Categories

Categories have several purposes. They allow you to divide up your schedule into sections. Also, they allow you to attach any kind of information you want to any shift or time block, which your employees can view.

There are several pre-defined types of categories. They are locations, departments, tasks, times of day, and time on/off. The time on/off category is a special category which classifies a shift as being either time on (working) or paid time off (vacation, sick, etc.) Your company is originally set up with any of those above mentioned categories that you chose to use in the Setup Wizard, but you can change these to whatever you want. Or you can remove them. You can also define your own categories. It is important to understand the difference between a category and a category item. This is best described by example: "Location" is the name of a category. "Miami" is a category item in the category, "Location". You can have up to six categories, but up an unlimited number of category items for each category. The best way to explain how categories work is with a simple example.

Let's say you are running a small restaurant chain. You have to schedule cashiers and cooks at three different locations in three different cities. In this case you would want to have two categories called "Location" and "Task." Under the category of Location, you would add three category items, "Virginia Beach," "Norfolk," and "Chesapeake." Under the category of Task, you would add two category items, "Cashier" and "Cook." Now when you are in the Current Schedule, Recurring Schedule, or the Time Sheet), you will be able to deal with one category at a time, or all of them together. So you can view the schedule for all the cooks scheduled at all three locations. Or you can view the schedule for just the Norfolk location, for both cooks and cashiers. You can even view the schedule for just the cooks at the Virginia Beach location if you want.

You can use this category to schedule time off. The category items for a Time On/Off category are the different types of time off. A typical company may have Sick Time and Vacation Time as category items in this category. Time blocks attached to any category item in this category besides the default which is "ON (Working) " will show up with inverted colors in the editors to further emphasize that it is time off. Also, employee will see the time as "OFF."