Making a rota

[Iggles]

I'd like to make a rota which takes into account the availability of the employees. I've tried searching for "rota" but not found anything. I tried searching for "schedule" but that doesn't help for obvious reasons!

I'm not entirely sure this is appropriate for Alteryx but I remember a demonstration of the Optimization tool at Inspire and thought it might work. Unfortunately the Optimization tool's guide is a bit beyond me; my eyes start going funny when I read the words, "mixed integer linear programming".

A simple example would be: we have four employees and need three to work on every weekday in February. The working days are from Monday, 1 February - Friday, 26 February. I want Amy, Barry, Claire and Darren to have an equal number of shifts - or as close as possible. 

• Amy can't work on Mondays
• Barry can't work from 1st - 5th inclusive
• Claire can't work 13th - 24th inclusive
• Darren can work any day

What I was hoping is that there's a way of plugging in the days that need to be worked (or a range) and the availability and Alteryx would magically give which three employees should work on each day.

Is this possible? Thanks for reading!

[OllieClarke]

Hey @Iggles check out this blog by @BenMoss: Return to Work Timetable which covers a very similar problem 🙂

[csmith11]

Hi @Iggles 

I'm not too familiar with the optimization tool. But i was able to put together a same proof of concept regarding the Rota you were looking to create.

Despite the name i assigned to my workflow, I did not leverage the optimization tool.

Instead, I put together a macro to randomly assign each employee to a date when they are available to work. Which employee is chosen for the next assignment is based on the # of total shifts not yet assigned. The total # of shifts assigned to each employee is set out in the initial criteria input file.

The macro provide for variation in the Seed used, as well as the number of shifts per day.

Give the workflow a whirl, and let me know if it accomplishes what you were looking to do. This is the final output with total columns and rows.

[Iggles]

That looks really helpful, thanks for sharing it!

[Iggles]

Thanks, this also looks great! I'll also give this a try 🙂