How To: Firefighter Shift Scheduling – Part 2

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Shift Calendar AprilThis is the second part of a multi-part blog post on setting up shift scheduling in TexCom. (Part 1 can be found here)

In this post we will cover how to determine your shift repeating cycle and how to set it up within TexCom. For this example I am going to use a shift cycle that a user commented on in the first post which is the common Kelly shift schedule.

From Medcapt93′s Comment – “24 on, 24 off, 24 on, 24 off, 24 on, 96 off then it repeats”

The Shift Cycle

The first step is to determine the exact repeating cycle which is the amount of time from a starting point until the pattern starts to repeat itself. Even though your pay cycle may be longer, such as 28 days in this example, the pattern is usually much smaller. The shift cycle is the combination of the working and non working hours. Adding up the total hours gives us 216 hours or simply 9 days. Now that we have a 9 day repeating shift cycle, all we need is a start day for this shift. You should pick the first day you want it to show on the calendar. In this example, we will use April 1, 2012.

Creating A New Shift in TexCom

In TexCom, navigate to the administration area and select Shift Schedules. To start creating a new shift select Add New Shift. (Note: Only administrators of the organization will be able to set up shifts.)

Enter the information as shown:

  • Shift Name – Name of the shift as it will be displayed on calendars – Blue Shift
  • First Day/Time of Shift Cycle – First day the shift will start displaying on the calendar – April 1, 2012 @ 08:00
  • Number of Days in Shift Cycle – Number of days until the cycle repeats itself – 9 Days
  • Default Duration of Each Working Shift – The working hours of a shift per day. This is only used to populate the calendar in the next step – 24 hours

Shift Setup Properties

Once completed, select the Populate Calendar button and you will see a calendar that starts on April 1, 2012 and populates through 9 days

Select the check boxes on the working days, April 1, 3, & 5. You can fine-tune the start time and hours worked if you’d like, but we will leave them at 8:00 and 24 hours in this example. Once completed, select Save.

At this point TexCom takes you to the next step Shift Settings which is where we will start in the next post. For now, you can select View Shift Calendar at the top to see your shift on the calendar. You should see this shift listed starting April 1 and continuing through the month repeating it’s working days. If you select the left arrow next to the month name you can go back to March and see the shift is not listed because our start date was April 1. Go forward to May and see the shift continue.

In our next post we will learn how to set up our settings for this shift which will also enhance the look on the calendar. Feel free to set up one of your own shifts and comment below if you have any questions.\

Go to part three

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