Welcome to your October product roundup, where we’ll be diving into everything new and improved in Deputy from the last few months. If you’re looking for a visual, ‘just the best bits’ summary, we’ve also put together a quick roundup video here for you to watch.
Don’t want to wait for the roundup each quarter? Stay up to date on all releases as they happen at whatsnew.deputy.com.
The October release highlight: Open Shifts
Deputy’s Open Shift feature is a great way to fill scheduling gaps, quickly. Whether you’re adding an extra shift to your usual coverage, or you need to replace someone who can no longer work, publishing an unassigned shift as an Open Shift lets available employees know that there is an extra shift up for grabs. Depending on your preference, employees can automatically be allocated the shift once they’ve claimed it, or you can choose to review the employees that have opted-in to claim the shift, and allocate the employee you approve to work that shift.
This quarter, we’ve made some big improvements to how you manage Open Shifts with approval, as well as Open Shifts in general. This includes:
Allowing team members to decline Open Shifts that require approval (as well as Find Replacement invites), to help more quickly narrow down who is available to work that shift, so you’re not left hanging.
Managers can now decline requests to work Open Shifts that require approval, so that team members are proactively informed that they have not been selected for that shift, and aren’t keeping that time free.
Once an Open Shift is published, even if there are already requests to claim the shift, you can now view Shift Details, and make some edits to Open Shifts such as adding Shift Notes.
If you want to learn how to fill your shifts faster with Open Shifts, click here.
What else is new?
Avoid rostering team members who haven’t completed their onboarding process
To avoid service disruptions or compliance issues, we’ve added a new alert for scheduling managers. This alert will notify them if they attempt to schedule a team member who hasn’t finished the onboarding process. If required, the alert can be overridden, allowing the team member to be scheduled. Please note this feature is available for Deputy HR subscribers only. Learn more.
Create a new custom term for ‘Shift’, that makes sense for your business
Using the right terminology for your business is important, and we know that a ‘shift’ can reflect a wide variety of purposes. That’s why in our business settings, you can now replace the word shift throughout the Deputy product, with a custom term that makes sense for you and your team. Learn more.
Set up automatic updates to required staff when forecasts change
With a lot on your plate, there’s now one less thing to remember. You can now set up your required staffing levels to automatically update as your forecasts change, so you don’t need to remember to run your labor model when there is an update, Deputy will do this for you. Learn more.
Even more improvements to training requirements
Last quarter we released a new location setting option, that allows you to choose whether you want training requirements to apply for employees working an unscheduled shift. Thanks to more feedback on this feature, we’ve now updated this to ensure that if the employee does not have the training required for an area, that area will not show up for the employee to be able to clock in at. Learn more.
Choose whether you want to use GPS to capture location on clock in and clock out
We know that not all businesses want or need to know the location of their shift when they start their shift, which is why we’ve now made capturing the GPS location on clock in an optional setting. If you would like to disable GPS capture on clock in, you can do so within the Timesheet section of your Location settings.
Coming soon…
View shift times based on the employees time zone, or the workplace location time zone
This is a key update for businesses whose team members don’t live in the same time zone that the business operates on. Employees now have the option of whether they view their shifts based on their device's time zone (where they are located) or the business location's time zone. This way, employees living in a different time zone to their business know exactly when they need to start work, without having to do complicated time zone math!
Complete bulk actions on the schedule, in a jiffy
Whether you want to start over from scratch and delete all shifts, mark all shifts as empty, mark all empty shifts as open, or remove all empty shifts, we’re making some changes under the hood to make this happen super quickly. We’re also adding a progress bar, so you can intuitively see how long is left before the action is completed.
Power user tip
Supercharge your schedules, by copying weeks at a time
You’ve built the perfect schedule, and besides the odd tweak or two you know it will be roughly the same across the next few weeks. This is the tip for you!
At the top of your schedule, find the button that says ‘Copy’ and select ‘Copy schedule’
Select the option that says ‘Advanced’
Choose the week you would like to copy, and then set how many weeks into the future you would like to repeat that same schedule, and hit the ‘Copy’ button
Just like that, you can create your schedule weeks into the future in just minutes. You can learn more about using this power feature here.
Thanks for reading all the way to the end! If you want to stay up to date with everything new in Deputy before our next newsletter, you can always visit whatsnew.deputy.com where we share regular updates from our product.
