What are Areas?
Areas let you organise your roster by a location or unit. When an area is applied to a shift, it appears as a prefix on the allocation, for example "ICU: Morning" or "Ward A: Night".
Areas are useful for:
Filtering - View just one area's roster at a time, which makes large rosters easier to read and check.
Optimisation structure - When the same shifts exist across multiple physical locations, areas let the solver treat "Morning in ER" and "Morning in ICU" as distinct allocations without you needing to create duplicate shifts.
Activating Areas
Areas are activated in the Settings menu under Location Behaviours.
Once active, an Areas tab will appear in your sidebar. This is where you create and manage your areas.
Assigning employees to Areas
Assign employees to areas on the Employees page. By default, employees are set to all areas, meaning they're eligible to work anywhere. To restrict an employee to specific locations, update their area assignment here.
Area Properties
An area has the following components:
Name - This is the name of the area. We recommend using a short name (5 characters or less) to make the roster solutions easier to read. This name must be unique and can't match the name of any shift, shift group, task, task block, area or leave.
Description - This is a free text section that lets you add additional information that will be visible to all admins.
Skills - These are the skills an employee must have to be assigned to this area. Only employees with the selected skills will be considered for shifts in this area. Leave this as All if any employee can work in the area.
Shift or Shift Groups - These are the shifts (or shift groups) that can be worked in this area. Only the shifts you select here will be available for assignment in this area. Leave this as All if any shift can be worked in the area.
Tasks - These are the tasks that can be assigned to employees working in this area. Leave this as All if any task can be assigned in the area.
AI Assigned - (Ticked by default) This allows the AI to assign employees to this area in the solution. Untick this if you want to assign the area manually.
Areas and Demands
Demands can optionally reference a specific area, which narrows where a staffing requirement applies:
A demand tied to "Area A: Morning" only counts people allocated with that area prefix. Someone working "Morning" in Area B doesn't count toward it.
A demand with no area reference applies across all areas, scoped only by whatever else it references (shift, task, skill).
This lets the same shift carry different staffing levels per area. For example, "need 3 on Morning in Area A" and "need 1 on Morning in Area B", even though it's the same shift definition.
Areas can be specified through both the demands table and demands sentence builder
When should I use Areas?
Areas work best for larger rosters where the same set of shifts repeats across multiple locations. For example, if Morning, Afternoon, and Night shifts exist identically in ER, ICU, and Ward A, areas let you model this cleanly with one set of shifts instead of nine.
Keep in mind that areas multiply the number of possible allocations in your model very quickly, so only add them where they're genuinely differentiating something. If you're unsure don't hesitate to reach out to a member of the Rosterlab team
When should I use Areas?
Areas work best for larger rosters where the same set of shifts repeats across multiple locations. For example, if Morning, Afternoon, and Night shifts exist identically in ER, ICU, and Ward A, areas let you model this cleanly with one set of shifts instead of nine.
Keep in mind that areas multiply the number of possible allocations in your model very quickly, so only add them where they're genuinely differentiating something. If everyone is left on the default "all areas" setting and no demands or rules reference specific areas, then areas aren't restricting or organising anything, and your roster may be simpler without them.
If you're unsure whether areas are doing anything in your model, or whether you need them at all, get in touch and a member of the RosterLab team can help you check.