Visualizations

Learn how to use the visualizations in the Employee Shift Scheduling model to validate schedules, detect bottlenecks, and uncover inefficiencies.

The Employee Shift Scheduling model provides four complementary visualization views:

  • Low-level validation:

    • By shift: Validate individual shifts (search by shift ID).

    • By employee: Validate individual schedules (search by employee ID).

  • High-level validation:

    • Shift efficiency: Detect structural coverage gaps by hour and day.

    • Employee efficiency: Detect coverage, overtime, and fairness issues across groups.

Used together, they transform an optimized schedule from a black-box output into an explainable and continuously improvable operational plan.

Low-level validation views

The following views allow you to validate the schedule at the most granular level. Use them when investigating specific assignments or explaining individual results.

By shift

By shift visualization

Primary focus: Detailed shift coverage validation.

The By shift view shows the schedule as a time-based grid of shifts across days.

Each block represents a shift and displays:

  • Assigned employees (or “Unassigned” if not covered).

  • Shift details like required skills, priority, start and end time (hover over the shift for details).

The view includes a search bar where you can search for shift IDs.

At the bottom left of the view, pagination controls allow you to navigate through the shifts. Pagination is ordered by shift ID.

By employee

By employee visualization

Primary focus: Detailed employee-level validation.

The By employee view organizes the schedule by employee. Each row shows:

  • Assigned shifts

  • Unavailability periods

  • Preferences and unpreferences

  • Skill tags and contract types

This view includes a search bar where you can search for employee IDs.

At the bottom left of the view, pagination controls allow you to navigate through the employees. Pagination is ordered by employee ID.

High-level validation views

The following views operate at a strategic level. They help identify systemic issues rather than isolated problems.

Shift efficiency (preview)

This visualization is currently available as a preview feature. If you’d like early access to this feature, please Contact us.
Shift efficiency visualization

Primary focus: Time-based coverage bottlenecks.

The Shift efficiency view shows a grid with the hour of the day on the vertical axis and the day of the week on the horizontal axis.

Each cell represents the number (or percentage) of unassigned shifts that overlap that specific hour and day. A shift is counted in a cell if it has time within that specific hour of that specific day. For example: If a shift runs from 08:00–16:00 on Monday, it contributes to all Monday cells between 08:00 and 15:00.

Filters and controls

This view provides powerful filtering capabilities:

  • Filter by skill

  • Filter by tag

  • Filter by priority

This allows you to analyze unassigned shifts for a specific dimension.

You can also toggle Show total shifts. The UI will display how many total shifts exist in that time slot, allowing you to compare unassigned vs total demand.

When to use

Use this view for high-level validation when you want to:

  • Detect recurring staffing shortages.

  • Identify time-of-day bottlenecks.

  • Analyze structural demand-supply mismatches.

  • Evaluate what-if scenarios (attrition, maternity leave, demand changes).

Employee efficiency (preview)

This visualization is currently available as a preview feature. If you’d like early access to this feature, please Contact us.
Employee efficiency visualization

Primary focus: Strategic utilization and fairness.

The Employee efficiency view aggregates and visualizes employee metrics.

Understanding the employee metrics

Metric Description Interpretation

Deployment

Indicates how much of the employee’s available time is assigned to shifts.

  • 100% → Fully utilized.

  • Low percentage → Underutilization.

  • Very high percentage combined with overtime → Possible overload.

Overtime

Indicates how much assigned time exceeds the employee’s preferred capacity.

  • Ideally as low as possible.

  • High overtime may indicate:

    • Structural understaffing

    • Skill shortages

    • Poor contract mix

Preferences

Indicates what percentage of the employee’s assigned shift time falls within indicated preferred time slots.

  • Ideally as high as possible.

  • Low value may signal morale risk.

  • n/a if no preferences are defined.

Unpreferences

Indicates what percentage of assigned shift time falls within indicated unpreferred time slots.

  • Ideally as low as possible.

  • High value may signal morale risk.

  • n/a if no unpreferences are defined.

Filters and controls

You can filter employees by:

  • Skills

  • Tags

  • Contracts

  • Risk factors

This allows you to focus on specific employee groups.

You can group results (for example by skill or contract type) to compare groups.

Distribution charts

The Employee efficiency view provides distribution charts. This is useful because averages might hide outliers. A small group of heavily overloaded employees may not be visible in average values.

The distribution charts show how deployment, overtime, preferences, and unpreferences are spread across employees or groups.

When to use

Use this view for high-level validation when you want to:

  • Compare deployment percentages across skills.

  • Identify underutilized contract types.

  • Detect whether a specific skill group experiences more overtime.

  • Assess fairness across the workforce, including fairness in deployment, overtime distribution, preference satisfaction, and unpreference violations.

Recommended analysis workflow

A structured approach:

  1. Start with Shift efficiency (high-level bottlenecks).

  2. Inspect problematic time slots in By shift.

  3. Review affected employees in By employee.

  4. Validate utilization and fairness in Employee efficiency.

  5. Use these insights to inform strategic decisions and test different scenarios.

Next

The visualizations help you understand the what of a schedule, which is a first step to understanding the why and the so what.

  • For guidance on how to validate and explain optimized plans, see the Validating an optimized plan with Explainable AI guide. This guide explains why trust and explainability matter when presenting a plan to planners and stakeholders. How to check correctness, understand trade-offs, and communicate why certain assignments were made. It shows how visualizations, real-world metrics, and explainability features work together to build confidence in a schedule rather than treating it as a black box.

  • For a broader view on diagnosing and resolving operational bottlenecks, the Uncovering inefficiencies in operational planning guide provides useful context. It discusses common sources of planning inefficiencies (such as under- or over-utilization, skill mix issues, and demand imbalances) and how planning optimization can help you pinpoint structural problems in your workforce plan.