After a master schedule template (a schedule of all the shifts you expect an employee to work in a week) has been created in Time and Attendance (TAA), you can assign its schedule to an individual employee or multiple employees on the Assign Schedules screen. Its shift hours will appear on their time cards as planned work. Then, as they clock in and out of TAA throughout the week, their actual hours will appear next to their scheduled hours on their time cards, so you can easily check how closely they are adhering to your timetable.
Note: For more information about the entire process of using schedules in TAA, go to The Process of Using Schedules. To see how to add a new master schedule template, check out Creating a Master Schedule Template.
To assign a schedule to your employees, follow these steps:
- Click
>> Assign Schedules.
The Assign Schedules screen will appear.
A list of all the master schedule templates in your organization will be displayed in the right pane. By default, the schedules will be listed in alphabetical order by name.
- To assign a schedule to a whole department (or several departments) of employees, follow these steps:
- Under Employees (in the left pane), click
.
The Employees dialog box will appear, displaying your departments in a tree structure.
- To select individual departments, you may need to click the expansion arrow to the left of your top department's name.
Note: You can select all your departments by clicking the check box to the left of "Name" at the top left, although it is unlikely that you will be assigning the same schedule to all your employees. - Expand higher-level departments until you find the one you need, if they're not already expanded.
- Select the check box to the left of each department name to which you want to assign the schedule.
- Click Apply.
The number of employees added will appear in the Employees pane.
- Skip down to step 4.
- Under Employees (in the left pane), click
- To assign a schedule to a few employees by name, follow these steps:
- Under Employees (in the left pane), type the first employee's name (or part of it) in the Search Employee field.
Matching names will appear in a drop-down list.
- Select the employee from the list.
- Repeat steps a and b for as many individual employees you need.
The names of employees added will appear in the Employees pane.
- Under Employees (in the left pane), type the first employee's name (or part of it) in the Search Employee field.
- Find the master schedule template you need to assign to the selected employees in the Schedules grid. (You can sort or filter the Schedule Name column, if needed, as shown in Sorting and Filtering Column Data.)
- Click
to the left of the schedule's name.
The Assign Schedule dialog box will be displayed.
By default, yesterday will be specified for the day you want the schedule to begin for the employees.
- To change the date for the new schedule to first apply (such as at the beginning of your work week, often Monday), click the Start Date date picker and select the beginning date (the first day the schedule should appear on the employees' time cards for their expected work shifts).
- If necessary, click the End Date date picker and select the day when the schedule will no longer be applicable.
Note: Most often, you will leave this blank so that the schedule will be used in perpetuity. - Optionally, you can select Keep Selection to make the names of the chosen employees remain in the left pane after the assignment has occurred (so that you can still see which ones you added the schedule for). (
means selected, and 
deselected.)
Note: You can also use Keep Selection if you need to add another schedule for the selected employees for a different time frame — such as a holiday week. (Even though employees can't have two schedules assigned to them for the same work day or week, they can have separate schedules for one week and then the following week.) Be extremely careful with this, however! You'll need to make sure that you add back the employee's regular schedule for the week after the aberrant one. - Click Assign.
Note: If there are any issues with the employees you selected (such as if their employee types aren't allowed to use the job type specified in the schedule — see Job Types), the warning will include a link such as 2 issue(s) that will enable you to download an Excel file (ValidationErrors.xls) explaining the errors with their files.
The warning will also alert you if any of the selected employees already have an assigned schedule, telling you that the previous schedule will be deactivated and replaced with the new one if you continue.
A success message will appear at the top right of the window, including the name of the schedule, the number of shifts it contains, and how many employees it was just assigned to.
- You can assign a different schedule to other employees by repeating steps 2 through 9.
When you do so, you will find that the Start Date value you chose for the preceding assignment will persist, which is useful if you have several new employees starting on the same day with varied schedules.
Note: To see the assigned schedule, follow the steps in Viewing an Employee's Schedule. You can also view an employee's schedule on their time card (if it's after the start date you set for it), right next to their actual work hours.