecast dialog without leaving Roster Manager.

• Autofill shifts: fills unassigned shifts on the roster you are viewing, without creating a forecast. See Autofilling shifts.

• Manage Forecasts: opens the Smart Scheduling page, which lists all forecasts and their status. You can open it in a new tab using the icon beside the menu item.

Showing the demand graph

1. In Roster Manager, turn on the demand graph using the graph toggle. The graph is available in each Roster Manager view.

2. Select a Demand Profile. No forecast data loads until you choose one, and you will only see profiles for locations and departments you have permission to view.

3. Roster Manager applies the profile's location and department to your filters, and clears any other filters, so the shifts shown always match the forecast.

The graph shows the forecast demand for the dates in view alongside the headcount currently rostered, so gaps and surpluses are easy to spot. The graph adapts to the interval your forecast was created with (for example 15, 30 or 60 minutes, or a full day). It stays fixed at the top of the screen as you scroll the roster, and it refreshes as you add, edit or move shifts.

The side panel

Open the side panel from the graph to see a detailed breakdown of demand and headcount by role for the day. Use it to:

• compare forecast demand with rostered headcount for each role over the day,

• click a role to jump to the shifts for that role, and

• keep the panel open while you move between days. It updates as you navigate.

If you have rostered a role that the forecast has no demand for, that headcount appears as excess.

When you see validation messages or weak results

If Smart Scheduling can't create a forecast, or the results look unreliable, it almost always comes back to one of three inputs:

• the Demand Profile isn't set up completely,

• there isn't enough historical demand data linked to the profile, or

• there isn't enough historical headcount data (timesheets) for the same location and department.

The Creating a forecast article lists the common messages and what each one means.