How to videos
These short videos are designed to support the meetings/tutorials in our onboarding program and are separated into the key stages of the onboarding
Initial setup
Checking Staff Import and Workplans
Checking Leave Import
This video covers how to check that all of your past leave has been imported correctly.
Checking Leave Import
Checking Leave Import
This video covers how to check that all of your past leave has been imported correctly.
Managing Your Workforce Settings
Managing Workforce Settings
This section guides you through correctly setting up your workforce for the first time and making any necessary adjustments.
The key settings you need to configure are:
- Ensure “Ignore missing documents” is ticked (unless this function is required)
- Employment Status
- Whether the staff member is a Registrar
- Work Plan Section:
- Attributes:
- Any leave exceptions?
- Are they a partner?
- Workplans:
- Preferred Module
- Primary Location:
- Do they have a preferred room?
- Are they supervised?
- Workplan hours/sessions:
- What days do they work, and how many hours do they work on those days?
- Total Agreed Workplan
- Attributes:
Teams and Leave management
LEAVE MANAGEMENT – Making a Manual Leave Request
Manual Leave Requests
This video covers how to make a manual leave request i.e. when it has not been requested directly by the user through their account.
LEAVE MANAGEMENT – Managing Leave Requests
Mastering Leave Requests: A Guide for Line Managers and Admin Users
This video is your go-to resource for efficiently managing leave requests. As a Line Manager or Admin User, you play a vital role in ensuring your team’s work-life balance while keeping operations running smoothly. Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Viewing Leave Requests: Get a clear, real-time overview of incoming leave requests.
- Balancing the User’s Perspective: Does the staff member have enough leave available? We’ll guide you through assessing their request seamlessly.
- Supporting the Organisation and Team: Make confident decisions by considering:
- Will there enough people still at work?
- Are the requests aligned with team leave rules and the minimum service level defined in your Organisation Template?
By keeping both individual needs and organisational priorities in view, you’ll maintain a strong, effective team.
Before you dive in, it’s worth exploring these key setup sections:
- Setting up your teams
- Manual Leave Requests
LEAVE MANAGEMENT – Time Off Settings
Time-Off Settings
This area is one element of your fundamental organisation settings that forms the basis of many of the calculation and entitlements through Tempo. It is an important one to get right as it is this area of entitlements that can cause issues with your teams if they are seeing entitlements that are not alligned with what they are expecting.
YOUR TEAMS – Creating Week Types
Creating Week Types
When planning your services throughout the year, many organisations find that the type of services they provide will vary depending on the different pressures and priorities at various times. For example, the type of rota or services provided during the week of Christmas or the week leading up to Christmas might differ from those in a standard week of the year. It might also be that you allow different numbers of people to be on annual leave at different times of the year.
To give you the flexibility to plan your services to meet these pressures effectively, ensuring you meet your patients’ needs efficiently while also allowing your staff to have the time off they deserve, we have created a feature that enables you to plan for these weeks by creating them in our system and automatically planning different leave rules and rotas for these times of the year.
You will typically start needing to use these features when setting leave rules, but their real power is revealed when you use them to plan different organisational templates for various levels of service provision at different times of the year. See our section on Rotas and Organisational Templates for more details.
The steps you need to follow to set these up are:
1. Decide how many different types of weeks you want (this list will probably grow over time).
2. Create these different week types.
3. Decide when you want these different weeks to apply
YOUR TEAMS – Setting Up Your Teams
Setting Up Your Teams
Once all your staff have been added to your Hub account, the next step is to group them into teams. The team functionality within Tempo has various applications, enabling you to group staff members to gain powerful rota, planning, or management insights.
The most common starting point for using teams is managing leave, particularly in terms of how many people can take leave at one time. Therefore, the initial teams to set up are those where the amount of leave taken is linked, such as a team of GPs with a rule that only a certain number of GPs can be off at the same time.
The steps to setting up a team in this scenario are:
1. Deciding who you want to be in the team.
2. Deciding which line manager will manage the leave for this team.
3. Deciding what your leave rules are.
Rota management
ROTA MANAGEMENT – Rota Management Concepts with User and Organisational Templates
Rota Management Concepts with User and Organisational Templates
This guide explains the concepts behind User Template and Organisational Template Based Rota Management. For detailed instructions on how to implement these approaches, please refer to our other guides once you’ve understood the concepts.
User Templates
User Templates are linked to individual staff members and outline the type of work they typically perform during a specific week of the year. Initially, these templates might focus solely on session types (e.g., the kind of session they usually conduct), but they can also include appointment-based details, specifying both the type and number of appointments in the sessions that they usually do.
User Templates represent potential capacity and are used to form the basis of your rotas. They also help you assess your capacity and begin designing changes to your services to better meet demand, use capacity more efficiently, and understand the costs of running your current services.
Organisational Templates
Organisational Templates represent the design of the services you intend to provide with the capacity you have. In its simplest form, this might involve arranging one duty GP session at each of your sites for both morning and afternoon, or a single GP triage session for your entire organisation. However, Organisational Templates also allow for more nuanced designs to better meet service demands such as determining the minimum number of different appointment types (e.g., same-day bookings vs. book-in-advance) that you want to offer. These templates ensure that decisions about leave or recruitment align with your service targets.
Flexible vs. Protected Sessions
This is an important distinction that helps you manage capacity while meeting your practice’s needs. By labelling sessions as either Flexible or Protected, you can manage who does what, and when, in a way that suits the practice while keeping things fair for your team.
- Flexible Sessions: These are sessions that can be converted or changed to meet organisational requirements. For example, a GP Standard Session might be converted into a GP Duty Session if it’s that GP’s turn to cover. This conversion can happen automatically if you’re using Organisation Template-based rota management or can serve as a guide in User-Template-based rota management. Examples of Flexible Sessions:
- GP Standard Session
- Nurse Standard Session
- Protected Sessions: These are sessions that are not typically converted or changed, except in exceptional circumstances. For example, if a GP is scheduled for a Diabetes Clinic, this session would usually be protected, meaning another GP won’t be asked to take it over unless absolutely necessary.
Examples of Protected Sessions:- GP Management Session
- GP Minor Ops Session
- GP Diabetes Session
- GP Tutorial Session
How to Decide: Flexible or Protected?
An easy rule of thumb to help decide whether a session should be flexible or protected is this:
- If a staff member is absent, would someone else cover their session or would it be cancelled?
- If someone else would cover: Flexible
- If it wouldn’t go ahead without them: Protected
This decision will be vital when you start using Organisational Templates for rota management, as these rely on flexible sessions to help meet the practice’s service requirements.
Bringing User Templates and Organisational Templates Together
Managing your rotas with Organisational Templates allows your rota team to prioritise the level of service you want to provide when managing rotas and making decisions about leave. They begin by focusing on the service level target defined in the Organisational Template, then consider the available capacity in the User Templates. This approach ensures that the Organisational Template is covered before managing any additional capacity.
Tempo enables you to create different rota designs for different times of the year, such as a distinct service design for Christmas week or a bank holiday compared to a normal week.
ROTA MANAGEMENT – Checking for User Template / Workplan Errors
Checking for User Template / Workplan Errors
This video explains how to use the annual planner to check for errors in a user’s workplan or templates, ensuring you have the correct foundational information to build your rota with confidence.
ROTA MANAGEMENT – Managing Session Types
Creating Session Types in Tempo: Flexible and Protected
Session types are the foundation of your rota system in Tempo. Think of them as labels that define what kind of work each staff member will be doing during their shift, like “GP Standard Session” or “Nurse Smear Clinic.” By creating clear session types, you’ll ensure that both you and your team know exactly what to expect during a given shift. Let’s dive into how to set these up and why they’re important!
Why Create Session Types?
Creating specific session types helps organise the different roles and responsibilities your team will cover. It’s essential for reflecting the variety of tasks your staff handle. Each session type clarifies what a staff member is expected to do during a specific shift, so there’s no confusion on the day.
