Working Patterns & Preferences

Note: Screenshots in this article use data from our internal demo organisation. Any organisation IDs or user IDs visible in the screenshots reference our demo dataset, not your or any other customer's data.

🎯 Overview

Understand how your employees actually work — the days they show up, the days they prefer, and when they signal they're unavailable.

This report:

• Combines worked patterns (from the roster) with employee-set preferences and unavailability schedules
• Surfaces potentially dormant users so you can act on inactive accounts
• Shows employees under their base location only

Use this dashboard to:

• Spot which days of the week are busiest across teams, locations, or individuals
• Compare what employees prefer to work against what they actually worked
• Plan around recurring and one-off unavailability
• Identify active users who haven't appeared on the roster or clocked in recently

🗂️ Dashboard Tabs

Tab	What it shows	Best for
Patterns	Worked days, hours, and weekday frequency from the roster	Reviewing how teams or individuals actually work
Preferences	Each employee's stated availability by day of the week	Aligning rosters with employee preferences
Unavailability	Calendar and detail view of one-off and recurring unavailability	Planning around known unavailable periods
Potentially Dormant Users	Active users with no recent shifts or clock-ins	Cleaning up inactive accounts

Patterns

See how shifts and hours are distributed across the working week. The tab opens with a Latest Data Sync indicator, then drills into worked days and weekday frequency.

• Days Worked — lists each employee (or other grouping) and the days they worked across the selected period.
• Shifts/Hours Worked Per Day — a pivot showing a tick or cross for every day in the range, with a count of shifts or hours worked plus a TOTAL row. Switch between shifts and hours using the Shifts or Hours filter.
• Days Of The Week Worked — for each grouping, shows weekday-by-weekday activity. Use the inline Analysis Method picker on the card to switch between Worked, Rostered, and Worked vs Rostered comparisons.
• Frequency Of Weekdays Worked — the share (or count) of activity falling on each weekday. The inline Frequency As picker toggles between Percentage and Total.
• Average Days and Hours Worked — average days worked per week and average hours worked per day over the chosen window. The card has its own inline controls: Number of weeks (defaults to 52) and Starting from the week of to set the window, and Group By (defaults to Employee) to pick the grouping.

Preferences

Each employee's stated working preferences by day of the week, with a ✅ or ❌ for every weekday.

• Working preferences — one row per employee (with employee number) and a column for each day. Useful for matching rosters to declared availability or spotting employees with no preferences recorded.

Unavailability

A calendar-style view of employee unavailability, plus the full detail behind each entry. Covers both one-off and recurring unavailability.

• Unavailability Calendar — colour-coded by employee with the title and dates shown on each cell. Use this to scan a period at a glance.
• Unavailability Details — a full table including the unavailability title and description, start and end dates and times, whether it's recurring, the recurrence frequency, which days are affected, and how long the recurrence continues.

Use the Is Recurring? filter to focus on one-off or recurring entries only.

Potentially Dormant Users

Identifies active users who haven't been rostered or clocked in for shifts within your chosen threshold. Useful when reviewing accounts for inactivity.

• # Of Potentially Dormant Users — the count of users meeting the dormant criteria.
• % Of Active Users That Are Potentially Dormant — the same count expressed as a share of active users.
• Potentially Dormant Users Details — one row per user with employee number, location, contract type, job title, continuous employment start date, last rostered shift, last clock-in, dormant reason, and weeks since each activity.

Adjust the Dormant Threshold In Weeks filter (defaults to 2) to tighten or loosen what counts as dormant.

🎛️ Filters

Standard Filters

• Location / Parent Location / Grandparent Location — filter by organisational hierarchy
• Job Title — filter by employee role
• Contract Type — filter by employment contract
• Full Name / Employee ID — find a specific employee
• Status — employee status (Active, Leaver, Left, Starting Soon, Deactivated). Defaults to Active and Leaver.

Report-Specific Filters

Filter	Default	What it does
Is Recurring?	--	On the Unavailability tab, narrows the calendar and details to recurring or one-off entries.
Dormant Threshold In Weeks	2	On the Potentially Dormant Users tab, sets how many weeks of inactivity define a dormant user.
Dormant User Status	Active	Limits the dormant list to a specific employee status.
All Locations Downstream From	--	Filters to every location below a chosen point in the org hierarchy.

Dynamic Parameters

The Summarise By filter changes how the Patterns tab is grouped — across Employee, Location, Parent location, Grandparent location, Job title, or Contract type. Defaults to Employee.

The Shifts or Hours filter switches the Patterns tab's measure between counting shifts and summing hours. Defaults to Shifts.

The Analysis Method filter (inline on the Days Of The Week Worked card, in the Patterns tab) switches between Worked, Rostered, and Worked vs Rostered comparisons. Defaults to Worked.

The Frequency As filter (inline on the Frequency Of Weekdays Worked card, in the Patterns tab) switches the output between Percentage and Total. Defaults to Percentage.

The Group By and Number of weeks filters (inline on the Average Days and Hours Worked card, in the Patterns tab) control the grouping (Employee, Location, Parent location, Grandparent location, Job title, or Contract type) and the size of the rolling window. Group By defaults to Employee; Number of weeks defaults to 52. The Starting from the week of picker on the same card anchors the window's end.

📅 Date Filtering

The Date filter scopes the Patterns and Unavailability tabs. Defaults to the past 1 month. Use Start Date and End Date for a custom window.

The Potentially Dormant Users tab uses its own Dormant Threshold In Weeks logic and ignores the date range. The Average Days and Hours Worked card on the Patterns tab uses its inline Number of weeks and Starting from the week of controls instead.

❗️ Important Definitions

• Potentially dormant user — an active user who hasn't been rostered for a shift and hasn't clocked in within the threshold you set. The Dormant reason column on the details card explains which activity is missing for each user.
• Working preference — the days an employee has declared as available or unavailable in their profile. Employees who haven't set preferences are shown as available by default on every weekday.

❓ Common Questions

Why do some employees appear available every day on the Preferences tab even though they don't work weekends?

When an employee hasn't explicitly set working preferences, the system shows them as available (✅) on every weekday by default. The Preferences tab reflects what's been recorded, not what's been rostered — cross-reference with the Patterns tab to see actual worked days.

Why doesn't the Potentially Dormant Users count match what I see elsewhere?

The dormant list filters to users whose last rostered shift and last clock-in both fall outside the Dormant Threshold In Weeks window, regardless of the global date filter. It also respects the Dormant User Status filter, which defaults to Active — leavers and deactivated users are excluded unless you change this.

🗓️ Data Coverage

• Data freshness: Refreshes every 30 minutes via the automated data pipeline. Check the "Latest Data Sync" indicator on the dashboard for the exact timestamp.

⬇️ Downloading Data

• To download the current view as a PDF, click the download button in the top-right corner of the dashboard.
• To download an individual chart or table as CSV or Excel, click the download button in the top-right corner of that chart.