Feature Requests

We're asking to include the rule ID for the recommendation API (i.e. the API that makes the recommendation of the next best employee that can be assigned to the shift). Currently, the recommendation api only shows the rule category, not the individual rule. We would like to see the individual rule included in the recommendation API. E.g. if you have configured multiple periodRules, we would like to see the recommendation API output constraint diffs per rule, and not only aggregated. Similar like the justifications do.

When sending input files with lots of pinned items, it is relevant to see how much the solver could fit on top of the already pinned items. With an extra column that shows the pinned items in the input this would put the assigned shifts (for Employee shifts) in perspective.

Some (not all) shifts can be rescheduled, date and/or time. I.e. ideally the shift is nov 11th, 10am-11am but if that is not possible, it may be rescheduled to nov 12th, anywhere AM or nov 13th 11am-12am. There can be an order of preferred alternatives, this can be a range or an exact slot. All the rules need to be configurable within the dataset, not global (difference groups have different rules). Potentially also the duration of a shift would be somewhat dynamic.

Currently, DST change works fine for shifts, but Employee has a static timezone offset used to interpret the period date spans start and end (e.g. start and end of a day). This works fine for multiple timezones but during a DST change, the Employee's offset should change according the time zone rules.

For continuous planning use cases it would be very helpful if you can refer to an existing plan (run) and only have changed data elements in the input instead of the complete input payload (e.g. new visits to take into account for Field Service Routing, a sick employee for Employee Scheduling).

"We want to account for various location based constraints when assigning people to shifts, including: minimizing travel distance: absolute and by preferred zones minimizing travel time enough travel time between shifts: make sure there is enough time to move between shift A and B"

This request is to allow setting a maximum for the number of concurrent shifts at a certain location. A shift can be limited by a tool or machine to use, e.g. a location might only have 3 demo carts, so there can only be 3 concurrent shifts going on at one time.

"Currently there are some limitations for shift pattern rules: The all-or-nothing match semantic as a hard constraint cannot be achieved on a larger scale, especially if we can expect rules defined for (almost) every employee in the dataset. The solver cannot incrementally improve the match, as unassigning any shift that breaks the pattern always leads to a better score. In fact, it would be better that this feature is changed, so that it is not a hard constraint (it's not a limitation of the real world or a legislation that always has to be fully respected), it's rather a strong soft constraint."

"The employee contracts feature of Timefold allows to e.g. define maximum numbers of hours per day, or per week. These limits are for fixed timeframes. But certain labour laws, or company policies, or contracts might also have requirements for rolling time windows (e.g. maximum numbers of hours worked over a rolling time window of 48 hours). Such time windows can potentially also span longer than the planning window. This is a request to make that type of contract restrictions for rolling time windows possible."

Currently travel configuration is globally. This request is to allow specifying a maximum distance between the employee's home location and the shift's location, at a more granular level.