By assigning a session type, you also make it easier for staff to know what’s expected of them at a glance—whether they’re covering a standard clinic, running a specialised session, or managing admin tasks.
Tip: Aim to create session types that cover each unique type of work, but don’t overcomplicate things. For example, if your morning and afternoon sessions are exactly the same in content, you only need one session type for both. You only need a separate session type if the work differs (e.g., morning triage vs. afternoon consultations).
Common Session Types:
Here are some typical session types you might need:
- GPs:
-
- GP Standard Session
- GP Duty Session
- GP Triage Session
- GP Minor Ops Session
- GP Tutorial Session
- GP Management Session
- GP Diabetes Session
- Nurses:
- Nurse Standard Session
- Nurse Diabetes Session
- Nurse Smear Clinic
- Nurse Asthma Clinic
- Receptionists:
- Front Desk Session
- Triage Session
- Phone Session
Managing Morning vs. Afternoon Sessions
If your morning and afternoon sessions are identical in structure and content, you don’t need to create separate session types. For instance, if your “GP Standard Session” is the same throughout the day, you only need one session type.
However, if there are significant differences between morning and afternoon—such as different session lengths, types of appointments, or the number of patients—then it’s wise to create distinct session types for each.
Also, don’t worry about creating new session types for small variations, like if a meeting happens during the session or if someone is supervising a colleague. These minor differences can be managed within the session templates themselves, which we’ll cover in a later guide.
Starting with Existing Clinic Systems
A great place to start is by referencing your clinic’s current system, such as SystmOne. Many clinics already have a structure for rota management, which can be transferred into Tempo. If you have a long list of session types, we can even help import them directly from your clinic system to save you time.
Once imported, all you’ll need to do is review and tweak the settings to make sure everything aligns with your specific needs.
Key Session Type Attributes in Tempo
Every session type in Tempo comes with a set of attributes that help define how the session is used within your rota. While you can explore more advanced settings later, here’s what you need to know for the initial setup:
- Session Name: Choose a clear, descriptive name for the session. This name should make it easy to reference within your rotas and clinical system. For example, “GP Duty Session” is clear and tells both the staff and the rota manager exactly what’s expected.
- Session Code: This is a unique, shorthand reference for the session type. It allows for quick identification when you’re working in Tempo’s rota overview, the annual planner, or other areas. Keep it simple and logical, like “GP-DS” for GP Duty Session.
- Flexible or Protected: This distinction is key and is explained in more detail below. It determines whether the session can be repurposed based on the needs of the practice (Flexible) or if it’s a session that should remain fixed and only changed in rare cases (Protected).
- Equity Range: This setting allows you to define how far back Tempo looks when deciding which staff member is most appropriate for a shift. For example, if you want to share duty sessions equally among GPs, you can set Tempo to review the past 3 or 6 months to ensure the load is distributed fairly. If one GP has done more duty sessions recently, Tempo will suggest another for the next one.
- Session Colour: Assign a colour to each session type for easy identification in the rota. This helps you spot different sessions at a glance, especially when managing a large team with multiple types of sessions.
Once you’ve set up these attributes, you’re ready to start building your rota templates!
Flexible vs. Protected Sessions
This is an important distinction that helps you manage capacity while meeting your practice’s needs. By labelling sessions as either Flexible or Protected, you can manage who does what, and when, in a way that suits the practice while keeping things fair for your team.
- Flexible Sessions: These are sessions that can be converted or changed to meet organisational requirements. For example, a GP Standard Session might be converted into a GP Duty Session if it’s that GP’s turn to cover. This conversion can happen automatically if you’re using Organisation Template-based rota management or can serve as a guide in User-Template-based rota management.
Examples of Flexible Sessions:
- GP Standard Session
- Nurse Standard Session
- Protected Sessions: These are sessions that are not typically converted or changed, except in exceptional circumstances. For example, if a GP is scheduled for a Diabetes Clinic, this session would usually be protected, meaning another GP won’t be asked to take it over unless absolutely necessary.
Examples of Protected Sessions:
- GP Management Session
- GP Minor Ops Session
- GP Diabetes Session
- GP Tutorial Session
How to Decide: Flexible or Protected?
An easy rule of thumb to help decide whether a session should be flexible or protected is this:
- If a staff member is absent, would someone else cover their session or would it be cancelled?
- If someone else would cover: Flexible
- If it wouldn’t go ahead without them: Protected
This decision will be vital when you start using Organisational Templates for rota management, as these rely on flexible sessions to help meet the practice’s service requirements.
Next Steps
Once you’ve created your session types and set their attributes, you can begin building your user templates and rotas! If you have a lot of different session types, remember we can help you import them from your clinical system (such as SystmOne). Just get in touch, and we’ll walk you through the process.
If you’re unsure about any of the details above or need more guidance on setting up your sessions, we’re always here to help!
ROTA MANAGEMENT – Organisational Template Based Rota Management
Organisational Template Based Rotas
This guide will help you navigate the rota planning process, ensuring your team is supported and your practice runs efficiently.
The video for this is shown at the bottom but you may want to go to our YouTube channel directly so you can click through to any bits that you are particularly interested in: https://youtu.be/bnOW6cOijy0
What am I trying to do?
The first step in rota planning is understanding the task at hand. This part of the process takes place in the Annual Planner screen.
- Check the Organisation Template: Review your organisation template here to understand the sessions required for the week.
Who have I got?
All of your available resources can be managed and checked in the Annual Planner screen:
- Check the User Templates for the Week: Identify who has a template for the week and is available.
- Check What Leave There Is: Review which staff members are on leave. This will help you account for gaps in coverage before starting the rota.
Have I got enough people to cover my organisation template?
Still within the Annual Planner, you can assess your coverage:
- Check the Dials: These visual aids show whether you have enough people to cover your organisation’s template needs for the week.
- Can I cover it with flexible sessions? Flexible sessions offer adaptability. Check if they can fill any gaps.
- If not, can I cover it with protected sessions? If flexible sessions aren’t enough, consider whether protected sessions can help.
Starting to Rota
Now, it’s time to move on from the Annual Planner to the Rotas view.
- Check the Shift Mode Views (Optional): These views can give you a clearer picture of the shifts you are managing within the template.
- Load the Rotas:
- Load the Organisational Template and Protected User Sessions: Import the templates you’ve already reviewed in the Annual Planner into the rota.
- Decide whether to load people on leave: If someone is off for the whole week, you might choose not to load them. However, it can be helpful to include them for visibility.
Selecting People into the Organisational Template
Once you’ve loaded the template, begin assigning staff to their sessions.
- Covering Unfilled Sessions: If there are still gaps, this is the moment to decide how to cover them—whether by reallocating existing staff, using additional shifts, or finding other solutions.
Using Remaining Flexible Sessions
Maximise the use of your flexible sessions through:
- Shift Mode View: A visual approach to flexibly managing your template.
- Direct Load of Flexible Sessions: Quickly load any remaining flexible sessions to fill gaps in the template.
Final Checks
Before you finish, make sure you’ve covered all your bases:
- Have you used everyone? Ensure no staff member has been overlooked by cross-referencing with your Annual Planner.
- Check the Rooms: Ensure your room allocations are correct in the Annual Planner view.
- Check Appointment Numbers: In the rota view, verify that the appointment numbers match demand.
Commit Your Template
When you’re happy with the template, click “Commit.” You’ve just created a balanced template that supports both your staff and patients!
ROTA MANAGEMENT – User Template Based Rota Management
User Template Based Rotas
This guide will walk you through the process of rota management using user templates as the foundation for your rotas. This method is one of the simpler options and is commonly used when creating rotas for users who already have established templates, with minimal variation in their session types compared to what is outlined in their templates.
For more complex rota management, particularly if you need to design rotas based on minimum service levels or to meet specific targets (e.g., appointment numbers), we recommend using the Organisational Template-based approach. Please refer to our other guides for more information.
