Configure Requests to Cover

Request to Cover is a request from an employee for another employee to cover a scheduled shift. Unlike a shift swap request, the employee does not want to get another shift to work but rather wants another employee to take over a shift for them without taking another shift in exchange.

Cover requests can be offered to employees directly, or to the Shift Market, through which other employees can select a shift that has been offered. See The Shift Market for more information.

Note: Employees can submit a Request to Cover based on how the manager defines the request period in Manage Employee Visibility Periods. If the manager chooses a Rolling Period, employees may have to make a request several days previous to their chosen time. If the manager chooses Any Time, employees can submit a request up to a minute before the chosen time, but not after the shift starts.

Note: To include employees who are scheduled for on-call or standby shifts, see the Include On-Call Shifts in Requests to Cover topic.

  1. Click Tap Main Menu  > Administration > Application Setup > Employee Self Service > Request Subtypes. 
  2. Do one of the following: 

    Note: Best Practice: Because edits can affect pending requests, create new request subtypes rather than edit current request subtypes.

    • Click Tap New. Enter a Name .
    • Select one subtype. Click Tap Edit or Duplicate.
    • Select subtypes. You cannot delete subtypes that are being used. Click Tap Delete. Click Tap Yes to confirm.
  3. (Optional) Enter a Description.
  4. (Optional) Enter a Symbol. A symbol is an abbreviation to be displayed in the workspace; it does not have to be unique and can be up to five characters long.
  5. In Request Type, select Cover.

    Note: You cannot change the request type after you save it.

  6. (Optional) Enter a Priority order in which to list the subtypes.
    • Highest priority = 1.
    • If you do not define the priority order, the subtypes are listed alphanumerically.
  7. Select notifications — Always select notifications. Otherwise, the manager is not notified when an employee submits a request, or the employee is not notified when the request is approved or refused. Regardless of the notification settings, the request can continue through the submission and approval process. Without notification, the manager must log in manually to review the request, and the employee must log in manually to see whether the request is approved.

    Note: If a business process for a notification or a generic notification is deleted, the request subtype cannot be used. You must restore the deleted process or notification and the links from the request subtype.

    Select the following:

    • Employee (Requester) Notification: Select the notification to send to employees who request someone to cover a shift for them, such as to confirm that their requests were submitted, accepted, or rejected.
    • Employee (Recipient) Notification: Select the notification to send to employees when they are sent requests to cover shifts.
    • Manager Notification: Select the notification to send to managers when requests change status such as when employees submit, respond to, or cancel a request to cover a shift.

  8. In Recipients of Request Offer, select one of the following:

    • Offer to Employee — Allow the employee to offer the shift to selected employees.
    • Post to Market — Allow the employee to offer the shift to all eligible employees who have access to the Shift Market by way of their open shift request subtype.
    • Both — Allow the employee to select either of the previous options.

  9. Note: You can configure cover requests so that requests offered to the Shift Market are invalidated when the request expires. See "Enable automatic invalidation of Shift Market requests" later in this topic for more information.

  10. Select Automatic Approval so that without manager intervention, requests to cover shifts are approved automatically when the recipient accepts, unless requests violate an employee rule.
  11. Select Allow Cover if Managers are Different to allow employees who have different managers to cover shifts.
  12. Select Allow Cover With Unposted Shifts to allow employees to request cover for shifts that are in a schedule that is not posted.
  13. Note: If Allow Cover With Unposted Shifts is left unchecked by the manager and employees select an unposted shift, when they click tap the Cover My Shift link, no shifts are displayed in the Events tab.
  14. Select Employee Filter and Sort, which uses the call list to show the list of employees that can be selected. The call list must be defined previously in a procedure set.
  15. In Minimum Rule Severity to Validate, select a minimum severity level of schedule rules to block requests.
    • Not Considered — Requests that violate rules of any severity level are submitted.
    • Informational — Requests that violate rules of Informational, Warning, and No Save severity are not submitted.
    • Warning — Requests that violate rules of Warning or No Save severity are not submitted.
    • No Save — Requests that violate rules of No Save severity are not submitted.

      Note: If a request violates a schedule rule at this level or a more severe level, the request cannot be submitted; the status remains Draft. If a request violates rules of a lower severity, the request is submitted.

      Note: This field can also used to determine which shifts are made available for employees submitting Open, Cover, Swap, and Self-schedule requests. See Ensure break compliance for employee self-service requests for more information.

  16. (Optional) Select Approval settings.

    Note: If selected, Approval Settings override the Employee and Manager Notifications that are configured in the request.

    Approval settings apply only to requests that are Submitted or Pending.

