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Constraints

Constraints are the rules that guide how rosters are generated. They fall into two categories; hard constraints which are non-negotiable rules such as legal requirements or employee availability, and soft constraints which are preferences like preferred working hours.

All soft constraint have a weight field, and many have a fairness field.

  • The weight of a constraint indicates its priority level. It is typically a value ranging from 0 to 100, with 100 representing utmost priority. Certain constraints may also have negative weights, going down to -100, to effectively reverse the constraint's impact. The default weight is set at 0.
  • The fairness of a constraint encompasses two elements:
    • The fairness weight, a numeric value between 0 and 100, which assesses how evenly the constraint should be applied among employees. The default fairness weight is 0.
    • A boolean that considers whether the Full-Time Employee (FTE) working hours of employees should influence the fairness score. When set to true, the fairness weight adjusts based on the FTE hours of the employees. This is set to false by default.

Most constraints can be tailored to affect specific employees. If no employeeIds are defined in the constraint configuration, it applies to all employees.

Implicit Constraints

ConstraintDescription
One Shift Per DayAn employee can work only one shift per day. Note: A shift spanning two days only belongs to one day as specified.
No Concurrent ShiftsAn employee cannot be assigned to two shifts that overlap in time.

User-Configurable Constraints