If you’re unsure which option is best for your needs, feel free to reach out to us, and we’ll be happy to assist you.
How to videos
These short videos are designed to support the meetings/tutorials in our onboarding program and are separated into the key stages of the onboarding
Initial setup
Checking Staff Import and Workplans
Checking Leave Import
This video covers how to check that all of your past leave has been imported correctly.
Checking Leave Import
Checking Leave Import
This video covers how to check that all of your past leave has been imported correctly.
Managing Your Workforce Settings
Managing Workforce Settings
This section guides you through correctly setting up your workforce for the first time and making any necessary adjustments.
The key settings you need to configure are:
- Ensure “Ignore missing documents” is ticked (unless this function is required)
- Employment Status
- Whether the staff member is a Registrar
- Work Plan Section:
- Attributes:
- Any leave exceptions?
- Are they a partner?
- Workplans:
- Preferred Module
- Primary Location:
- Do they have a preferred room?
- Are they supervised?
- Workplan hours/sessions:
- What days do they work, and how many hours do they work on those days?
- Total Agreed Workplan
- Attributes:
Teams and Leave management
LEAVE MANAGEMENT – Making a Manual Leave Request
Manual Leave Requests
This video covers how to make a manual leave request i.e. when it has not been requested directly by the user through their account.
LEAVE MANAGEMENT – Managing Leave Requests
Mastering Leave Requests: A Guide for Line Managers and Admin Users
This video is your go-to resource for efficiently managing leave requests. As a Line Manager or Admin User, you play a vital role in ensuring your team’s work-life balance while keeping operations running smoothly. Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Viewing Leave Requests: Get a clear, real-time overview of incoming leave requests.
- Balancing the User’s Perspective: Does the staff member have enough leave available? We’ll guide you through assessing their request seamlessly.
- Supporting the Organisation and Team: Make confident decisions by considering:
- Will there enough people still at work?
- Are the requests aligned with team leave rules and the minimum service level defined in your Organisation Template?
By keeping both individual needs and organisational priorities in view, you’ll maintain a strong, effective team.
Before you dive in, it’s worth exploring these key setup sections:
- Setting up your teams
- Manual Leave Requests
LEAVE MANAGEMENT – Time Off Settings
Time-Off Settings
This area is one element of your fundamental organisation settings that forms the basis of many of the calculation and entitlements through Tempo. It is an important one to get right as it is this area of entitlements that can cause issues with your teams if they are seeing entitlements that are not alligned with what they are expecting.
YOUR TEAMS – Creating Week Types
Creating Week Types
When planning your services throughout the year, many organisations find that the type of services they provide will vary depending on the different pressures and priorities at various times. For example, the type of rota or services provided during the week of Christmas or the week leading up to Christmas might differ from those in a standard week of the year. It might also be that you allow different numbers of people to be on annual leave at different times of the year.
To give you the flexibility to plan your services to meet these pressures effectively, ensuring you meet your patients’ needs efficiently while also allowing your staff to have the time off they deserve, we have created a feature that enables you to plan for these weeks by creating them in our system and automatically planning different leave rules and rotas for these times of the year.
You will typically start needing to use these features when setting leave rules, but their real power is revealed when you use them to plan different organisational templates for various levels of service provision at different times of the year. See our section on Rotas and Organisational Templates for more details.
The steps you need to follow to set these up are:
1. Decide how many different types of weeks you want (this list will probably grow over time).
2. Create these different week types.
3. Decide when you want these different weeks to apply
YOUR TEAMS – Setting Up Your Teams
Setting Up Your Teams
Once all your staff have been added to your Hub account, the next step is to group them into teams. The team functionality within Tempo has various applications, enabling you to group staff members to gain powerful rota, planning, or management insights.
The most common starting point for using teams is managing leave, particularly in terms of how many people can take leave at one time. Therefore, the initial teams to set up are those where the amount of leave taken is linked, such as a team of GPs with a rule that only a certain number of GPs can be off at the same time.
The steps to setting up a team in this scenario are:
1. Deciding who you want to be in the team.
2. Deciding which line manager will manage the leave for this team.
3. Deciding what your leave rules are.
Rota management
ROTA MANAGEMENT – Rota Management Concepts with User and Organisational Templates
Rota Management Concepts with User and Organisational Templates
This guide explains the concepts behind User Template and Organisational Template Based Rota Management. For detailed instructions on how to implement these approaches, please refer to our other guides once you’ve understood the concepts.
User Templates
User Templates are linked to individual staff members and outline the type of work they typically perform during a specific week of the year. Initially, these templates might focus solely on session types (e.g., the kind of session they usually conduct), but they can also include appointment-based details, specifying both the type and number of appointments in the sessions that they usually do.
User Templates represent potential capacity and are used to form the basis of your rotas. They also help you assess your capacity and begin designing changes to your services to better meet demand, use capacity more efficiently, and understand the costs of running your current services.
Organisational Templates
Organisational Templates represent the design of the services you intend to provide with the capacity you have. In its simplest form, this might involve arranging one duty GP session at each of your sites for both morning and afternoon, or a single GP triage session for your entire organisation. However, Organisational Templates also allow for more nuanced designs to better meet service demands such as determining the minimum number of different appointment types (e.g., same-day bookings vs. book-in-advance) that you want to offer. These templates ensure that decisions about leave or recruitment align with your service targets.
Flexible vs. Protected Sessions
This is an important distinction that helps you manage capacity while meeting your practice’s needs. By labelling sessions as either Flexible or Protected, you can manage who does what, and when, in a way that suits the practice while keeping things fair for your team.
- Flexible Sessions: These are sessions that can be converted or changed to meet organisational requirements. For example, a GP Standard Session might be converted into a GP Duty Session if it’s that GP’s turn to cover. This conversion can happen automatically if you’re using Organisation Template-based rota management or can serve as a guide in User-Template-based rota management. Examples of Flexible Sessions:
- GP Standard Session
- Nurse Standard Session
- Protected Sessions: These are sessions that are not typically converted or changed, except in exceptional circumstances. For example, if a GP is scheduled for a Diabetes Clinic, this session would usually be protected, meaning another GP won’t be asked to take it over unless absolutely necessary.
Examples of Protected Sessions:- GP Management Session
- GP Minor Ops Session
- GP Diabetes Session
- GP Tutorial Session
How to Decide: Flexible or Protected?
An easy rule of thumb to help decide whether a session should be flexible or protected is this:
- If a staff member is absent, would someone else cover their session or would it be cancelled?
- If someone else would cover: Flexible
- If it wouldn’t go ahead without them: Protected
This decision will be vital when you start using Organisational Templates for rota management, as these rely on flexible sessions to help meet the practice’s service requirements.
Bringing User Templates and Organisational Templates Together
Managing your rotas with Organisational Templates allows your rota team to prioritise the level of service you want to provide when managing rotas and making decisions about leave. They begin by focusing on the service level target defined in the Organisational Template, then consider the available capacity in the User Templates. This approach ensures that the Organisational Template is covered before managing any additional capacity.
Tempo enables you to create different rota designs for different times of the year, such as a distinct service design for Christmas week or a bank holiday compared to a normal week.
ROTA MANAGEMENT – Checking for User Template / Workplan Errors
Checking for User Template / Workplan Errors
This video explains how to use the annual planner to check for errors in a user’s workplan or templates, ensuring you have the correct foundational information to build your rota with confidence.
ROTA MANAGEMENT – Managing Session Types
Creating Session Types in Tempo: Flexible and Protected
Session types are the foundation of your rota system in Tempo. Think of them as labels that define what kind of work each staff member will be doing during their shift, like “GP Standard Session” or “Nurse Smear Clinic.” By creating clear session types, you’ll ensure that both you and your team know exactly what to expect during a given shift. Let’s dive into how to set these up and why they’re important!
Why Create Session Types?
