Review staff preferences so your next roster reflects the intended priorities.
Preferences tell planning which outcomes to favour. Resolve pending special preferences before generation so your intended priorities are ready.
Use the staff-preference controls with planning access to the relevant roster, and check the employee, location or sub-roster and dates. Employees entering requests should use Set your preferences; planners entering new requests should use Enter planning preferences.
Roster settings determine the default importance of ordinary requests and the importance applied by bulk special-preference approval. To check or change those controls, use Configure staff preference settings.
Understand what approval means
A preference asks for an allocation; it does not guarantee it. A special preference waiting for review has not yet been assigned the planner's resolved importance.
Normal, High and Critical express priority within planning. A higher priority is still a preference, not a fixed assignment. Use the fixed-shift workflow only for a commitment that must be preserved.
Review the requested work
1. Open Preferences in the left sidebar for the relevant roster. Review date-specific entries in the Overview section at the top of the page.
Whole-screen navigation: Preferences overview. The surrounding app navigation identifies where to start.
Screenshot of Preferences Overview, with numbered callouts for the Preferences navigation (1) and importance controls (6).
2. For recurring entries, scroll below Overview to Recurring Patterns. These are stacked sections, not tabs.
Screenshot of Preferences scrolled to Recurring Patterns, with numbered callouts for the section (2) and importance controls (6).
Existing recurring preferences for fictional Daniel Reed: Recurring Patterns (2) and importance controls (6). These are existing preferences, not newly copied entries or pending requests.
3. Check the employee, requested shift or shift group and affected dates.
4. Compare the request with known availability, leave and operational requirements.
5. Select the cell or range of cells you intend to resolve.
6. Choose Critical, High or Normal in the importance controls.
7. Review the resulting entries in the planning view.
Dated preferences for fictional Daniel Reed, with Normal, High and Critical importance and the importance controls (6). The blue and yellow examples show importance, not pending status. These examples were entered by an administrator, not submitted as pending employee requests.
Admin Preferences showing a pending special off request for 7 November and the bulk approval control. The pending banner distinguishes this from the priority examples above. Identifying fields are outside the supplementary crop; the request remains pending.
Select only entries that should receive the same importance. A range selection is useful for a consistent request, but it can also change several dates unintentionally.
Use bulk special-preference approval carefully
The bulk approval action uses the approval level configured for that roster. Check the explicit setting and fallback behaviour in Configure staff preference settings before approving requests.
1. Confirm that level and review the pending entries so you understand which requests will be affected.
2. Select Approve all pending special preferences only when you intend to apply that configured level to all pending special preferences in the chosen section.
The bulk button applies across the chosen section: Overview for dated preferences, or Recurring Patterns for recurring preferences. It is not limited to the selected cells. Review both sections separately, and do not assume displayed filters limit bulk approval.
Screenshot of Preferences Overview showing Approve all pending special preferences (2) beside the importance controls; the visible rows are empty.
Where a denial action is provided for special preferences, resolving the request as normal is different from deleting the preference. Check the resulting priority rather than assuming the underlying request has been removed.
Check before generation
Resolved preferences feed into planning for AI generation. If you continue past a Pending Special Requests warning, pending special requests are treated as normal for that generation. Review them first when that is not the intended outcome.
After generation, inspect the resulting allocations and Fulfilled Preference indicators to see which preferences were met.
If a preference is missing or has the wrong priority
Check the selected roster, dates and whether the request is recurring or date-specific. Staff recurring preferences may be disabled by a location setting even when planner controls remain available. For an unexpected priority, check the roster's default and bulk-approval settings before changing unrelated requests.