Preference-based rosters normally require a roster administrator to finalise the roster for publishing. This article shows how to review users' preferences, develop a draft roster automatically, edit any selections, and finalise the roster for publishing.

To access the preference roster after the window has closed, go to the 'Closed' tab on the self-roster pages (A) and select Manage selections (B) from the Actions menu.

There are 3 main tabs (C):

Selections: see who has expressed what preferences for what shifts, and how many people have expressed a preference for each shift.

Drafts: build and edit the proposed roster

Stats: review each user against their quota, the number of shifts they selected and the number of shifts they have been assigned.

Any shift that has at least one preference will be shown in green and any shift that has no selections against it will be shown in pink. The number of selections is listed at the bottom of each shift. In the example in the screenshot above (E), there is one person who has expressed a preference for Wednesday 3 April, and five people who have expressed a preference for Wednesday 10 April.

To see the selections of an individual, select their name from the 'Show data for' dropdown (D). The status of the selections is shown by the colour (see example in F), and may change colour as you build your rosters:

Yellow (e.g. 1 April): Preferences picked by this user, but the person has not been assigned to that shift

Green (e.g. 4 April): Preferences picked by this user, and the person has been assigned to that shift.

Navy (e.g. 10 April): a blockout shift chosen by this user, which only applies if you allowed blockouts on this roster.

Grey (e.g. 14 April): a shift that has been assigned to a person which was not on their preferences. If you staff someone on a shift that they have blocked out you will see a warning icon (e.g. 2 April).

The simplest way to start building a roster is to select the 'Refresh drafts' button (G). This will run HosPortal's automated roster-building algorithm and create a draft roster. Some of this process is random, so you might get a different roster each time you press this button.

The status of shifts is shown by colour (H):

White (e.g. 10 April): a shift that matches a user's preferences

Yellow (e.g. 3 April): a shift assigned to someone that does not match their preferences. If you assign someone to a shift that they have blocked out (something HosPortal's algorithm will never do, but you can do manually) you will see a blockout icon as shown on 2 April.

Pink (e.g. 16 April): a shift that has no one yet assigned to it.

HosPortal's roster-filling algorithm uses a semi-random process to fill a roster. The rules it uses are that a user will never be staffed on a shift:

Roster administrators can override any of these rules by editing a shift manually.

If there is a large aggregate of excess quota allocated to users the the random nature of the algorithm will generally tend to allocate shifts fairly across all users, rather than leave some users un-staffed. But you can check this at any time on the Stats tab (C) and - if desired - run the algorithm any number of times by pressing the 'Refresh drafts' button (G).

Click on any shift to edit it. The selection menu (I) shows you the users who have expressed a preference for that shift, or use the 'Change user' option to select anyone else on the roster.

If you use the Change user option, you will have the option to filter the participants on your roster to see only those people who have not met their quota.

You can 'Pin' a user to a shift to make sure that HosPortal's algorithm does not move them when you select 'Refresh drafts'. This can be helpful to manually fill difficult shifts first before filling the rest of the roster with HosPortal's algorithm. Pinned users are shown with a pin icon, for instance Dr Eckleburg on 2 April (H).

You can leave the roster in working state and come back to it at any time.

To finalise the roster and transfer it to the main roster page, select the 'Finalise' button (G). This will lock down the selections as they exist on the Drafts tab and transfer them to the main roster. You can choose to transfer them in Published state, which makes them visible to users immediately, or Draft state, for a roster administrator to publish later.

Once a roster is finalised you can no longer edit it on this Drafts tab. You can however always come back to this tab in the future to see the status of the roster at the moment you finalised it. You can also review the Selections tab at any time in the future, too.

The Stats tab allows you to review each user against their quota, the number of shifts they selected and the number of shifts they have been assigned. If you have used blockouts it also reports the number of blockouts users have selected.

The data reported against each person (J) are:

Quota name: if there are multiple quotas, e.g. for weekdays and weekends, then data on each quota is reported separately.

Quota: the quota assigned to each person. This could be reported in points if shifts are worth different amounts. Anyone where the draft shifts is less than the quota assignment is flagged with a yellow alrert icon.

Prefs: the number of preferences expressed by each person. A count of 0 means that person did not pick any preferences at all.

Drafts: the number of shifts assigned to each person.

Match: the number of shifts assigned to each person that matches their preferences.

Match percent: the ratio of Match divided by Drafts. If someone did not express any preferences then this percentage is not able to be calculated.

Other options for presenting the data are at the top of the table (K):