Shift patterns

Use shift patterns to store each agent’s regular working hours in Assembled instead of in spreadsheets or templates. Assembled uses them to place full-day time off at the right times, to report time off by the hours people actually work, and to show each agent’s shift on the schedule.

To open them, go to Configure > Shift patterns.

Note: If your company uses working hours, Shift patterns isn’t in your Configure menu. Use working hours to set when people work instead.

After you set them up, you’ll usually only come back to shift patterns when your team runs a shift bid or you onboard new agents.

How shift patterns work

• A shift pattern is the full period an agent is usually scheduled for, including unpaid time such as lunches and breaks. It can have the same hours every day, or different hours on different days of the week.
• Each shift has a color based on when it starts or ends, so you can tell shifts apart at a glance. For example, a typical 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM shift is green, and an 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM shift is purple.

Keep in mind: If your access is limited to certain sites, you see and manage only the shift patterns for your sites, and you can assign them only to agents in those sites. If you have more than one site, you choose the site when you create a pattern, and you can’t change it afterward. Shift patterns that aren’t assigned to a site aren’t visible to you.

Where shift patterns appear

Each agent’s assigned shift pattern shows on the scheduling pages below. Hours outside the agent’s shift are shaded with gray diagonal lines, and the unshaded area is their shift. Agents with no shift pattern have no shading. Shift patterns also appear wherever agent profile details show, such as agent popovers and page headers.

Staffing timeline

Every agent’s shift pattern is shown on Schedule > Staffing timeline.

Templates

On a template, each row shows the shift pattern of the agent assigned to it, and updates when you change the agent.

My schedule

Agents see the same shading on their own schedule, so they can see their working hours at a glance.

How shift patterns affect time off

When a full-day or multi-day time off request is submitted and approved, Assembled uses the agent’s shift pattern to set each time off event’s exact start and end times, instead of blocking out 24 hours. For a week off, it places one event for each shift in the pattern.

The events are based on the shift pattern assigned when the request is approved. After that, they stay as they are, even if the agent’s shift pattern changes or the pattern is edited.

For example: an agent’s shift pattern is Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and their time off for Monday to Wednesday is approved. Three time off events from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM are added, one each day. If the pattern later changes to Tuesday to Saturday, 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM, the approved time off doesn’t change.

Requests approved before the agent had a shift pattern keep the times they were approved with.

Full-day and multi-day time off is reported by shift in Report > Schedule analysis and in the Staffing timeline’s CSV export, minus any excluded duration. The export includes Time Off Duration (seconds) and Time Off Description columns. For how to export, see Schedule uploads and exports.

Create a shift pattern

1. Go to Configure > Shift patterns.
2. Select Create shift pattern.
3. Enter a Title and, optionally, a Description, and choose the Timezone.
4. If your access is limited to more than one site, choose the Restricted site.
5. Under Shifts, select the Days of week the shift runs and set its start and end times. To use different times on different days, select Set different shift times throughout the week.
6. Optional: under Excluded duration for time off reporting, enter the unpaid time in each shift. See Exclude unpaid time from time off reporting.
7. Select Save shift pattern.

The pattern appears on the Shift patterns page. Next, assign it to agents.

Exclude unpaid time from time off reporting

A shift pattern covers the whole shift, including unpaid breaks. To report time off by paid hours only, enter an Excluded duration for time off reporting, in minutes or hours. Assembled subtracts it from each full-day or multi-day time off event in Report > Schedule analysis and in the Staffing timeline’s CSV export.

For example: a shift pattern runs from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM with a 1-hour unpaid lunch. Exclude 60 minutes, and a full day off is reported as 8 hours instead of 9.

Assign shift patterns to agents

1. Go to Manage team > People management.
2. To assign one agent, edit their profile and choose a Shift pattern.
3. To assign several agents at once, select them, then select Edit people… > Shift patterns and choose the pattern.

The assignment takes effect the next day, from 12:00 AM in the agent’s time zone. For more about the People management page, see People management.

Request time off for overnight shifts

For an overnight shift, request time off as a multi-day request with start and end times.

For example: an agent’s shifts run from Monday 9:00 PM to Tuesday 6:00 AM and from Tuesday 9:00 PM to Wednesday 6:00 AM. To take both shifts off, request Monday 9:00 PM to Wednesday 6:00 AM. A request for Monday to Tuesday without times only covers Monday 9:00 PM to Tuesday 11:59 PM.

Edit a shift pattern

Important: Editing a pattern changes the shifts of every agent assigned to it, and their pending time off requests. Before it saves, Assembled asks you to confirm and says how many agents are affected.

1. Go to Configure > Shift patterns and open the pattern.
2. Make your changes, then select Save shift pattern.
3. Confirm the change.

Time off that’s already been approved or denied, and past time off reporting, don’t change. Only pending requests, and requests created afterward, use the new shifts.