Roster constraints and scheduling rules

A reference for the work-pattern, rest, and fairness rules the PlanMyRounds scheduling engine applies when generating a duty roster for your clinical team.

When PlanMyRounds generates a roster, it applies a set of hard and soft rules to produce a schedule that is both valid and fair. Some rules you set yourself in the creation wizard; others are applied automatically based on doctor profiles and approved leave.

This page is a reference for every rule the engine respects.

Hard vs. soft constraints

• Hard constraints must be satisfied. If the engine cannot meet them, generation fails.
• Soft constraints are preferences. The engine tries to honour them but may bend them if there’s no other way to produce a valid schedule.

Work and rest rules

Set per roster in Step 4 of the creation wizard. All of these are hard constraints.

Rule	What it does
Max consecutive work days	A doctor cannot work more than this many days in a row without a day off.
Min rest days per week	Every doctor must have at least this many days off in every seven-day window.
Min rest hours between shifts	Always enforced. No two shifts assigned to one doctor can be closer than this many hours apart.
Recovery after 1 shift	Minimum rest required after any single shift.
Recovery after 2 consecutive shifts	Applies when back-to-back duties are enabled. A longer rest is required after two shifts in a row.

Approved leave

Approved leave entries are hard constraints. The engine will never assign a doctor to a shift on a date they have approved leave for.

Shifts to avoid are soft constraints. The engine tries to honour the preference, but if there’s no other option the doctor may still be assigned.

Only Approved leave is applied. Pending or rejected requests have no effect on generation. Always clear your pending queue before generating a roster.

Senior-to-junior ratio

For organisations on the advanced scheduling engine, each shift can require a defined ratio of senior to junior doctors — for example, one senior for every three juniors. This is a hard constraint.

Shift-specific staffing requirements

Each shift template defines:

• Required doctors — the exact headcount per occurrence.
• Min seniors required — the minimum number of seniors per occurrence.

Both are hard constraints. If you don’t have enough doctors to meet these across the full period, generation will fail.

New doctor onboarding period

If configured, doctors who joined within a defined number of days can be protected from specific shift types during their onboarding period. This is set at the roster level under Other Configurations.

Use this to ease new joiners in gradually — for example, no night shifts in their first 30 days.

When generation fails

If the engine cannot find a valid schedule that satisfies every hard constraint, the roster shows a Failed status. The reason will appear on the roster page.

Common fixes:

• Add more doctors to the team so the engine has more options.
• Loosen a rule — for example, raise max consecutive work days or lower the minimum rest days.
• Approve outstanding leave before retrying so the engine has a complete picture.
• Shorten the period if the date range was very long.

Next steps

Create a roster

Apply these rules in the four-step wizard.

Roster and shift statuses

Reference for every status you’ll see on a roster.