Understanding and Managing Badges

Using badges on your shifts in Ameego is the best way to create schedules that will put the right people in the right places! We like to call this method "getting your aces in their places!"

Ameego’s One Touch scheduling tool will use badges to determine which employee is assigned a specific shift. Badges can be as simple as shift labels, but if you create them based on the capability required for the shift, One Touch will assign your shifts to the right employees. This will save you some valuable time when creating your schedules in Ameego. We know you have your own terms for your important or key shifts, but here are some examples below to get you started. 

• Opener
• Closer
• Pre-closer
• Mid shift
• Expeditor
• Grill Cook
• Fryer Cook
• Inventory

Badges can also be used to assign employees to specific shifts on a regular basis using the ‘preferred employees’ function within the badge setup. See 'Assigning badges to your employee profiles' at the end of this article for more information. 

Setting up badges has 3 simple steps and once you have them setup, they are relatively easy to maintain. We recommend that you spend a few minutes each week reviewing your employees profiles, keeping them up to date with badges and departments. You can also edit these profiles while you are scheduling if you notice a need for a badge or department change.

Let's get started with those 3 setup steps for badges!

1. Creating a badge: Badges are created specifically for each department within the department settings screen.

• Navigate to the People tab, then ‘Employee Manager’
• Click on the setting wheel of the department
• Click the ‘Add Badge’ button and type the name of the badge
• Click ‘Create Badge’ to save

2. Assigning badges to your employee profiles: By assigning a badge to an employee profile, you are telling Ameego that the employee can work a shift with this badge.

• Navigate to People tab, then ‘Employee Manager’. 
• Click on a department to view the employees within the department
• Click on an employee profile to expand it 
• Click the ‘+’ sign beside the badge section
• Click on the available badge(s) and you're done! 
• Note - you will only see the badges for a department if the employee profile indicates that they belong to the department. You can add any additional departments required for the employee by clicking on ‘+’ sign in the department section.

3. Adding badges to your Base Floor Plans: In this step you will add the badges to the shifts on your base floor plans for each day of the week. These floor plans will be imported and used each week when you create your weekly schedules. If you are not familiar with the setup of base floor plans, Click HERE to review our knowledge base document first.

• Navigate to the Schedule tab, then ‘Base Floor Plans’
• Click on a base floor plan to see the shifts for this day
• Click on the centre of a shift on a base floor plan to reveal the edit box
• Select the badge for the shift using the ‘Badge’ drop down list (you will only see the badges that were created for the department of the shift you are editing)
• Click the ‘Save & Close’ button
• Repeat this process for any other days of the week that the badge is required for

Assigning badges to your employee profiles: Now that you understand the basics of badges, let's take that up a level now and show you how you can assign a preferred employee to a badge. This is a perfect solution when you have some employees that work regular shifts week to week. You can also use this feature to ensure that you have the best people assigned to the most important shifts! Follow the steps below to assign a preferred employee to a badge.

• Click on the ‘Edit’ button to the right of the badge name.
• Click on the drop down menu for any day of the week to set a preferred employee for the day. If the employee that you set here is available, they will get the shift with this badge over other employees. 
• You don’t have to set an employee for all days of the week. In this example we are not setting a preferred employee for Saturday and Sunday. Ameego will look among the other employees that have this badge and will assign the shift accordingly.