Creating specific session types helps organise the different roles and responsibilities your team will cover. It’s essential for reflecting the variety of tasks your staff handle. Each session type clarifies what a staff member is expected to do during a specific shift, so there’s no confusion on the day.
By assigning a session type, you also make it easier for staff to know what’s expected of them at a glance—whether they’re covering a standard clinic, running a specialised session, or managing admin tasks.
Tip: Aim to create session types that cover each unique type of work, but don’t overcomplicate things. For example, if your morning and afternoon sessions are exactly the same in content, you only need one session type for both. You only need a separate session type if the work differs (e.g., morning triage vs. afternoon consultations).
Common Session Types:
Here are some typical session types you might need:
- GPs:
-
- GP Standard Session
- GP Duty Session
- GP Triage Session
- GP Minor Ops Session
- GP Tutorial Session
- GP Management Session
- GP Diabetes Session
- Nurses:
- Nurse Standard Session
- Nurse Diabetes Session
- Nurse Smear Clinic
- Nurse Asthma Clinic
- Receptionists:
- Front Desk Session
- Triage Session
- Phone Session
Managing Morning vs. Afternoon Sessions
If your morning and afternoon sessions are identical in structure and content, you don’t need to create separate session types. For instance, if your “GP Standard Session” is the same throughout the day, you only need one session type.
However, if there are significant differences between morning and afternoon—such as different session lengths, types of appointments, or the number of patients—then it’s wise to create distinct session types for each.
Also, don’t worry about creating new session types for small variations, like if a meeting happens during the session or if someone is supervising a colleague. These minor differences can be managed within the session templates themselves, which we’ll cover in a later guide.
Starting with Existing Clinic Systems
A great place to start is by referencing your clinic’s current system, such as SystmOne. Many clinics already have a structure for rota management, which can be transferred into Tempo. If you have a long list of session types, we can even help import them directly from your clinic system to save you time.
Once imported, all you’ll need to do is review and tweak the settings to make sure everything aligns with your specific needs.
Key Session Type Attributes in Tempo
Every session type in Tempo comes with a set of attributes that help define how the session is used within your rota. While you can explore more advanced settings later, here’s what you need to know for the initial setup:
- Session Name: Choose a clear, descriptive name for the session. This name should make it easy to reference within your rotas and clinical system. For example, “GP Duty Session” is clear and tells both the staff and the rota manager exactly what’s expected.
- Session Code: This is a unique, shorthand reference for the session type. It allows for quick identification when you’re working in Tempo’s rota overview, the annual planner, or other areas. Keep it simple and logical, like “GP-DS” for GP Duty Session.
- Flexible or Protected: This distinction is key and is explained in more detail below. It determines whether the session can be repurposed based on the needs of the practice (Flexible) or if it’s a session that should remain fixed and only changed in rare cases (Protected).
- Equity Range: This setting allows you to define how far back Tempo looks when deciding which staff member is most appropriate for a shift. For example, if you want to share duty sessions equally among GPs, you can set Tempo to review the past 3 or 6 months to ensure the load is distributed fairly. If one GP has done more duty sessions recently, Tempo will suggest another for the next one.
- Session Colour: Assign a colour to each session type for easy identification in the rota. This helps you spot different sessions at a glance, especially when managing a large team with multiple types of sessions.
Once you’ve set up these attributes, you’re ready to start building your rota templates!
Flexible vs. Protected Sessions
This is an important distinction that helps you manage capacity while meeting your practice’s needs. By labelling sessions as either Flexible or Protected, you can manage who does what, and when, in a way that suits the practice while keeping things fair for your team.
- Flexible Sessions: These are sessions that can be converted or changed to meet organisational requirements. For example, a GP Standard Session might be converted into a GP Duty Session if it’s that GP’s turn to cover. This conversion can happen automatically if you’re using Organisation Template-based rota management or can serve as a guide in User-Template-based rota management.
Examples of Flexible Sessions:
- GP Standard Session
- Nurse Standard Session
- Protected Sessions: These are sessions that are not typically converted or changed, except in exceptional circumstances. For example, if a GP is scheduled for a Diabetes Clinic, this session would usually be protected, meaning another GP won’t be asked to take it over unless absolutely necessary.
Examples of Protected Sessions:
- GP Management Session
- GP Minor Ops Session
- GP Diabetes Session
- GP Tutorial Session
How to Decide: Flexible or Protected?
An easy rule of thumb to help decide whether a session should be flexible or protected is this:
- If a staff member is absent, would someone else cover their session or would it be cancelled?
- If someone else would cover: Flexible
- If it wouldn’t go ahead without them: Protected
This decision will be vital when you start using Organisational Templates for rota management, as these rely on flexible sessions to help meet the practice’s service requirements.
Next Steps
Once you’ve created your session types and set their attributes, you can begin building your user templates and rotas! If you have a lot of different session types, remember we can help you import them from your clinical system (such as SystmOne). Just get in touch, and we’ll walk you through the process.
If you’re unsure about any of the details above or need more guidance on setting up your sessions, we’re always here to help!
ROTA MANAGEMENT – Organisational Template Based Rota Management
Organisational Template Based Rotas
This guide will help you navigate the rota planning process, ensuring your team is supported and your practice runs efficiently.
The video for this is shown at the bottom but you may want to go to our YouTube channel directly so you can click through to any bits that you are particularly interested in: https://youtu.be/bnOW6cOijy0
What am I trying to do?
The first step in rota planning is understanding the task at hand. This part of the process takes place in the Annual Planner screen.
- Check the Organisation Template: Review your organisation template here to understand the sessions required for the week.
Who have I got?
All of your available resources can be managed and checked in the Annual Planner screen:
- Check the User Templates for the Week: Identify who has a template for the week and is available.
- Check What Leave There Is: Review which staff members are on leave. This will help you account for gaps in coverage before starting the rota.
Have I got enough people to cover my organisation template?
Still within the Annual Planner, you can assess your coverage:
- Check the Dials: These visual aids show whether you have enough people to cover your organisation’s template needs for the week.
- Can I cover it with flexible sessions? Flexible sessions offer adaptability. Check if they can fill any gaps.
- If not, can I cover it with protected sessions? If flexible sessions aren’t enough, consider whether protected sessions can help.
Starting to Rota
Now, it’s time to move on from the Annual Planner to the Rotas view.
- Check the Shift Mode Views (Optional): These views can give you a clearer picture of the shifts you are managing within the template.
- Load the Rotas:
- Load the Organisational Template and Protected User Sessions: Import the templates you’ve already reviewed in the Annual Planner into the rota.
- Decide whether to load people on leave: If someone is off for the whole week, you might choose not to load them. However, it can be helpful to include them for visibility.
Selecting People into the Organisational Template
Once you’ve loaded the template, begin assigning staff to their sessions.
- Covering Unfilled Sessions: If there are still gaps, this is the moment to decide how to cover them—whether by reallocating existing staff, using additional shifts, or finding other solutions.
Using Remaining Flexible Sessions
Maximise the use of your flexible sessions through:
- Shift Mode View: A visual approach to flexibly managing your template.
- Direct Load of Flexible Sessions: Quickly load any remaining flexible sessions to fill gaps in the template.
Final Checks
Before you finish, make sure you’ve covered all your bases:
- Have you used everyone? Ensure no staff member has been overlooked by cross-referencing with your Annual Planner.
- Check the Rooms: Ensure your room allocations are correct in the Annual Planner view.
- Check Appointment Numbers: In the rota view, verify that the appointment numbers match demand.
Commit Your Template
When you’re happy with the template, click “Commit.” You’ve just created a balanced template that supports both your staff and patients!
ROTA MANAGEMENT – User Template Based Rota Management
User Template Based Rotas
This guide will walk you through the process of rota management using user templates as the foundation for your rotas. This method is one of the simpler options and is commonly used when creating rotas for users who already have established templates, with minimal variation in their session types compared to what is outlined in their templates.
