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Employee Schedule Preferences

Here are the 8 key steps to maximizing the use of Schedule Preferences

  1. Set Schedule Preference Security

    Check that the 2 permissions relating to Schedule Preferences are properly set for each Role. We recommend logging in as each Role to ensure that it is configured per your needs.

    1. Employee Schedule Preference Maintenance permission
    2. Schedule Preference Status permission
  2. Setup Schedule Preference Notifications

    This step is important if supervisors want to be notified when employees submit a Schedule Preference Request, and if employees should be notified when the supervisor has Approved or Denied that request. This setup is very similar to Time Off Request notifications and can be configured under Utilities -> Notification Maintenance. There are 3 total Schedule Preference Notifications that can be setup, as desired. The image in 2.2 shows how it appears in QSMessages and as a Text/SMS.

  3. Creating a Schedule Preference: Redesigned

    There are now 2 types of Schedule Preference types:  Unavailable and Preferred. We’ve also redesigned the steps to create a schedule preference to be much more intuitive. Once a Schedule Preference Type is chosen, select the Start Date, as well as Start and End time. Next, choose how often it will repeat (Weekly, Monthly, etc). Finally, choose the date it will end on. Depending on the permissions of the user adding a schedule preference, the Status may also need to be set. This can be done in QSP or QSMobile!

  4. Schedule Preference via QSMobile

    Schedule Preferences are just as easy to manage in QSMobile too. Schedule Preferences that are still pending approval will display as a red color, and those approved will display green, and those denied will display in gray.

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  5. Schedule Preferences in Employee Schedule View

    All Approved Schedule Preferences also display in the employee’s schedule view by selecting “Show Schedule Preferences”. The “Preferred” types display with a white background and blue text, and “Unavailable” display with a white background and red text.

  6. Show Available Employees Only 

    We’ve included Unavailable Schedule Preferences to be applied when the “Show Available Employees” filter is selected in the edit shift window. This means that any employee that has an approved Unavailable Schedule Preference that conflicts with any portion of the shift being edited will have their name omitted as an available option.

  7. Conflict Warning

    If scheduling a shift with an employee that has an approved Unavailable Schedule Preference, a warning message will be triggered.

  8. Schedule Preferences Report

    We’ve made a nice report to capture employee Schedule Preferences Details. It’s found under Employees -> Reports -> Schedule Preferences. The selected date range will generate the Schedule Preferences that have a Start Date during that time frame. You can use the optional Preference Type and Status filters to pre-filter the data you want to see exported to Excel.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about Schedule Preferences in QSP!

Just like setting a weekly OT cap for a client or worker, the same type of limit can be set up to manage how much IHSS a worker or client can be scheduled. The difference is that there are no security override options available. If a user attempts to schedule over the weekly IHSS cap, they are forced to modify the shift. No exceptions here. Each worker and client can have a custom cap that can be set up in their profile, after being initially set up in the SLS OT settings. The worker even has a special weekly IHSS dashboard that is enabled by selecting them as an IHSS worker in their HR profile. Check out how all this is done.

It’s vital that every shift on the QSP calendar is accurate, especially with appointments that are shared: One worker : Multiple clients. When a change needs to be made to an existing shared shift, QSP prompts you to choose if you want to save the edit for all linked client shifts. So, if client A and B share staff C from 8p-8a, and you replace staff C with staff D, QSP wants to know if staff D is serving both client A and B like the shift was setup. If YES, it will update the shared shift appropriately. If NO, staff D is not serving A and B, then QSP will adjust the service type from 1:2 to 1:1. If edited from client A’s calendar view, then staff D will stay linked to A, while client D will display an un-staffed appointment. Watch to see this in action!

Desiring to put up a high wall between a worker’s expired HR requirements and their availability to be scheduled? Within QSP’s Email Notification Set up, you can enable a Scheduling Restriction that actually prevents the scheduling of any worker with an expired HR requirement. You determine the requirement type (ie First Aid, CPR, TB) that is important to you, and QSP will let you know if they are being scheduled on a day past their HR training/requirement expiration.  Watch to see this in action!

A beautiful feature within QSP is the ability to manage the utilization of a client’s POS from their Schedule! The POS Dashboard toggle allows you to manage multiple authorizations at once! It takes the POS (or IHSS NOA) value(s) from the Client Profile, in-conjunction with  the service types the client receives (as you indicate under their Client Info 2 tab), and displays that information in their POS dashboard. You can use the POS dashboard to toggle between multiple authorizations to see how you are doing at scheduling these services and maximizing their budgeted hours. Watch the tutorial to see this in action.

Updating a client’s IHSS value is quick and easy within a client’s profile. Once updated, a proper effective date should be assigned in order for the IHSS value to display on the appropriate month’s reports and calendars. When indicating the proper effective date, if the 1st of any month is chosen, the update IHSS value will be displayed for that given month. If any day other than the 1st of the month is chosen (ie 2nd – 31st), the IHSS value will be displayed on the following month’s reports and calendars. Watch this video to learn more.

 

Setup an approved, or even a pending, Time Off Request (TOR) for your employees, and have that appear blacked out on their worker calendar. Also, if any unaware scheduler attempts to assign a shift to them during that approved TOR time frame, a warning message will alert them. There is also the option with Utilities, and the Application Settings, to not just warn, but Restrict users from Scheduling over an approved TOR. You can also assign a security level minimum to override this setting. If a Paid Time Off (PTO) request was chosen as the specific type of TOR, this will allow for that employee’s PTO  hours to appear on the appropriate Timesheet and payroll processing reports. Watch for the step by step instructions on how to set this up.

 

Documenting what happened during an appointment is vital and necessary in order to better serve our clients and help them achieve their goals and live as independently as possible. Users have the capability within QSP’s scheduler to document the service notes that occurred during a particular appointment. Furthermore, they can write service notes and attach it to the ISP objectives listed in the client profile. At anytime during a month, the Service Note Report can be ran and generated to Excel. Watch the tutorial to learn more!

One of QSP’s signature functions is the IHSS tracking calculator (aka POS/NOA Dashboard) which provides real-time knowledge of a client’s IHSS utilization for a given month. Each agency has a different practice when it comes to how IHSS hours are communicated to their workers and filled out on IHSS time cards, but what is mostly unique to all (where this applies) is maximizing the utilization of a client’s IHSS hours. These hours are input into the client’s profile in this format HHH:MM. It is possible, because of this IHSS dashboard, to schedule, down to the minute, an entire IHSS NOA. Not only that, but as the days tick by during the month, you have more power over the client’s IHSS world to achieve the outcomes you deem necessary. Here’s to 100% utilization.

 

 

There are two Security Levels, 6 and 7, that are essentially the same, but with one major difference: Schedule Change vs Schedule Request. As a level 7 user, you are able to create or edit shifts, however, those changes don’t actually occur, but rather trigger an email notification be sent of the appropriate personnel of the schedule requests.  These requests, therefore, must still be manually entered by someone. Level 6 users, on the other hand, can create or edit shifts and have those changes appear instantly.  An email notification is still sent to the appropriate personnel, but the content of the email is more of an FYI to the recipient that an actual change has been made, not a request for a change to be entered. This tutorial shows how to set up these email notifications, which can also be set up to capture any time there is a Data Change (ie worker taff demographic info) for level 6 and 7 users as well.