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Schedule Reminder Workflow

As an administrator or schedule manager, you want to help ensure that your employees work their schedule. With the Schedule Reminder workflow, employees are notified when their schedule is coming up.

By default, this workflow will:

  • Notify employees approximately an hour before their schedule begins
  • Employees will be notified by an Avanti Message in their Self-Service Portal (ASSP), as well as a notification in the Avanti Mobile app.

This article will guide you through:

  1. Creating this workflow, and
  2. Maintaining this workflow.

Create the 'Schedule Reminder' Workflow

To create the ‘Schedule Reminder’ workflow, click Insert in Workflows>Maintain Workflows.

Select the 'From Template' option and then workflow ‘200 – Schedule Reminder’ from the dropdown, click OK.

By default, this workflow will:

  • Notify employees approximately an hour before their schedule begins
  • Employees will be notified by an Avanti Message in their Self-Service Portal (ASSP), as well as a notification in the Avanti Mobile app.

The notification will display the following: 

Once you are satisfied with these defaults, all that is needed to activate the default workflow is to select ‘Active’ and click OK. Notifications will now be sent to employees approximately an hour before they are scheduled to work.

If you would like to changes the defaults, you can further configure the workflow by following Step 2.

Maintain the 'Schedule Reminder' Workflow

Once you have created the workflow in Step 1, this section will guide you through:

  • Updating how employees get notified
  • Updating the notification
    1. Subject
    2. Message
  • Updating the length of time the notification is sent before the employee is scheduled to work

Update How the Employees Are Notified

By default, employees will be notified via an Avanti Message and a notification in the new Avanti mobile application (early access coming soon). You can configure how you would like to notify employees from these options:

  • Avanti Message
  • Email
  • Avanti Mobile Notification (coming soon)

To update how the notifications are sent, click ‘Send Notification Settings’. This can be found on the last step of the 'Schedule Reminder' workflow under Workflows>Maintain Workflows.

Sending the Notification via Avanti Message, Email Only, or Avanti Message & Email

From the Notification tab of Send Notification Settings, select your preferred 'Notification Type' from the dropdown.
*For notifications sent by email, you may also select 'High Priority' to flag the email as High Priority in the employee's inbox, if supported by their eMail program.

  • Avanti Messages are accessed from ASSP.
  • Emails will be sent to:
    • Alert Email address on their Employee Profile
    • If they do not have an Alert Email, it will be sent to the the Primary Email on their Employee Profile
    • If there is no Alert or Primary Email on their Employee Profile, it will be sent to the Alert Email on their Avanti User

Sending the Notification to new Avanti mobile app (early access coming soon)

By default, the notification will also be sent to Avanti Mobile. To prevent this, deselect ‘Send Avanti Notification’ from the Notification tab of 'Send Notification Settings'.

If you are satisfied with the rest of the defaults, select OK to save the changes to the notifications. All that is needed to activate the workflow is to select ‘Active’ and click OK. Notifications will now be sent to employees approximately an hour before they are scheduled to work.

Updating the Notification

There are three things that can be updated on the notification:

  • The Subject
  • The Contents of the Notification
  • When Employees Are Notified

By default, the message sent will display similar to the following: 

Updating the Subject

To update the contents of the notification the employee receives, click ‘Send Notification Settings’ if it's not already open. This can be found on the last step of the 'Schedule Reminder' workflow under Workflows>Maintain Workflows.

When the notification is created, the subject defaults to ‘Upcoming Schedule at <the scheduled start time>'. 

You can update the Subject to display any text you would like. For example, update the subject to be ‘Your next schedule is starting soon’.
*Tip: Try to keep the Subject brief and to the point so that the employee easily recognizes the purpose of the email and does not mistake as spam. 

To include the start time of the schedule, enter:

<% (Item.FromTime / 60).ToString("00") %>:<% (Item.FromTime % 60).ToString("00") %>

To include the end time of the schedule, enter:

<% (Item.ToTime / 60).ToString("00") %>:<% (Item.ToTime % 60).ToString("00") %>

If you are satisfied with the rest of the defaults, select OK to save the changes to the notifications. All that is needed to activate the workflow is to select ‘Active’ and click OK. Notifications will now be sent to employees approximately an hour before they are scheduled to work.

Otherwise please proceed to update the contents of the notification.

Update the contents of the notification

To update the contents of the notification the employee receives, select ‘Send Notification Settings’ if its not already open. This can be found on the last step of the workflow.

When the notification is created, the message defaults to the following on the Notification tab.

You can update the message to display any text you would like. It can also include the following information about the employee and schedules.

Avanti Information

Tag in Message

Employee’s given name

<% Item.Employee_Master.GivenName %>

Employee’s last name

<% Item.Employee_Master.Surname %>

Schedule start time

<% (Item.FromTime / 60).ToString("00") %>:<% (Item.FromTime % 60).ToString("00") %>

Schedule end time

<% (Item.ToTime / 60).ToString("00") %>:<% (Item.ToTime % 60).ToString("00") %>

Schedule shift ID

<% Item.ShiftId %>

This message can also be formatted using HTML, if ‘HTML message’ is selected.

If you are satisfied with the rest of the defaults, select OK to save the changes to the notifications. All that is needed to activate the workflow is to select ‘Active’ and click OK. Notifications will now be sent to employees approximately an hour before they are scheduled to work.

Otherwise please proceed to ‘Update when Employee are Notified

Update when Employees are notified

By default, the workflow will check once every ½ hour to confirm whether employees are scheduled to work within the next hour. If an employee is scheduled work within the hour and they have not been notified about their upcoming schedule, they will be sent a notification.

There are two components that impact when the notification runs:

  1. Run Schedule – How often upcoming schedules are checked.
  2. MinutesBeforeSchedule Parameter – The time before the schedule that a notification will be sent.

These settings work together to determine how long before the schedule the employee will be notified.

Example:
If the 'Run Schedule' and 'MinutesBeforeSchedule Parameter' are both set to their defaults, employees that are scheduled to start their shifts at 7:45 AM or 8:00 AM will be notified of their upcoming schedule at 7:00 AM.

This is because:

  • The workflow checks the schedules every 30 minutes, and
  • The employee must be scheduled to work within the hour.

When the notification schedule ran previously at 6:30 AM, neither schedule is starting within the hour.

The schedule is next checked at 7:00 AM, where both schedules are within the hour.

For the employee to be notified an hour before their start time, 'Run Schedule' must be updated to run every 15 minutes.

Run Schedule

By default, this workflow will run every 30 minutes, throughout the entire day, to check whether employees have upcoming schedules.
To change this, select ‘Schedule’ on the Schedule Reminder workflow.

Update how often upcoming schedules should be checked here:

This must be less than the 'MinutesBeforeSchedule' Parameter, or notifications may not be sent to employees.

MinutesBeforeSchedule Parameter

By default, employees will be sent a notification when they are scheduled to work within the hour, and they have not been notified about the schedule. 

To update this value, select 'Parameters' on the 'Schedule Reminder' workflow.

Update the value to the amount of time, in minutes, that the schedule must be within of the current time to have the notification sent to the employee. 

  

This must be more than the value entered for ‘Occurs Every’, or notifications may  not be sent to employees.

Congratulations! This workflow is now set up. Click OK to save the changes to the notifications. Then all that is needed to activate the workflow is to select ‘Active’ and click OK. Notifications will now be sent to employees approximately an hour before they are scheduled to work.

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