On this page, you'll find detailed information about Bid Manager and Shift Bidding, including recent improvements, gaining access and how to navigate the Bid Manager screen.
New to shift bidding? Start with What is Shift Bidding and Bid Manager
Recent improvements
- From v6.0.21 (Mar 2024) - where an employee has submitted bids for shifts that are exactly the same, and where that employee is either offered or directly assigned one of those shifts via Bid Manager, all the other active bids from that employee will be removed from the other duplicate shifts. This is to ensure managers can have more confidence that the bids presented in Bid Manager are valid and are not offering a shift to an employee who already has the same shift offered or assigned.
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From v6.0.17 (Jan 2024) users are able to select shifts to directly Assign to bidders via Bid Manager. The Assign functionality entirely bypasses the sometimes lengthy process of offering a shift to a bidder, then waiting for the offer to be accepted (or declined).
What is Shift Bidding and Bid Manager?
Shift Bidding allows employees to request to work ('bid' for) unfilled/unassigned published shifts that match their employee profile.
An employee with a rostered shift that overlaps an unassigned shift can also request to Exchange their current shift with the unassigned shift.
Managers can then review bids and offer or assign the shift using Manager > Shift > Bid Manager. When an employee is offered a shift, the shift is assigned to the employee and the employee must then confirm or decline the shift. When a shift is assigned via Bid Manager, the shift is immediately assigned to the employee who bid on it, bypassing the offer>confirm/decline process.
Shift Bidding is available in Humanforce Cloud as a paid feature. Please speak to a Humanforce support consultant for further details.
For information on how to Offer and Assign see Offering and Assigning Shifts via Bid Manager.
What Access Level/Permissions are required?
To ensure employees can see the Shift Bidding page and managers can offer shifts in Bid Manager, the following access levels must be applied.
Employee permissions for Shift Bidding
For employee access to the Shift Bidding page and to allow bidding on shifts that do not overlap their existing rostered shift:
- Go to Admin > Security Config > Access Levels
- For the relevant Access Level, click Edit
- Open the Permissions tab
- Enter Shift Bidding in the filter search box and press enter
- Expand the TimeTarget Online access permission and tick the View Shift Bidding Page.
- If you want employees to be able to view and bid on shifts that overlap with their existing rostered shifts, tick the Allow Exchanging permission.
- Click Apply Changes.
Manager permissions for Bid Manager
For managers to be able to allocate shifts:
- Go to Admin > Security Config > Access Levels
- For the relevant Access Level, click Edit
- Open the Permissions tab
- Enter 'View Bid' in the filter search box and press enter
- Expand the 'TimeTarget Online' access permission and tick View Bid Manager Page
- Click Apply Changes.
These access levels can be applied in HumanForce Web or the Back Office.
For permission-related information on how to Assign see Offering and Assigning Shifts via Bid Manager.
When does a shift become available on Shift Bidding?
A shift becomes available on Shift Bidding when it is unassigned and published. The below shifts would be available on the Shift Bidding page for employees to express an interest in working.
Note that the access levels and permissions for Shift Bidding need to be enabled. See What Access Level/Permissions are required?
How does an employee bid for a shift?
For employees on Humanforce Web v5.0.19 onwards, the process is detailed on the following page: https://help.humanforce.com/hc/en-au/articles/5497383979919-How-do-I-use-Shift-Bidding-
In what scenarios should shifts be visible in Bid Manager?
Shifts will be visible in Bid Manager where the shift is either:
- Unassigned
- Offered but not yet accepted/confirmed (these shifts will be assigned to the employee being offered)
Shifts will not be visible in Bid Manager where the shift is:
- Assigned
- Assigned, with the bid in a declined status (this occurs where auto-unassign is off, and a shift offer is declined - the shift itself will still be assigned to the employee)
Offering and Assigning Shifts
For information on how to review, offer and directly assign shifts in Bid Manager, refer to the Offering and Assigning Shifts via Bid Manager page.
Customise columns displayed on Bid Manager
To select the columns you wish to have displayed on Bid Manager, click the icon.
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- There are three types of column settings, that align with the different row types shown on Bid Manager: shifts, bids, and exchanges.
- The column selections apply to all rows of the same type (changes to columns for the Bid type row applies to all Bid rows whether expanded or not)
- The column selections made are retained between logins.
How does an employee confirm or decline the offered shift?
Once a shift has been offered by a manager, the employee must then confirm or decline the shift to confirm that the shift either using Shift Bidding, or via the Rosters page.
From the Home page, an employee has a number of ways to be able to confirm/decline a shift.
- Clicking the Shift Bids tile on the home page
- Navigating to Employee > Rosters
- Navigating to Employee > Shift Bidding
Using Shift Bidding page: For employees on Humanforce Web version 5.0.19 and later, the whole Shift Bidding process - including how to confirm or decline a shift offer - can be found here.
Using Rosters page: Employees on any Humanforce Web version can continue to accept or decline a shift offer via the Rosters page.
