AI-generated shifts is a scheduling capability that produces a schedule using the location's labor forecast, employee availability, and historical labor and scheduling data in R365. A manager triggers generation, reviews the suggested shifts, and approves, edits, or deletes shifts before publishing. Shifts can be approved or deleted individually or in bulk. A suggested shift that violates a labor rule is flagged with the rule name, and a flagged shift that adds overtime also shows the added hours.
In Beta
This feature is in beta. Contact your CSM to learn more.
Security
Users must have the following permission to generate and review AI shifts:
Labor → Scheduling → Schedule → Add/Edit/Delete Shifts
These permissions can be added to custom user roles or individual users. The Permission Access report can be used to determine which user roles or users already have these permissions assigned. For more information, see User Setup and Security.
What AI Shifts Does
AI-generated shifts change how managers build a schedule. Without it, managers build shifts one by one using manual entry, templates, or prior-week copy. With it, managers can generate shifts for a full week — or specific days — in a single action, then decide which suggestions to keep.
The manager stays in control at every step. No AI-suggested shift is saved to the schedule automatically. Every suggestion must be approved before it becomes a real shift, either individually, in bulk, or as the first step of publishing the schedule. When a manager approves suggestions in bulk, R365 validates the entire batch before committing any shift to the schedule.
How AI Shift Generation Works
When a manager triggers generation, R365 begins processing the request and sends individual shift suggestions to the Schedule Calendar one at a time.
The panel visible during generation shows a progress indicator as R365 cycles through the constraints it is evaluating:
Checking availability
Validating time off
Checking role coverage
Optimizing assignments
Checking compliance
Generation can be scoped to the full week or to specific days. Past days cannot be selected. If pending shifts from a prior generation already exist, the manager is prompted to regenerate — existing suggestions are replaced when the new run completes. Learn more about generating AI shifts.
If generation fails, the manager sees a notification message and no shifts are added to the schedule. There is no automatic retry; the manager must trigger generation again.
Where a labor matrix is configured for the location, suggested shift shapes are based on the location's published labor forecast for the requested dates. Where no labor matrix is configured, or no forecast is published for those dates, suggested shift shapes are based on the location's punch history.
Labor Matrix and Labor Forecast
The labor matrix is a primary input for determining how much staffing AI shift generation plans for. Configuring a labor matrix helps AI-generated shifts reflect the location's expected labor needs.
How forecasted demand reaches AI-generated shifts
The labor matrix defines how much labor a location needs based on forecasted demand. R365 uses the labor matrix and the location's sales forecast to generate a labor forecast. Once the forecast is published, the labor forecast is available on the Schedule Calendar and is used by AI shift generation to determine how many shifts to suggest and when.
How labor demand is distributed depends on the location's labor matrix configuration:
Custom labor matrix — Labor demand is defined by job, so AI-generated shifts can use the forecasted demand for each job directly. This provides the most precise staffing input and is the recommended configuration.
General labor matrix — Labor demand is defined for the location as a whole. AI shift generation distributes that demand across jobs based on the location's staffing history. Because the distribution between jobs is estimated rather than defined in the labor matrix, results may be less precise.
No labor matrix or no published forecast for the requested dates — AI shift generation uses the location's punch history to determine suggested shift patterns. If no punch history is available, it uses scheduling history.
Labor matrices can include both variable and fixed labor. Variable labor changes based on forecasted demand, while fixed labor defines a set number of labor hours per week regardless of demand. AI shift generation can suggest shifts for both labor types.
Managers do not select Custom or General when generating shifts. AI shift generation uses the labor configuration already set up for the location.
Pending Shifts
Pending shifts are AI-generated suggestions. They appear with a star badge and cannot be moved or resized. A pending shift is not a real schedule entry until a manager approves it.
Pending shifts persist across page reloads. If a manager generates suggestions, closes the browser, and returns to the schedule, the suggestions are still there.
The AI Schedule Panel displays the number of suggested shifts to review, how many could not be filled, and the bulk action buttons.
A pending shift that violates a labor rule shows a warning triangle beside its duration. Pointing to the warning triangle displays the name of the violated labor rule. A shift that adds overtime also shows the added hours in the tooltip, for example 4h daily overtime. A pending shift with no violation shows no warning triangle.
Unfilled Shifts
Some pending shifts cannot be matched to an employee. These shifts appear as a distinct warning-toned card with a plain-language explanation that no employee could be staffed for the shift. Unfilled shifts remain part of the pending count and are not reported as generation failures. Approving an unfilled shift, individually or in bulk, creates an open, unassigned shift on the schedule. The open shift still needs an employee assigned before the week is fully staffed.
Reviewing and Acting on AI Shifts
Once generation completes, the Schedule Calendar shows the pending shift cards and the panel transitions to a review view. Managers can approve, edit, and delete suggested shifts individually. Managers can also approve, delete, or regenerate all pending suggestions in bulk. Bulk approval applies to every pending suggestion at once; there is no option to approve a subset by day or job. Learn more about reviewing AI-suggested shifts.
When a manager approves suggestions in bulk, R365 checks the whole batch first and shows a summary before saving anything. The summary states how many suggestions have no warnings, then lists each flagged suggestion with the labor rule it violates. The manager can approve everything listed, skip the flagged ones and save only the rest, or cancel. Skipped suggestions stay as pending shifts and can be approved individually.
AI Shifts and the Publish Workflow
Approved AI shifts are treated as standard unpublished shifts and go through the normal publish workflow. They are visible to employees only after a manager publishes the schedule.
Publishing a schedule that still has pending suggestions approves those suggestions first, then publishes them. If any of them could not be filled, the publish dialog offers the option to include the resulting unassigned shifts, along with a count of them. On the Employee tab the count covers all unfilled suggestions; on the Job and Department tabs it covers only those for the selected job.
Learn more about publishing a schedule.
FAQ
What does it mean that a shift's shape comes from the labor matrix instead of punch history?
When a location has a labor matrix configured, generated shift shapes are based on the staffing levels defined in that matrix and the location's published labor forecast. Without a labor matrix, or without a published forecast for the requested dates, shift shapes are based on the location's punch history instead. Learn more about the Labor Matrix.
I approved an unfilled shift and now there's an open, unassigned shift on the schedule — what do I do with it?
An open, unassigned shift still needs an employee assigned before that shift is fully staffed. Assign one the same way as any other unassigned shift on the Schedule Calendar — by dragging an eligible employee onto the shift, pasting a shift onto their line, or opening the shift's details and selecting an employee from the dropdown. Learn more about assigning employees to shifts.
Are "AI-generated shifts" and "AI-suggested shifts" the same thing?
Yes. Both terms refer to the same pending shift suggestions produced by AI shift generation. This article uses "AI-generated" in its title; the step-by-step Generate AI Shifts article uses "AI-suggested" for the same concept.
Why does a pending shift show a warning triangle?
A warning triangle means the suggested shift violates a labor rule. Pointing to the triangle shows the name of the violated rule, and an overtime violation also shows the added hours. Learn more about labor rules.