Terms

This section lists frequently used terms and their meanings:

The hard, medium, and soft rules that must be taken into account when creating an employee shift schedule. Learn more about constraints.

An employee contract defines conditions that apply to specific employees. Learn more about employee contracts.

Timefold accepts input datasets that include information about the employees and the shifts to be scheduled and optimized. Input datasets are created using our predefined model schema which follows the OpenAPI specification. Timefold returns output datasets that contain the optimized solution.

See the API spec for more information.

An employee is a person with a contract who can be assigned to shifts.

A model run is an instance of an input dataset being solved.

The time period that will have shifts scheduled during a planning run. Learn more about planning windows.

A work period with start and end times that is assigned to an employee.

A group of alternate shifts of which only one shift should be assigned. Learn more about alternative shifts.

Shift patterns define sequences of shifts that occur in specific orders. Learn more about shift patterns.