Scheduler Guide

You own the month: shift types, the roster, drafts and publishing. CAIER gives you a manual grid and CASE, the scheduling engine. CASE applies hard rules first, then balances coverage, FTE, fairness and preferences.

1. Shift types — in Shift types set label, key, start and end, hours, location or sub-location, category (Day, Mid, Night or Backup), allowed credentials and days of week. Deactivating a type keeps past assignments.
2. Roster — in People confirm each provider's FTE and credentials. Mark as PRN takes someone out of automatic builds; Deactivate removes a person who left but keeps history.
3. Department preferences — in Rules & voice set Weekend includes Friday, Required annual hours (1.0 FTE) and Apply the trim list automatically (whole organization).
4. Rules — type or dictate rules in Rules & voice. Conflicting rules are flagged before you save, and every rule can be switched on or off.
5. Holidays — turn observed holidays on or off in Holidays.

Tip: Rules can be dictated — tap the mic on Rules & voice or the Voice rule button on the Schedule toolbar.

1. Open Schedule Creation, pick the month and the locations, then click Build month. The arrow beside it offers this month, the Entire quarter or selected dates.
2. CASE fills every eligible slot while protecting approved time off, opt-outs, locks, credentials, rest rules and location limits. It always keeps at least 11 hours between shifts and 24 hours after a night (48 hours before a day shift), and prefers 72–96 hours after a night block.
3. Read the completion panel: assigned and open slots, blocked writes, any time-limit warning and providers below target.
4. Adjust cells, then click Review & publish above the grid. You can publish quietly or notify providers.

Need empty slots first? Use Add unfilled shifts for the month or one shift type. To start over, Discard draft removes the draft month after saving a snapshot you can restore from Version history.

Date pins

• In the Calendar view, click the pin in a date header to choose a provider who should work that day — useful for holidays.
• A Hard pin reserves an eligible assignment; a Soft pin is a preference. CASE picks the shift on that date. Pins never override approved time off or safety rules.

Locks

• Lock an assignment you want CASE to keep (hard) or prefer (soft); the lock menu also offers Hard-lock all assigned.
• Lock Month freezes a whole month against edits until you unlock it.

Trim shifts above FTE

• When Apply the trim list automatically (whole organization) is on in Rules & voice, CASE reopens shifts above each provider's goal after a build.
• Trimming reopens the safest, easiest-to-refill assignments first, protects locks and near-term shifts, keeps providers at their preferred-FTE floor and never below required FTE. Removed slots stay open.
• When it's off, use Unassign / delete shifts → Trim shifts above FTE target to preview and approve the same trim by hand.

• Provider preferences cover shift-type ratings, hard "never schedule" opt-outs (set by schedulers), required and preferred FTE, streak limits, night preferences, rest after nights, start time and weekend priority. Religious holidays and birthdays are soft preferences; guaranteed leave needs approved time off.
• Locations: allowed locations, one primary and optional fixed FTE shares (never more than 100%; the rest floats). Sub-location limits can be flexible, preferred or firm.
• Repeating rotations — a provider's fixed weekly or multi-week pattern — are seeded first in every build and never on holidays.
• Night plans combine a provider's FTE across locations and track how many nights they're due.
• Certifications are profile labels; credentials control shift eligibility.

1. Open Import schedule from the sidebar, or Replace this month on the Schedule toolbar.
2. On desktop, drop an Excel, CSV or PDF file. On mobile, tap Take photo or Photo library.
3. The month is detected automatically. Review the extracted providers and shifts and fix any name mismatches.
4. Choose whether to create new shift types or map onto existing ones, then confirm.

Tip: iPhone HEIC photos are converted automatically. Recent uploads lets you retry or remove a past upload; to roll a month back, use Version history on the Schedule page. Tricky grids can be tagged by hand with the Grid cell painter.

• Requests & swaps — approve a swap with Assign to, deny it, or Cancel request. Approve or deny time-off requests on the same page.
• Enter time off for providers yourself — one at a time or from a sheet — and it's saved as approved.
• Shift marketplace — open shifts and give-aways. A pickup that creates a hard conflict (overlap, missing credential) is blocked; soft conflicts (FTE, preference, days in a row) warn but allow.
• Approved time off blocks the builder from assigning that person.

1. Publishing makes the month visible to providers in My schedule and their calendar feeds.
2. Providers subscribe once from My schedule → Calendar sync.
3. Calendar apps pick up changes the next time they refresh — CAIER asks for hourly; Google can take longer.
4. Publishing doesn't freeze the month; use Lock Month for that.

Reports compares hours-based night, weekend, FTE and coverage load. Circadian Alignment (CAI) shows circadian alignment, and Custom reports holds saved reports your team built.

• Draft won't fill → check every shift type has at least one eligible provider and that rules don't contradict each other.
• Provider missing from a cell picker → confirm they're active, not marked PRN, and hold the required credential.
• Hours above available FTE → turn on automatic trim, or trim by hand from Unassign / delete shifts.
• Calendar not updating → have the provider re-copy the URL from Calendar sync; only rotate it if it leaked.

• Open Meri from the command strip under the header, or from Ask Meri. Type, or tap the mic (Speak to Meri) to dictate.
• Meri shows a preview of every change and waits for you to confirm. Building, publishing and deactivating also need a typed confirmation word.
• She can only do what your role allows. If she can't do something yet, click Ask the CAIER team to teach me this. For a poor answer, choose Send transcript and add a note.

Everything in this guide can be asked of Meri in plain language — "pin Dr. Lee hard on Christmas", "trim March above target", "turn on auto-trim", "approve the pending time-off requests", "build April for both locations". Imports still happen on Import schedule, where you review the extracted grid.