For more complex rota management, particularly if you need to design rotas based on minimum service levels or to meet specific targets (e.g., appointment numbers), we recommend using the Organisational Template-based approach. Please refer to our other guides for more information.
If you’re unsure which option is best for your needs, feel free to reach out to us, and we’ll be happy to assist you.
How things work articles
These articles describe concepts and elements of the user interface
Tempo for the practice manager and all operational staff
Tempo creates a window into your practice operations and provides a powerful interface for operational management and planning
Empowering views of operational data, enables you to see clearly and to plan for targets.
Clinical systems offer very little in the way of strategic planning, because they don’t capture that data. We realised that within practice operational planning and day-to-day practice operations, there is a huge amount of important useful data being generated and then largely lost! On top of this, there is a complex set of operational rules being held onto by operational managers who have to apply these each week, alongside handling day-to-day ‘real World’ changes.
For many practices, this has been just about manageable but they face a growing amount of complexity from more complex staff roles, flexible work plans and working at scale. Practice managers need to get to grips with this operational data in order to be in control and plan the financial year but, with such complexity, it’s difficult to know where or how to start.
Tempo therefore creates that starting point for a practice manager by creating a useful strategic view within a few weeks and an incredibly powerful set of views within 3 months!
By onboarding your fundamental data sets and standardising the way you work, Tempo quickly creates a view of the organisation over time that enables clear strategic thinking, planning, transparency, equity and reporting.
In Tempo, your operational rules are built-in, by your design and our configuration. This enables Tempo to create powerful time saving rota and leave intelligence, to calculate equity among teams and to semi-automate repetitive processes such as supervision, training, meetings, overtime, TOIL, entitlements and more.
Managing rollover in leave calculations
Rollover
Tempo does rollover calculations on a schedule, on the first day of a new financial year – applying the rollover from the FY just ended into the new FY just started
When we use the button visible to Hub admin with leave management permission, to force a recalculation, it simply makes this script run again and perform the recalculation
Forced recalculation can be done on one person (in the individual staff user view) or on the whole hub (in the wider all users view)
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The time off settings and rollover
If we set the rollover settings to zero and recalculate all rollover, Tempo will look at the previous year and apply new rollover calcs into this FY – setting rollover to none
Going forward
If you want to always prevent rollover being given, then leave the settings at zero and it will always give no rollover each time a recalculation happens
If you want to start applying rollover to the next FY, after running a recalculation at zero, change the settings to a new value and save but do not recalculate
This will then use those settings at the next scheduled recalculation, when the new FY starts
Staff users consent for use of information
Below are 2 screen shots related to two places that a staff user gives consent for their information to be stored and used, within Tempo.
The first is on account registration and the second is when joining a Hub (an organisation within the network)
The initial consent on account registration relates to a GPnetworks privacy policy and the Hub opt-in relates to a policy published into the Hub by the hub Admin
Capacity & segmentation of staff
This is a screen shot of the workforce management landing screen, in Tempo, showing the first ‘baked in‘ segmentation of staff users for the organisation – according to their professional roles, as tabbed groups, each listing staff electronic records.
Within those role groups staff are further divided into employment relationship to the organisation.
The Teams section of Tempo allows then the design of any bespoke groupings of people, for many purposes: leave rules, capacity planning, line-management and service line intelligence.
But, this initial standard segmentation of staff is important for at least 2 reasons:
- In order to establish a compliant, standardised electronic staff record as a baseline for capacity and a fixed point onto which capacity designs can be anchored.
- For the ability to rota staff, within the right groups
Capacity
Tempo can count organisational workforce capacity in sophisticated ways, including leave, across both baked in segments and arbitrary segments, created by Teams. The baked in segments of capacity are firstly the staff roles shown above and, secondly, the modular structure of the hub itself.
What are modules?
Modules are a way to Demand & capacity. In real terms they are a way to organise rota design across sites, people and services. They are also a way to segment and count capacity.
Handling tutorials by design and using automation
Manual adjusting (later to be automated)
When a GP trainer is not available for a tutorial as they are on leave then the tutorial needs to be cancelled and the registrar session would convert to a normal session.
The design behind it
The tutor and the reg both have their sessions within their user week templates. The tutor session are protected and the registrar sessions are flexible – so they can become something else if needed.
The tutor has their tutorial session type on their protected sessions and the reg has not a tutorial session type on their flexible session but a normal registrar session type (that can be used for normal reg session)
Scenarios
WHEN user sessions are toggled ON, in the rota week, we can see where tutorial can happen and where it cannot
WHEN the tutorial happens, the reg session type is changed to their tutored type (for now, manually)
WHEN the tutorial doesn’t happen, the reg session stays as a normal registrar type and they can be assigned supervision to any available supervisor
Modules, locations & rooms
What is a module?
Tempo rotas are firstly, grouped into Modules
Everyone knows what a Practice location is and what a room is, but what is a module?
Modules are the key additional element that allows for a better utilisation of locations and rooms.
A module is a bit of additional (notional) structure within rota design, that creates the basis for better flexibility in rota sessions.
A module is a way to firstly. ask: “What team is this work for” BEFORE asking “where is this work being done?”
When you add this additional bit of structure to a rota, as a top level grouping of work, it enables work to be done anywhere in the organisation (include at home or in a virtual location) and for that work to be properly counted for the group it belongs to.
Modules enable a more flexible use of locations across the whole organisation.
After work is first identified in the module it belongs to, locations and rooms can be assigned to that work, based on a priority.
Example
PCN work (module)
– Practice site 1
— Room 1
— Room 2
– Practice site 2
— Room 1
— Room 2
– Virtual location
The annual planner and rota week types
How to use the Annual planner
The Annual Planner is a place where rota template design meets seasonal week planning. IN the Planner calendar you can connect your rota template designs to any number of week ‘type’ that you want to create and connect those to the actual weeks of the year.
This action connects your template designs to the weeks of the year in the rotering screen and ensures targets and counts are defined across different weeks of the year.
In the annual planner calendar, we use the drop down at the top/left of each week, to set the week type for that week.
The things that are part of Annual week planning:
- The week types
- The templates
- The Annual Planner calendar
At the top of the planner, you can see the week types you have created. Edit them or make new ones until you have the latest set of week types you need for a year.
In the planner calendar, go to each week of the year and use the drop down to set the proper week type for that week.
The last part, after setting this schedule up, is having enough variations of templates to match the week types you created.
Each templates can be assigned to a week type (in template edit screen)
When templates are assigned to a week type, they will show in the annual planner, when they are appropriate
Duplicate / copy rota templates
You can copy any template to another template
Even an organisation template to a user template
To duplicate a template to a person, for example:
Go to your Rota Templates and open the template to duplicate
Example: pharmacist template
Once in this view, click the ‘Week templates’ button to open the options
In the popup modal, select User template option and then choose the person from the dropdown – that you want to clone the template to
Note
Don’t forget to name the new template being created and then click Save (the green button bottom left)
This creates the persons template and takes you to the edit view of that template, where you can edit it and connect it to their work plan
Then Save that
User templates versus org templates
How to use them and why
Why have two types of session?
Because practice rotering needs to combine the rota of an individual with the additional rota needs of the organisation, we have solved this complexity by splitting the two types out, into two different rota templates and, within those templates, defining the two types of session.
This means that the two types of template can overlap and Tempo can intelligently work out how overlapping sessions interact to create a complete, workable, practice rota.
Org templates only contain organisation type sessions and do not need names assigned to them.
User week templates can contain BOTH org sessions and user sessions.
User sessions are protected. This means they are generally not suitable for transformation into something else, within a rota.
An example of an org type session in a practice rota is a Duty session. That could be GP Duty or something else, such as Pharmacist Duty. The key thing is that, it is a session that usually has to happen, within an organisational rota.
This is distinct from the ‘protected‘ sessions contained within a staff user template
The staff user week template is a design of the weekly plan and expectations of the staff user.