In the Roster page, the question mark icon indicates shifts that have been offered but are yet to be accepted (or declined).
To accept the shift offer, the employee will need to click on the question mark once, where it will turn into a green tick, then Submit.
To decline the shift offer, the employee will need to click on the question mark twice, where it will turn into a red X, then Submit.
If the Auto-unassign setting is inactive, declined shifts will remain visible on the Roster, with an indication it's been declined.
If the Auto-unassign setting is active, declined shifts will be removed from the Rosters page view.
What notifications are generated for Shift Bidding?
Notifications are sent when an employee accepts or declines an offered shift.
Note: If the Auto-unassign feature is active, and the offer was declined via Web, the
notification will specifically state that the shift has been unassigned. At present
if declined via Mobile, the standard notification will be sent.
System Settings for Manager Notifications
From 25th October 2023 (v6.0.12), there are new options so you can choose which managers receive notifications when an employee accepts or declines an offer made via Bid Manager.
Note that this function does not apply to offers made from Roster/Fill Shift.
The options are:
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The manager who published the shift and the manager who offered the shift. One notification will be sent if these two personas are the same user. This is the default setting.
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All manager users with access to the Location/Department of the offered shift and who also have access to Bid Manager or the Rostering screens (those users with either the 'Rostering Screen' permission or the 'View Bid Manager' permission active)
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All reporting managers for the employee's management group
Depending on the above setting, the manager user will receive a push notification which will also be visible on the Messages page and shown on the Home screen.
Clicking the entry on the Home screen will take you directly to the notification in the Messages page.
Employee Notifications
Employee notifications relating to Bid Manager/Shift Bidding are 'always on'.
Notifications are sent as push messages and are visible in the Notifications section on Web and Mobile.
Offer
When an employee is offered a shift, the employee receives a notification advising their bid has been selected and they need to confirm it for it to be assigned to them. The employee will also receive this notification as a push message for their Humanforce App.
Offer Text: Your bid was selected and you have been offered a shift for CHEF on 25/10/2023. Please confirm the offer to have the shift assigned to you.
Assign
When an employee is directly assigned a shift via Bid Manager, the employee receives a notification advising their bid has been selected and they have been assigned a new shift. The employee will also receive this notification as a push message for their Humanforce App.
Assign Text: Congrats! You have a new shift! Your bid was successful and a new shift has been assigned to you. Check out the details of your new shift below. [SHIFT DETAILS]
Notes
The Retain unconfirmed overlapping shifts upon acceptance of offer system setting found in the Rosters/Roster Templates tab does not apply to offers made via Bid Manager. It only impacts offers made via BackOffice.
Shift Bids and Offers Workforce Analytics Report
Refer to https://help.humanforce.com/hc/en-au/articles/900004391223-How-can-I-view-Shift-Bids-and-Offer-responses-in-Humanforce-Web for information on the Shift Bids and Offers Workforce Analytics report.
Earlier improvements
Several enhancements and new features for Bid Manager and Shift Bidding have been implemented and are available for all versions of Humanforce Cloud from v6.0.4 onwards (released on 21st June 2023).
Enhancements
- Bid Manager now shows you all unassigned shifts with bids in any status (Submitted, Offered or Declined), so you can see exactly where each shift is in the Shift Bidding flow. This means all shift bids stay visible in Bid Manager, until an employee confirms/accepts the shift.
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As you're likely to see many more shifts in Bid Manager and not all will require your attention, we've added a tag to indicate where your action is required. For example, you'll see the tag on days and shifts where offers haven't yet been made in response to bids.
- All bids submitted against a shift will be retained, even after the shift has been offered. If the first employee declines an offer, and once the shift is unassigned, all the other bids submitted for that shift will again be visible in Bid Manager, making it quicker to fill the shift.
- Employees who decline an offered Exchange shift (which is a shift that overlaps with an existing confirmed shift assigned to them), will now retain their original shift.
- From v6.0.17 (Jan 2024) users are able to select shifts to directly Assign to bidders via Bid Manager. The Assign functionality entirely bypasses the sometimes lengthy process of offering a shift to a bidder, then waiting for the offer to be accepted (or declined).
New Feature: Auto-unassign shift when employee declines offer
We've introduced new settings that offer a second, automated option for how shifts are unassigned when an employee declines a shift offer.
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Existing default option: Retain employee on Roster, showing decline status
Under the existing default settings for all new and existing customers, when an employee declines an offer, the shift remains assigned to the employee and is marked as declined on the roster. A manager must manually unassign the shift on the roster. When the shift is unassigned:- existing bids are displayed in Bid Manager and
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other employees can submit new bids for the shift again.
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New option: Auto-unassign employee from Roster
When an employee declines an offer, the shift will be automatically unassigned from the employee and marked as unconfirmed. The shift continues to be visible in Shift Bidding, so employees can continue to submit bids.If you wish to enable this option see How to activate/deactivate Auto-unassign.