Roster Structure
Roster: is a schedule or structure that outlines the assignments, shifts, and activities planned for individuals over a specific period.
Roster group: is what comprises one or more rosters; it could be either activity-based or location-based:
a- An activity based roster is most suited where the shifts are filled with a single person per activity, the activities are regular (e.g. every weekday) and a location is not always required to be shown. For example: on-call rosters and daytime trainee duties. See this article on how to create activity based rosters.
b- A location-based roster will allow you to manage more complex rosters, such as when there may be different locations for each type of activity, there may be more than one person per activity, or the activities are irregular across a multiple week cycle. Some of the examples are theatre and clinical allocations. See this article on how to create location based rosters.
Shifts
Templates: the foundation of allocating users to shifts. They define the frequency and cycle of allocations, are pink coloured and only visible to site administrators.
Drafts: the pre-published stage for shifts after the users have been allocated to shifts. Yellow coloured and only visible to site administrators.
Published: the final stage of allocations. They are visible to all users to see their shifts and show in white color.
Shift structure
Shift: the specific period during which a user is scheduled to work, for example a day shift could be from 8:00 to 16:00 whereas a night shift from 20:00 to 6:00.
Slot: a specific allocation within which a shift or activity is scheduled to occur. For example, a registrar slot for a shift that had only a consultant. A slot can be defined within the roster structure, or can be created as adhoc.
Assignment: where the user is attached to a shift or slot. Its status is either published or draft, and it can be either manually assigned or through the self-roster or auto-build process.
Session: refers to a specific period during which a user is allocated to an activity, for example: AM or PM session.
Location: applicable to location-based roster groups, for example operating theatres.
Cancelled shift: where a shift that was previously templated has been called off from the user's schedule. The shift will appear as cancelled on the roster page, and it can be uncancelled.
Deleted shift: where a shift that was previously templated has been removed and is not part of the roster page anymore.
Roster tags: the visual differentiation between rosters using icons and/or colors. See more information in this article.
Role tags: the visual differentiation between roles using icons and/or colors. See more information in this article.
Term: A fixed period of time for which shifts are defined for specific roles and users. Terms are managed in the admin page. See this article about terms.
Role: the user's designation in the hospital, for example consultant or registrar. See more information in this article.
Team: a group of doctors that have a common specialty or skill set, for example: cardiology or endoscopy team. A team can have as many levels for sub-teams. See more information in this article.
Skill: a speciality or skill set that a doctor posses, for example: paediatrics or echo. The role can then be consultant and the skill paediatrics or echo. See more information in this article.
FTE: Full time equivalent, which refers to the arrangement the user is working for the hospital. Some individuals are part-times, hence their FTE would be less than 100%. FTEs are defined on the staff page, and can be used in work rules.
Templates and patterns
Patterns: are the repetitive structure of allocations that a user is rostered to, for example: User X is on a shift on fortnightly cycle. Patterns are managed from the admin page.
Templates: are regular repeating patterns.
User Templates
Available: where a user has made themselves available for staffing on days and times they are not normally expected to be staffed. Users can define these for themselves. Neither they nor a roster administrator can set an available time that conflicts with an allocated or unallocated template.
Unavailable: where a user has made themselves unavailable for staffing on certain days and times. Users can define these for themselves. When they do so, this will appear for the roster administrator so they are informed and thus not staff the user.
Unallocated: where a user is expected to be staffed but has not been given a specific regular activity. Click into the 'unallocated' category to edit it, or to change from unallocated to allocated.
Allocated: where a user has been staffed to an activity.
Shift change types
Gift: when a doctors decide to give up their shift for another doctor.
Swap: when two doctors exchange their shifts between each other.
Bounty: when doctors gift or swap their shifts with an incentive, which could be in monetary or non-monetary term.
Market: the place where vacant shifts can be placed so they can be picked up by doctors. See this article about using the shift market.
Rules
Shift conflict rule: shift rules defined at the level of the roster and roster groups that will show conflict when assigning users to shifts. These rules can be filtered by type, tags, days of the week, and can be applied to specific roles. For example: a user cannot be assigned for on-call at the same day with theatre work, or a user cannot do a morning shift after a night shift.
Work rule: employment rules that the site has in place, for example: individuals must not work more than x hours per x weeks. These rules can apply to roster groups, rosters, types, tags, and/or roles.
Permission terminology
Site administrator: The roster administrator at the hospital that manages the rosters for the users on timely basis. The site administrator has full power of the system.
Default permission: The permission group determines access to rosters, messages, documents, and what users can view, as well as managing leave, events, and the noticeboard. This group can be administered from the admin page and adjusted to specify the actions and views permitted for different roles.
