You define common schedule patterns that can then be used as templates to define schedules assigned to resources. Categories set up by your administrator are assigned to define whether a resource is available or not available. There are three ways to define patterns:

• Duration based pattern: The pattern is composed of durations, such as 8 hours available followed by 16 hours not available. Each duration is a shift you create and name while creating the pattern. See Creating a Duration Based Schedule Pattern.

• Calendar based pattern: The pattern is defined using the days of the week, start times, and number of hours. The day is the shift name. See Creating a Calendar Based Schedule Pattern.

• Day based pattern: The pattern is created by combining previously defined shifts. See Creating Shifts. The pattern has a specified length in number of days after which the pattern repeats. See Creating a Day Based Schedule Pattern.

The service department works Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00. A calendar based pattern named Service Work Week can be created as follows:

The company has a deal with the local authorities to respond to serious cases like poisonous snakes, alligators, and bears. This is a 24x7x365 deal for which the service department operates an emergency pager schedule.

The service department has 4 emergency response teams that are on call once every four weeks. Since it is 24 hours a day service there is no need to define a workday. Instead we create a pattern with the shift name Emergency Week with a duration of 7 days and a category of Available. And a second pattern called Emergency Unavailable with a duration of 7 days and the category Unavailable.

A pattern can include other patterns within its sequence. We now create a duration-based pattern called Emergency Monthly. It consists of the following:

When a schedule based on this pattern is later assigned to resources, different resources are scheduled to start the pattern at different points in the pattern: week 1, week 2, and so on.

The call center is staffed around the clock Monday through Friday. To achieve this they operate 3 shifts. These shifts are defined using Create Shift.

• Morning Call Center: Monday to Friday 06:00 to 14:00

• Day Call Center: Monday to Friday 14:00 to 22:00

• Night Call Center: Monday to Friday 22:00 to 06:00

Employees rotate by working the morning shift one week, then the day shift the next week, and the night shift the third week, creating a total 21 day pattern. We create a day based pattern with a length of 21 days, called Call Center Rotation, as follows:

Days 6-7, 13-14, and 20-21 are non-working days.