Plans and permissions:
- Create, edit, run, and publish shift bids: Admin role, or a custom role with Scheduling rules set to Full access on the Configure tab
- Rank shifts in a bid you’re invited to: Any role
- People with restricted sites see only bids where everyone taking part is in their sites.
Early access (Alpha): Shift bids is in early access, so it may still change, and we’d love your feedback. If you don’t see it, an admin can request access from Configure > Early access and send feedback from the same page. See Early access features.
Use shift bids to run your shift bidding process in Assembled. You add the shifts and seats available, choose the team members taking part and their priority order, and set a window for them to rank the shifts they want. When bidding closes, you match people to shifts, review the results, and publish them to team members’ schedules.
To open it, go to Schedule > Shift bids.
How shift bids work
- The Shift bids page lists your bids with their status, bid window, assignment dates, shifts, and team members. Use Active and Completed to switch between current and past bids.
- Each shift in a bid has seats: the number of people who can be assigned to it. You need at least as many seats as team members taking part. If there are fewer, Assembled asks you to add seats or remove people before you continue.
- A bid is Upcoming until its bid window opens, Bidding open while team members rank shifts, and Bidding closed when the window ends. It’s Matching complete after you run matching, and Published once you publish the results.
- Matching doesn’t run automatically when the bid window closes. You run it, review the results, and then publish them. See How matching works.
- Publishing assigns each person their shift for the bid’s assignment dates.
Keep in mind:
- You can’t limit a shift to certain teams, sites, or skills.
- If you add a shift from your working hours and those working hours are deleted later, the bid keeps the shift, but no one is matched to it.
Create a shift bid
- On the Shift bids page, select New shift bid.
- Under Eligible shifts, add the shifts team members can bid on, in any of these ways:
- Select Select shifts to choose shifts you’ve already set up as working hours, then enter the seats for each.
- Select Upload shifts to add them from a CSV file. See Shifts file.
- Select Create shift to add one at a time, with a name, time zone, shift pattern, unpaid time, and seats. For a pattern that covers more than one week, add more weeks.
- Select Next.
- Under Agents and priority, add the team members taking part and put them in priority order. Select Upload agents to add them from a CSV file, where the row order is the priority order (see Team members file), or select Add agents and then drag them into order. The person at the top has the highest priority when several people want the same shift.
- Select Next.
- Review the Bid summary.
- Under Configure details, enter a Bid name, and choose whether to Show agents their ranking and Show agents available seats. See Shift bid options.
- Under Bid window, set when team members can submit and update their shift preferences. It must start in the future.
- Under Assignment dates, set when the new shift assignments apply. The end date is optional: leave it blank if the assignments are ongoing.
- Select Create shift bid.
The bid appears on the Shift bids page as Upcoming. When the bid window opens, each team member taking part gets an email.
Change or delete a shift bid
To change a bid, open the three-dot menu on its row on the Shift bids page and select Edit. What you can change depends on the bid’s status.
| Bid status | What you can change |
|---|---|
| Upcoming | Everything |
| Bidding open | Seats on existing shifts, and adding team members |
| Bidding closed or Matching complete | Bid name and assignment dates |
| Published | Nothing |
Important: Deleting a shift bid can’t be undone, and you can’t delete a bid once it’s published.
To delete a bid, open the three-dot menu on its row, select Delete, then select Delete again to confirm.
What team members see
When the bid window opens, each team member gets an email, “Your shift bid rankings are open”, and a Shift bid available banner on My schedule, with the deadline and the date their new schedule starts. To rank their shifts, team members:
- Select Rank shifts on the banner.
- Review the starting order Assembled suggests, based on what they chose to prioritize and avoid before, or on their current working hours. To sort by Times to prioritize and Times to avoid, they select Customize. They can also drag the shifts into order.
- Select Submit preferences.
Team members can come back and select Update ranking until the bid window closes.
Track submissions
Open a bid to see who has submitted. While bidding is open, the page shows how many team members have submitted and when submissions close. Each person shows as Not started, Pending (started, but not submitted), or Submitted.
To remind someone, open the three-dot menu on their row and select Send reminder. They get an email: “Reminder: complete your shift bid rankings”.
Match team members to shifts and publish
Important: Once matching runs, you can’t extend the bid window. Publishing changes team members’ schedules right away, and you can’t change a bid after it’s published.
- Open the bid and select Run matching.
- Review the Results. To change priority or remove people, select Edit results, then select Run matching again.
- Select Publish shifts.
Team members see their assigned shifts in their schedules right away, for the bid’s assignment dates. They aren’t emailed when results are published.
Shift bid options
These options are under Configure details when you create or edit a bid. Both are off by default.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Show agents their ranking | Team members see their priority rank in the bid, and a line after the last preference that can affect their shift. |
| Show agents available seats | Team members see how many seats each shift has, under the shift’s name. |
CSV files for shift bids
Shifts file
Each row sets one week of a shift’s pattern. Use these columns:
| Column | What to enter |
|---|---|
name |
The shift’s name. Rows with the same name become one shift. |
week_num |
The week of the rotation that the row sets. Use 1 for a shift that repeats every week. |
seat_count |
How many seats the shift has. It applies to every row with the same shift name. |
time_zone |
The time zone for the shift’s hours, such as America/Chicago. |
monday_start and monday_end, through sunday_start and sunday_end
|
That day’s start and end time, in 24-hour HH:MM format. Leave both blank for a day off. An end time earlier than the start time makes an overnight shift. Each row needs at least one day. |
Team members file
The file has one column, email, with each team member’s email address in Assembled, one per row. The row order is the priority order, so the first row has the highest priority. Unknown and inactive email addresses are skipped, and if an address appears more than once, only its first row counts.
How matching works
When you run matching, Assembled gives each team member a shift, one person at a time:
- People who submitted or started a ranking go first, in priority order. People who didn’t start one go after them, also in priority order.
- Each person gets the highest shift in their ranking that still has a seat. For someone who started but didn’t submit, Assembled uses the order they last saved.
- People who didn’t rank any shifts get a shift at random from the ones that still have seats.
For example: A bid has an Early shift with one seat and a Late shift with two seats. Alex has priority 1 but didn’t rank any shifts. Sam (priority 2) and Jordan (priority 3) both submitted rankings with Early first and Late second. Sam and Jordan are matched first because they ranked: Sam gets Early, and Jordan gets Late because Early is full. Alex is matched last and gets the remaining seat on Late.