An activity defined to have a specific period during which users can be scheduled to work and the definition of the staffing required at that time. It can include other information like a name or location.

Examples

The definition of a series of shifts that are treated in a similar way or have similar characteristics.

For activity-based rosters our definition of roster is as you would expect, for instance the Consultant First On-Call roster, which defines weekday and weekend shifts that happen every week.

For location-based rosters the roster often group clinical activities of the same type, for instance all the ENT surgical sessions over the 4-week cycle, no matter their location and whether they happen in the morning or afternoon.

Rosters need to be selected carefully: most of HosPortal's rules and logic apply to rosters and not smaller units like shifts. If more nuanced rules need to be applied it might mean breaking something like the Consultant on-call activity into a 3 separate rosters, one each to cover weekdays, weekends and public holidays.

Although all shifts and rosters can contain the same information, like a location, HosPortal requires all rosters to be put into one of two types to simplify the way that the rosters are normally used. Once a roster is defined to belong to one roster group it cannot be moved to another: it needs to be deleted and rebuilt in that new roster group

All the activities on a single roster group are shown on a single roster view.

Activity-based rosters are most suited for the most common simple rosters: where every shift has the same staffing requirement, the activity happens regularly (e.g. every weekday) and - normally - it does not require being shown on the roster attached to specific locations.

Typical activity-based rosters include:

Location-based rosters are used for more complex rosters where there might be different staffing requirements on each shift, or where the activity happens irregularly over a 4-week cycle, or where it is more important to show the location of the activity on the roster page.

Typical location-based rosters include:

The definition of a staffing requirement for a single individual, defining what type of person is required based on their role, skill or team. For example, a staffing requirement that needs a Consultant with a Paediatric skill.

Where a user has been placed in a slot to meet a staffing requirement.

For location-based rosters a shorthand way of defining some standard times that might be applied to any shift in the entire roster groups. For instance, where every surgical activity will normally be either an AM session, from 0800-1200, or a PM session, from 1230-15:30.

An optional description to to be applied to a shift.

A shift or assignment that has been created that is only visible to roster administrators: it is not visible to normal users on either the roster pages or on their own dashboard. Draft shifts cannot be placed on the market and users cannot swap or transfer them.

The definition of each shift as is is seen on the roster: its timing, expected staffing, and if it has any repeating cycle (e.g. every weekday; every 4 weeks). It is only ever visible to roster administrators.

A shift or assignment that is visible to all users. If suitable permissions have been set then users can place published shifts on the market, swap and transferthem.

A shift that has been drafted or published that is no longer going ahead, but where it is important to still show its cancelled status on the roster. Cancelled shifts do not keep any howfrom a 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

A definition for what each HosPortal symbol signifies:

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:

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:

A shift on the market that can be gifted or swapped:

A shift on the market with a swap note:

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.

A leave request that has been approved:

A leave that has been requested but not yet processed:

One-off rate - visible on the shift or on the market page:

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.