Roster permissions: The roster permissions determine what a user can view or admin:
The view and/or admin can be applied to specified shifts or roles or teams:
All shifts: admin all shifts in all roster groups at your site
Shifts of own role: this allows a Registrar, for example, to admin all shifts relevant to Registrars, and a Consultant to admin all shifts that are relevant to Consultants. If someone with this permission changes role, the shifts they can admin will change automatically.
Shifts of selected roles, allows a user to be given admin over a specified role, such as just Consultant shifts, regardless of their own role.
Shifts of selected rosters, such as just the '1st On Call' roster, or 'Cardiac Surgery' roster. You can select more than one roster here.
Shifts of selected roster groups, such as any shifts on a roster group, such as all Call rosters.
Shifts of selected teams, users can view and/or admin shifts of users on selected teams.
Shifts of all users of own team, users can view and/or admin shifts only for users from own team.
Shifts of all users of own and parent teams, users can view and/or admin shifts only for own team directly between you and the root team.
Shifts of all users of own family, users can view and/or admin shifts for their own team, teams underneath them, and any team they are a root of.
Leave terms
Published: where leave has been submitted and approved.
Draft: where leave has been submitted but yet to be approved.
Cancelled: where leave has been submitted but then called off.
Leave request rules: leave rules that apply when a leave request is submitted. For example: automatically approve a request for specific roles, or render the request for review before approval for specific roles.
Self-roster terms
Types: A self-roster can be either a selection based or preference based type. For further information on each type, see this article.
a- Selection based: where each user picks their shifts directly on a first-in-first-served basis. Once a user pick a shift, no one else can select that shift. In these rosters, users may be given a quota of shifts that need to be filled.
b- Preference based: where each user express preferences for shifts that the roster administrator will use when building the rosters. In this case a user and any number of users can select the same shift, and the roster administrator will use HosPortal's roster-building algorithm and possibly some manual edits to build the roster. See this article on participating in preference-based self-rosters.
Related articles on self-rostering:
Launch: a launched self-roster refers to when it is ready to open at the time the window is set to open. It may be launched and opened if the time of the launch equal to the open date/time, or it may be launched and not opened if the launch time is different that the window open date/time.
Open: when the self-roster is ready for users to choose their selections or preferences.
Closed: when the self-roster window is no more open and users cannot make any more selections or preferences.
Finalise: refers to when the roster is completed and published. The finalisation process can be set as automatic, meaning an algorithm will run in the background at the closure date and will allocate the users considering the pre-set rules and leave dates, and publish the roster. If set to finalise manually, the roster algorithm can still be triggered manually and finalisation confirmed afterwards.
Quotas: where site administrators assign a quota to be filled during the self-roster process for each individual. Quotas are related to clinical activities and its data is provided by the hospital's site administrator to HosPortal. See this article on reviewing self-roster quotas.
Quota Calculations: HosPortal has the flexibility to provide different models of quotas calculations, which is discussed and agreed on with the hospital before the self-roster process is launched. The calculation modes could be manual, by bands, by weighting, or by band defined from weighting. For more information, see this article.
Exemptions: A list of doctors who are added to an exemption list on the roster and thus will not participate in the roster and their names will not be included in the self-roster.
Symbols
A definition for what each HosPortal symbol signifies:
Shift symbols:
A solid line on a shift indicates that a shift has been created from a template:
The stripes indicate that a shift has been created as ad-hoc:
Market gift symbols:
A vacant shift that has been placed on the market and can be picked up as a gift:
A vacant shift that has been placed on the market as a gift:
A shift on the market with a gift note:
A shift on the market with a gift bounty:
Market swap symbols:
A shift on the market that can be gifted or swapped:
A shift on the market with a swap note:
Example of how these symbols look on a roster page:
The highlighted shift shows a shift on the market that can be picked up as a gift or swapped. It has a bounty and a gift note, a swap bounty, and a swap note:
Rule symbols:
A shift that has a conflict rule. When you hover your mouse over the icon, a description of the conflict's nature appears.
A shift that has a change request rule. When you click on 'View change request,' details about the shift swap appear.
Leave symbols:
A leave request that has been approved:
A leave that has been requested but not yet processed:
Rate symbol:
One-off rate - visible on the shift or on the market page:
HosPortal sites
Production environment: referred to as the main URL. It is the live site where the hospital's staff use to login and see their shifts.
Mirror: refers to the testing environment, it is designated with is an orange banner on top of the page indicating 'Mirror'. The Mirror site do not send out emails or notifications to users, and is cleared every day after midnight. See this article about the Mirror site.