Covering an assignment couldn’t be easier. Navigate to the Scheduler. You’ll see the open assignments as red Assignment Tags. (Note: The information you can see will depend on the permissions your user account has.)



1. Click on an open assignment. The Assignment Summary panel for that assignment will open, and by default, will show you the qualified and available personnel.



2. If there are no personnel available and qualified, you can click on either of the ‘Qualified’, ‘Not Qualified’, ‘Available’, ‘Unavailable’, or ‘Not Set’ buttons in any combination to view the appropriate personnel. You can also use the search field to the right of these tabs to search the list if there's a specific name you're looking for.


3. Simply mousing-over a personnel’s entry for a second will slide them into the booking temporarily and show you some basic info about them on the left, including fields for setting assignment billing, notes, and more. Clicking on a personnel will do the same thing. Clicking on that personnel member's name on the left, or their picture thumbnail on the right will lead to their personnel profile. Clicking on their email address on the left side will create a new email addressed to them.


4. You can edit the billing figures for this assignment, or if billing is based on job type codes, you can select the appropriate code. Multiple billing types can be assigned by clicking the + button to the right of the lowest billing type (see page Billing Types Management for more info). The 'Missed Break' check box tells the system that this person has not taken a break, and it will bring up a dialog box where you can optionally deduct time from the missed break if they didn't miss the entire break, for example. You can find more info in Creating a Personnel Type.


5. Finally, if the personnel member is suitable, click on the ‘Confirm Assignment’ button, and the assignment will change colour to blue, which indicates that it’s covered. Notifications will be sent to both client and the personnel member (depending on preferences), notifying them of the booking.


5b. Alternately, if the personnel cannot or does not want to work the shift, you can click on ‘Decline Assignment’. This will remove the personnel member from any lists for this or any identical assignments (same times, hours, location, etc...), so that they can’t be moved back into the pool and be called on again by accident. This will also record it in the ‘Declined Assignments’ report for personnel. This report notes each personnel and the assignments they’ve declined, including the number of assignments, when they declined, and the total hours declined for that time period.


5c. If you need a specific person for a specific assignment and don’t want them to ‘escape’ by being booked by another coordinator to another assignment, or by requesting an assignment on their own, you can click on ‘Reserve Personnel’ to hold them in reserve. This will turn the assignment light blue, to signify that it has someone reserved. Notifications will be sent (if enabled) - but only to this personnel. They will also be able to see the reservation in their Personnel Panel and upon calling in to the system (depending on availability).



6. From a reserved assignment, you can either confirm the assignment as normal, turning this assignment blue and sending out the usual notifications, or you can cancel the reservation, turning it back to red, and leaving it open to anyone as usual. When a reservation is cancelled, no notifications are sent, as the person was not actually attached to any assignment.


7. Once an assignment has been booked to, or worked by the personnel and completed, you can make any applicable changes to the duration and billing. When you’re satisfied that everything is complete, click the ‘Approve Assignment’ button. This will essentially lock-in the assignment, marking it as complete, turning the assignment and its tag green, and placing it in the billing report ready to be invoiced.


Cancelling an Assignment


In the case where a client has cancelled their request, or for whatever reason, you can cancel the assignment - regardless of if it has personnel assigned to it or not. Please note that only Red (open), Blue (assigned), Yellow (Requested), and Light Blue (Reserved) assignments can be cancelled.



Right click on the assignment tag and it will show the option to cancel the assignment. Once you do this, a dialog box will pop up asking about your intentions. Choose a reason for this cancellation. These reasons are defined in the Billing Preferences.



The assignment will turn black to signify its new status, cancellation info will be added to its details, and depending on their notification settings, the client/personnel will be notified. Billing for the cancellation (or not) will also be calculated, based on your billing preferences.


Requested Assignments

The last ‘state’ of an assignment is one that is ‘requested’ by a personnel member through their Personnel Panel. This is a topic for that specific manual, but the basic idea is that if this is enabled for them, they will be able to see all open (Red) assignments from within their Personnel Panel, and will be able to request to work them proactively. This can save you the work of hunting for people or waiting for dispatching to find someone!



When an assignment is requested by a personnel member, its shift tag will turn yellow to signify that there is someone wanting to work it. There may be more than one person requesting to work an assignment, but regardless of if there is one or many, the assignment will turn yellow. From here, you can check who has requested the assignment, and can even ignore them and assign someone else entirely in the usual way. 


Once you’ve decided who will work this assignment, you simply assign them as usual, and things will proceed normally from there.

To Recap - assignment flow is as follows: An assignment can travel between many states before it’s complete, but once cancelled or confirmed, it is locked, and can no longer be modified (with the exception of confirmed shifts, which can be undone with the proper permission). Entries are placed in the event log with each change in status.



Checking In and Out (if available)

You may have the type of business where you need to keep track on if people have actually shown up to their assignments. In this case, being able to confirm in the system that they are where they should be can be invaluable.

Staffpoint allows you to do this with a checkbox in the blue (confirmed) assignment details, and within the The List View.


Beside the Assignment ID on the upper left side of the Assignment Summary, you'll now see an empty checkbox.


Clicking on this will cause the system to note that this person has been 'checked-in'.


The system will track the times and dates of all check-ins, so if you want to know when this person was actually checked-in to this assignment, you can move your mouse cursor over the check box, and it will show you the time and date of the check-in. This works in both the Assignment Summary and the List View.



Right clicking on a blue (confirmed) assignment will bring up a context menu with a number of options. Picking the 'Check In' option will check this assignment in without needing to go into its summary screen.