    1. Reminder Template: Use only if you select Approval Settings that have reminder notifications. Select the business process to use for all reminder notifications in the Approval Settings and Approval Step Settings.
    2. Automatic Action Template: Use only if you select Approval Settings that have automatic actions. Select the business process to use for automatic actions in the Approval Settings and Approval Step Settings.
    3. (Optional) Request Purpose: Use only if you select Approval Settings. To override the Default Approval Sequence in the Approval Settings, select a purpose that assigns a sequence of approvers to the request. Purposes and Reviewer Lists must be selected in the employee’s People Record.
    4. (Optional) Select a Reviewer Override.
  17. (Optional) Employees can offer shifts to the shift market for other employees to request to work.

    Shift Market settings

    1. Select Show Other Employees in Shift Market to display the name of the employees who offer a market shift. If this option is not selected, market shifts are offered and accepted anonymously.
    2. In Market Shift Expiration Before Shift Start, enter the time (in minutes) before the shift start time when the open shifts in the market stop being available. This setting is to prevent last-minute changes to the schedule.

      Default = 0 minutes; employees can request to work a market shift up until the time it starts.

      Example: Enter 120 minutes to prevent employees from requesting to work a shift less than 2 hours before it starts.

  18. (Optional) In Allow Cover Requests for Partial Shifts, select the applicable partial shift criteria if you want employees to be able to offer partial shifts when they submit a request to cover. See Configure Partial Shift Criteria for more information.
  19. (Optional) Select Adjust Breaks Automatically to apply the break rules to the shifts assigned to the requesting employee when the request is approved. The break rules are declared in the Work Rule, which is part of the Pay Rule assigned to the employee.

    20. Note: This field can also used to determine which shifts are made available for employees submitting Open, Cover, Swap, and Self-schedule requests. See Ensure break compliance for employee self-service requests for more information.

  20. Click Tap Save & Return.

You can configure a request to cover so that requests submitted to the Shift Market are invalidated when the request expires. The invalidation of the request is automatic; the system sends a notification to the requester's Control Center when the request is invalidated.

To enable automatic invalidation of Shift Market cover requests:

  1. Ensure that the required feature switch (or system setting) is configured correctly. See Feature Switch (or System Settings ) for more information.
  2. Set Recipients of Request Offer to Post to Market or Both.
  3. Note: If you select Both and the employee submits the cover request directly to another employee, and not to the Shift Market, automatic invalidation of the cover request does not occur when the shift expires.
  4. In Market Shift Expiration Before Shift Start, enter a positive value. Choose a time period that gives the requester adequate time to respond to the invalidation notification so they can seek an employee to cover their shift if necessary.

Using the REST API

If you use the REST API for managing requests, you must set the Invalidate Cover Request API ACP to Allowed if you want to gain access to the endpoint that is used evaluate requests to determine if they should be invalidated based on the configuration:

  1. Click Tap Main Menu > Administration > Application Setup > Access Profiles > Function Access Profiles.

  2. Click Tap the function access profile name you want to give access to.

  3. Expand APIs.

  4. Expand Rest API.

  5. In Invalidate Cover Request API, select Allowedin the Access Scope column.

  6. Click Tap Save.

See Function Access Profiles for more information.

In order to allow employees to request to cover parts of shifts, you need to specify the criteria that defines a partial shift.

Note: Configuring partial shift criteria does not preclude employees from requesting cover for a whole shift.

  1. Click Tap Main Menu  > Administration > Application Setup > Employee Self Service > Partial Shift Criteria.

  2. On the Partial Shift Criteria page:

    1. Name — Enter a name for the set of partial shift criteria you are specifying. Choose a name that will be easy to understand when you configure the shift request that supports a partial shift.

    2. (Optional) Description — Enter a description for the set of partial shift criteria.

    3. Offer partial shift as — Choose Fields to enter start and end times. This displays entry fields for employees to enter the start and end time of the partial shift they are requesting.

    4. (Optional) Partial Shift Constraints — Use these fields to specify constraints you wish to place on the partial shift employees can request.

      1. Partial shift must have same start time as whole shift — Check this box if the partial shift must start at the same time as the whole shift.
      2. Partial shift must have same end time as whole shift — Check this box if the partial shift must end at the same time as the whole shift.

        3. Note: When you use one of these settings, the start (or end) time of the whole shift is displayed in the Request to Cover panel and cannot be changed by the employee. If you use both of these settings, the partial shift request must include either the start time or the end time of the whole shift.

      3. Minimum length for partial shift request — The minimum length that the partial shift request can span (expressed as hh:mm).
      4. Minimum length for remaining shift — The minimum length of time in the whole shift that can remain after the partial shift is requested (expressed as hh:mm). For example, if the employee wants to work a partial shift in the middle of the whole shift, the remaining parts of the whole shift before and after the partial shift must be at least this length.

        5. Note: When you specify both minimum length settings, the whole shift must be greater than or equal to the sum of both lengths in order to be offered as a partial shift.

    5. (Optional) Re-evaluate breaks upon request approval — Check this box if you want the system to use break rules to re-assign breaks for both the assigned partial shift and any shift remainder. See Automated Break Placement tab for more information.

  3. Click Tap Save.