User week templates can contain two types of session: org sessions and non-org, protected sessions.
This ‘org’ or ‘protected’ attribute of a session is set, by the hub, for any session type, within the session type management screen.
https://tempo.gpnetworks.co.uk/hub_admin/pcn/session_types
Session type example
In a person’s week design, the org type session is given to those sessions that become the ones that can transfrom into an org session in a practice rota
Rota = where user and org templates come together and create rota sessions and assignments
Pharmacist examples
In one example, a pharmacist for who all her sessions can be transformed into organisation sessions in a rota – the sessions in her week template design are all of a session type that is an ORG session type and the org template contains all these sessions too but without a person associated to the sessions.
In another example, pharmacist with their weeks sessions designed in their user template and the organisation needs a duty pharmacist.
That duty session would be in an org template AND be a session in the users weeks that is using an ORG session type,
This setup tells the rota that the session can be transformed into an org session in a rota.
So, between the design of the user template and the org template, we’re telling Tempo rota how to handle overlap and transformation of a person’s week, to the rota requirements of organisation
Simple leave management
Manage leave without computing entitlements
Rotering in Tempo
Tempo rotas
Doing what you are familiar with in a live capacity environment
Tempo rotering has been developed to replicate exactly how practices rota but, crucially, to take those methods and place them into a real-time system, connecting all the elements that are the basis of a rota together in a live environment. This is simply a much more powerful way of doing the same thing.
The Tempo approach means that, while practice operational staff will find the key parts of a Tempo rota familiar, the weekly rota design process can be done with real-time operational intelligence. Tempo is able to effortlessly bring this to the rota design process for the manager.
Key practice rota concepts found in Tempo
The repeating rota of the individual staff user
The weekly appointment targets of the organisation – such as GP Duty
The additional scheduled rota elements such as meetings, tutorials or other events
The actual leave of staff
The leave rules of teams
Sickness (planned and ad-hoc)
Registrar sessions (supervision)
Locum cover
Overtime / TOIL
Rota templates
Setting up rota templates in Tempo
Tempo practice rotering works by combining planned weeks, in the form of templates, with the adjustments and nuance of the real-world.
Practice rota templates can be stored in two distinct parts: organisation templates and staff user templates.
These two parts, combined with the rota itself create what we call the Tempo rota face.
Staff user templates
Staff user templates capture a key part of practice rotering – the planned weeks and the week design of each rostered member of staff. These, alone, could form the major part of a practice rota and, in Tempo, once these individual weeks are built, a weekly rota can almost be automated.
Staff user templates
These templates bring into the practice rota:
- A detailed count of the capacity of your practice workforce, per site, per role, per week
- A design for the way each session within a persons week can be combined with organisation templates to create the practice rota
A GP week rota template
Work plan management for a staff user
Connecting a work plan to a week template
Organisation templates
The purpose of these is to capture a plan for the scheduled / shared work such as duty sessions and other similar types. This can be as simple or as intricate as is needed.
A typical organisation week template can look something like this:
A GP week rota template
Staff placement would be decided later, within an actual rota week.
Creating an organisation template
It’s very easy to create one of these in Tempo and templates can be copied and modified easily. Simply go to the Rota menu and drop down to Week templates to access the place where all templates are kept. Here you can edit an existing template, copy a template, or create a new one.
Rota and template structure within a hub
When we setup a Tempo hub we ask questions about the organisation: the sites and rooms, the services and the patient groups. This is so that we can setup the rotas with the sections and groupings to match your needs. These can be modified later and are configurable from within the hub settings.
The rota screen is divided into what Tempo calls ‘modules’.
A module can contain any group of sites and locations. Modules provide a flexibility that allows us to match rotering to any design of services and any approach.
Modules can be modified, turned on/off and combined into module groups.
Organisation templates are associated to a module
While staff templates are simply connected to a staff user work plan, organisation templates are associated with the parts of this modular structure. In other words, organisation templates are created associated with a module.
Video demonstration
Study leave
Setting study leave per staff role
The time-off hub settings controls the application of study leave on a per staff role basis
https://tempo.gpnetworks.co.uk/leave/hub_time_off_settings
Blending study leave (or not)
In each users staff profile, a setting determines if SL is separated from leave entitlement, into a separate ‘pot’ or blended with annual leave entitlement, into 1 pot, combining them both.
If separate, then the staff user can choose which pot they are using when requesting time-off
If blended, then a staff user does not need to choose which pot time-off is coming from. Its all one pot of time to be used as they wish. The actual time-off entries can still attribute the time-off to SL if wanted.
Staff users and onboarding
Join the network / join the hub
Accessing the system first
- Staff users need a free account on the system before they can use an account to join to a hub
- A staff user can have a network / system account and not be joined to a hub
- A staff user account can connect with more than one hub
Sometimes, because of this, joining a hub can be a 2 stage process:
- Registering for a staff user account
- Login and join to a hub in the Hub management section
The app vs the browser
Staff can use app or browser to access their account. Same login.
When you login using a browser your Dashboard will show links to the two app stores
Apple
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/workforce-from-gpnetworks/id1474686342
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.gpnetworks.app
You can and search both app stores – search ‘Workforce GPnetworks’
Once installed, open app and login
(we have been made aware of some rare cases where the app tells the user that it is not compatible. We know what causes this now and have to publish an app update)
In the meantime, even using the native browser on a phone or tablet will look and work just like the app does.
Browser URL
https://tempo.gpnetworks.co.uk
Whatever route a person takes to get to their account, all functionality is the same and all logins the same. It’s one system with a few different entry points.
Staff users
Staff logging in after a bulk import by us
When we bulk import staff users for a hub, we auto complete the user account registration step for users without an existing account, then join that user to the hub they are already part of.
We then send a file that contains staff user credentials to the hub manager
There may be a few members of staff who already had an account on the system, so they won’t be included in this import or the file but they will get joined to the hub.
If they are not existing users, its usual for them to need some help with their first steps.
Invalid login credentials
There is password reset on the home page of the site and on the app start screen. It’s found in within the Login feature ‘forgot p[password’
It will ask for the email address in the account and generate a new password, sending it to that email address
NOTE
Sometimes this email does not seem to arrive (caught in a person spam filter). It would only take 5 mins to come at most, so get in touch with me if it does arrive. I can find this and help.
Help and support information
In the browser, there is Help menu containing links to account support for staff online, in the form of short videos and an archive of articles. There is also direct support myself and Tom, via email.
https://tempo.gpnetworks.co.uk
The help menu for staff
https://support.gpnetworks.co.uk
Short videos for staff users on the support portal (I will be adding more shorts to the collection)
https://support.gpnetworks.co.uk/video-how-to/
New staff (having an account AND not having an account on the system)
Any new staff joining Charter, may or may not have an account on the system already.
If they DO have an account, they simply need to visit their Hub management section and Add Charter hub to their connections.
This will inform you and place them into the disabled tab for their staff role (HCA, GP, etc)
All the info from their account will appear in their record, within your hub and you can enable them for your hub whenever you like. This will let them know.
If they DO NOT have an account o the system, they can register for one for free on the home page, then, once that process is complete (20-30 mins) follow the above steps to join Charter.
https://tempo.gpnetworks.co.uk/
There is also an option to join a Hub during the registration process, if they see this and use it, it saves steps and some time for them and us.
Signup for an account form is accessed via menu on home page (staff users should NOT choose the last option)
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Hub Administrators
A person could have dual roles as a staff user and an Administrator.
For this they need 2 accounts on the system, each using an unique email)
Anyone can always register for a new account (the bottom option in that Signup menu is the Administrator role) – they will just need an email NOT already in the system.
Support for Administrators
Our Team provides business hours user support via email
For Hub managers (Administrators) there is additional supporting information in their help menu
There is also a support Ticket system.
The Manager support portal provides a searchable FAQ (I am also adding to this all the time)
https://tempo.gpnetworks.co.uk/about-tempo/portal
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Remote teams support sessions
We provide drop-in sessions in the week of staff user onboarding
Year weeks
Week types
Each hub can design its own collection of Year-weeks.
These are types of week, spanning a whole year, that require a different approach to the rota design. Typically this would be ‘Normal week’, ‘Half-term week’, ‘Christmas week’, ‘Easter weeks’ and so on.
Year weeks are connected to a yearly calendar. This creates a basis for a hub to apply different rules to weeks within a rota.
Create and manage week types
Week types are fairly basis in themselves but create a container for lots of rotering related logic and link rotering rules to different weeks of the year.
Videos
Video support library
We maintain a growing number of how-to support video clips on our support portal here
Glossary of Terms
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Module | Organisational rota & template segments. Modules contain a rota and templates are designed for modules. Example: PCN module. Modules can be sites, places, virtual or a combination of things. They exist to segment rostering into useful groups. Modules can adapt over time. new module can be added and modules disabled (hidden). |
Module group | Modules can be grouped so that rota designs can be seen grouped together and rota module templates can be designed that span multiple modules. This supports planning output across a range of services. |
Rota | The design of sessions, either individually or grouped as 'clinics'. Rotas span days and weeks, matching the built-in day design of the hub they belong to. Rotas are comprised of sessions that can have session types and contain opportunities for assignment and assignments. Rotas have a calculated output and can express room use and many other things. |
Location | A place where a session happens. These are usually sites, that sometimes include a room but can be virtual locations too. Locations are connected to modules by hub configuration and create the options when sessions are being created for the module rota. |
Room | An optional additional specific location for a session. Rooms have a capacity, can express attributes such as capability and form a room capacity report, beneath a rota. |
Team | An additional abstract way to group and segment staff users. Teams can be simple staff segments, used to understand appointment output or costs. They can also be management teams, that group staff users with hub managers for line-management. Teams can also be leave teams, with custom leave rules foreach role within the team, for each of the hub year/weeks that the hub has created in order to build rota templates that match output to demand across a year. |
Workforce | multi-disciplinary, mixed staff user accounts, spanning clinical and non-clinical roles, all employment types, locums, registrars, managers and can also include volunteers. The hub workforce is the basis of the hubs capacity can respond to requirements in a hub rota, with assignment and self-assignment controlled by Hub managers. |
Hub | An organisation within the network. A hub can be joined by network users of any type and employment status. Hub managers control access to their hub, build rota designs and rotas within the hub modules and many other things. Hubs have built in reporting, can create their own insights. Can build their own flexible staff bank and much more. |
Employer | A pseudonym for a hub. An organisation that employs staff. |
Pool | A useful segment of a hub workforce. Pools are built-in and reflect some key attributes within the profile of the staff user in the hub workforce and the hub, such as employment status, work plans and more. Pools an intuitive way to solve rota requirements in a priority order. |
Job plan | A simple breakdown of an internal staff users contracted week, with some other key attributes related to pay, site and team. A job plan is the basis of entitlement calculations, overtime and more. Staff users can have multiple job plans but only 1 active plan. |
Work plan | A more detailed rota type new of an internal staff users contested work, capturing their predefined sessions and their flexible sessions in one weekly template. Work plans are a powerful aspect of hub rostering and can interact with other elements in the rota design phase. |
Template | A design of rota output, for a designed hub module/year/week. Templates are a powerful planning tool, can count appointment output and other attributes and can be used to build module rotas very quickly. They can be adapted and tested as part of demand & capacity approach to rostering. |
Year week | A critical part of demand & capacity planning, the year week allows the hub to map out the key differences in its rota output over a whole year and beyond. Module rota templates are attached to year weeks in an annual planner view. Team leave rules are connect with year weeks. |
Session type | A useful taxonomy to segment sessional output into any meaningful design and capture output in a formally segmented way. Session types can also capture some key attributes and be associated with other elements of rostering. |
Slot type | A mirror of slot types in your clinical system. These can be imported and managed within Tempo. Slot types have a few important attributes. |
Slot type template | These are rota session templates that mirror those in the clinical system, comprised of your slot types. They break the session down into its component parts, allowing of all work and appointment counts. |
Specialism | An additional clinical capability assigned to a staff user. These can be managed as a table and assigned to staff in their profile. Specialisms can be used to determine assignability and to determine additional roles. |
Capability | Similar to specialisms but covering a wider range of clinical & non-clinical capabilities. An example of this is Care Coordinator, a capability for a receptionist. |
Assignment | Placing a staff user into a session. Creating a commitment for the staff user in a rota. There are two types: Assignment by a Hub Admin and self-assignment, by a staff user. Hub admins control all aspects of assignment. |
Self-assignment | A form of assignment that the Hub admin has delegated to the staff user or to a pool of staff. |
Ask | A way to send a direct request to a staff user for self-assignment. |
Workforce pools & work plans
What are workforce pools?
Workforce pools provide a useful grouping of a mixed workforce.
Pools can support an intuitive, priority based approach to solving rota requirements.
The pools help to segment and understand your workforce, in terms of of trust, work commitment, accessability and cost.
The workforce pools,
- Partners
- Employed staff (not a partner)
- Staff bank
- Staff bank flexible staff
- Flexible staff
———— - Network locums
Tempo workforce pools in relation to your hub and the wider network
Work plans
Within a hub workforce, some staff will have a work plan.
This is a defined and agreed pattern of weekly work, spanning a time period. Work plans can cover whole financial years or parts of a year. Work plans can combine iver a year, to create a whole entitlement. Work plans can be inactive when no longer in date and a user only ever has 1 active work plan. The active plan has a date in the future or no end date.
Within a workforce, staff accounts that are contracted to the hub organisation have a work plan. This defines their agreement of work, pay and entitlements (for the plan).
There are 2 types of work plan: the first, the basic type that every eligible staff user will have, just contains a breakdown of the contracted hours the user will work within that hub, in hours or sessions, per day.
A user can have a work plan with multiple hubs but work plans cannot overlap.
Work plans form the basis of entitlements and pay for a hub and allow auto calculation of overtime and TOIL from rotas.
Annualiased flexible work plans
Some staff users want to create a special agreement with a hub, to work parts of the year. An example of this is the term time contract.
We use annualised work plans to handle this.
An annualised plan, allows a pre-defined amount of the year to be deducted within the agreement and for entitlements to follow naturally.
Users with annualised plans and users with ordinary plans can then see a live running calculation of their entitlements and deductions, TOIL and more and can use the built in tools within their account to request and book time-off across all types, paid and unpaid, deductible and non-deductible.
Assignment
Assignment
Assignment is the action in a rota, where a commitment is made for someone.
Assignment is when the idea or plan to place someone into a session, becomes a scheduled event.
When assignment happens, the person is informed, via the system. Their account will show the session as assigned to them, they wont be able to be assigned elsewhere at the same time and the session is not available to someone else (unless its a duplicate session)
Self-assignment
Self-assignment is the action taken by a staff user, where a commitment is made by responding to an opportunity for self-assignment in a rota.
When self-assignment happens, the rota manager is informed, via the system. The staff user account will show the session as assigned to them, they wont be able to be assigned elsewhere at the same time and the session is not available to someone else (unless its a duplicate session)
Rules
There are a number of logical rules around assignment and self-assignment that govern when and how they can happen in a rota.
Rota mangers can control session attributes within the rota design that will bring rules into play. This allows them to control the manner in which they solve their session requirements using their available workforce, spanning all types of staff account relationships and over time, in a manner that suits.
A session can marked as self-assignable
This makes the session visible to any eligible users in the hub workforce and is assigned by the staff user, on a first-come-first-served basis
A session can be marked an Internal only
This ensures the session is only assignable to a member of the internal workforce pool within the hub workforce. The internal workforce pool can include flexible workers as well as contracted staff. It can also include external employed staff. The pool membership is managed by the Hub team.
A session can have a specialist capability added to it
This will restrict assignment for the session to staff users in the workforce who have that matching capability in their Profile. These capabilities of users are managed by the Hub team
A rota manager can send an ASK request to a staff user for self-assignment
This sends the staff user and email and app-push notification that contains a link to accept or decline the request. On accepting, the staff user is assigned to the session.
An ASK can be sent regardless of whether self-assignment is On or OFF for the session
Eligibility & availability
If all other conditions are met regarding user type and any specialist capabilities, a staff user is eligible for assignment to a session if they are available. A hub manager can set a rota to REQUIRE explicit staff user availability in order to assign or can set a rota to NOT require availability. In the latter case, its only required that the staff user is NOT UNAVAILABLE (in other words, not already booked for a session that clashes)
Rotas
Comms
Comms
There are a number of channels of communication for a hub, some of them individual communications between a manager and a staff user, some of them bulk comms, between a manager and a segment of the hub workforce or the whole workforce.
The communications span a few digital mediums:
Email
Tempo generating an external email to a user
App push
Tempo generating a message to a users app, on their device
Internal system / account level messages
Tempo generating a message that appears within a user account in Tempo (this is usually backed by an external communication too)
How communciations are created
Transactional messages
Some messages are generated automatically, by the system, as a result of some action or activity within the system and as a part of a logical workflow / process between hub and user. These are known as ‘transactional communications’.
Example 1:
A hub Admin creates a session in a rota and allows ‘self-assignment’. The system generates a weekly summary of any sessions available to self-assign, for each eligible staff user in the hub workforce and sends this as an email, containing links to self-assign to sessions.
Example 2:
A hub admin enables a new user into their hub, after checking their profile. The system generates an email notification to the user to let them know.
Overtime & invoices
Tempo has powerful options for handling overtime, generating reports and/or invoices for the hub and for the individual user.
Overtime for rotered staff
Staff that are rotered have their sessions automatically mapped to their work plan, so that any time rotered that is outside of a work plan, the system will recognise this as ask the rota team manager how to handle it?
The rota team manager choose how to handle it in each case.
TOIL = adds TOIl to the persons leave entitlemrnt calculations and show this is both the Managers TOIL report and the users leave management calcs
Overtime = adds the extra work to the monthly overtime report, for the user and uses overtime rates to calculate the additional pay
Ignore = just ignore this
Invoice = add the extra time and pay to an auto generated invoice for the user and store this in the Invoice management screen and in the users invoice screen
Overtime for non-rotered staff
Some staff users are opted out of being rotered and therefore manage their work plans in a flexible way For these it is not possible to calculate any overtime within a rota,
In this case, Tempo provides a simple way for them to add their overtime to their time-off management screen and have that approved by their manager in the same workflow as leave is requested and approved. This will then become an entry in an overtime report, for the user.
Permissions
What are Permissions?
- Permissions are a way to control the things that each hub admin can do, within their account, in terms of a particualr hub.
- Permissions can vary according to hub admin & hub.
- Permissions offer a granular control over the screens and functionality of the hub
Note:
There is a super admin level of permission which once set, cannot be removed by another hub admin
The Super admin is the user with the level of permissions that is permits them to manage the permissions of other hub admins (for the same hub)
Slot types & rota templates
Specialisms & capabilities
The purpose of specialisms
Specialisms and capabilities are a separately managed library within the hub. They are an important and useful attribute that connects staff to sessions.
How they work
Any specialism or capability you create in your library, can be assigned to eligible staff (this is done by role).
The same specialism or capability can also connected to Session types.
These two connects mean that, within a rots design, a Session type can understand the eligibility of staff within the hub workforce and bring some logical rules into play, to support the rota team
Rooms
Shift types & pseudo roles
What are shift types?
Shift types provide a way to design a category of user/role based control over shift assignment in a rota
A shift type attribute on a rota shift means that the range of workforce staff that can be assigned or self-assign to the shift is reduced to those that match booth the user type suitability rules AND have the shift type capability given to them in their profile.
We can separately setup as many shift types as we like and link them to our hub user types and built-in roles.
When can give shift type capabilities to our workforce users
We can set the shift type attribute at the shift level – which means the shift requires the capability from the user
Modules & module groups
Rates & fees
Pay rates
Where does a pay rate come from?
For any session in a rota, an associated rate of pay can come from a number of places:
- A standard pay rate – from a table of standard rates
- An over time rate – from a table fo standard overtime rates
- A special pay rate rule – from a rule that is setup to target that type of session
- A users work plan rate – from the work plan in their profile
- A users custom pay rate – from the custom rate fields in their profile
- A shift rate – from a specula rate, applied directly onto the shift itself in a rota
There is a built in logic that determines where a rate of pay for a session comes from, that is determined by a few factors:
- The users employment status in the hub that the rota is within
- The users work plan in that hub (if they have one)
- A users custom rate over rides within that hub (if they exist)
- The type of session in the rota (normal, locum, overtime)
- Special pay rate rules defined within the hub that target that session in a rota
Managing pay rates
Tracing & changing a pay rate
For any session in a rota, the pay rate that has been attributed can be found in an assignment report.
Within this report, a rate of pay for a session of a number of sessions can be recalculated. This is useful if changes have been made and the past needs to be recalculated.
Once a pay rate for a session has been recalculated, any reports of views of that rate in the system will show the new rate.
Standard rate tables
A standard table provides a starting point for a pay rate to be calculated as well as a fall back for any work where a rate is not defined elsewhere
Reports & exports
Troubleshooting
Unable to assign a staff member to a session
You have created a rota session but cannot see a staff member in the drop down of eligible staff for assignment
There are few possible reasons for this:
Drop downs are designed to provide intelligence – that is to say that they try to show staff names, ranked, according to a useful set of rules
- Eligibility
- Suitability
- Equity
The first of these, eligibility, is what could cause a staff member not to show in a drop down
Eligibility is where Tempo determines if someone is capable for a session in a rota
To be eligible, someone must first match the staff type of the rota shift. For example a nurse cannot be eligible for a GP shift or vice versa.
Then, if a session has specialism applied to it, the staff member must have that specialism applied to their Profile – to say they are capable of doing this specific type of work.
This is also true for social shift types.
As well as these things, a staff member who could be eligible may not be, due to the fact that their profile is not completed appropriately. The key thing is usually the required documents in the profile not being uploaded or ‘ignore missing docs’ is not ticked but a person may also be excluded from being eligible for assignment by an employent status. If a shift is specified as internal and a staff member has not be given the internal member attribute, they would not be eligible.
Suitability
After eligibility, comes suitability. Tempo takes all those eligible for a session and looks at who is most suitable. Suitability looks at a number of factors but, unlike eligibility, is not black and white, on or off. Suitability is about ranking stability.
Key factors for high suitability
- Location of session in rota matches usual location set for staff member in their work plan
- Not working elsewhere already
- Not being on leave at the time of the session
Less suitable people are often shown, further down the list but, if suitability matching means people fall outside the established suitability groups, Tempo may ask you to ASK the person if they wish to cover the session, rather than let you simply assign them. This is because they are deemed to not be expecting this assignment.
Not able to self-assign
Staff unable to see a session or self-assign
I put on a session in my Tempo rota but some or all my eligible staff cannot see the session in their Staff app Schedule.
Reasons:
Main reason: the session is not advertised for self-assignment. This is something set at the rota level or at the individual session level – by the rota team
Other reasons: mapping
Tempo rotering intelligence is all about ‘mapping’ between people, shifts, sessions and locations. A rota screen controls who can see a session based on any combinations of these things.
- A staff member needs a specialism or a shift capability because the session type has been connected to a specialism
- A staff user is the wrong staff type for the session because the session is rotered within a different staff type
- A staff user has something in their Profile that prevents them being eligible for assignment. The most likely is either missing documents that are required by the hub or missing documents and the ‘ignore missing documents’ is not ticked