A given use case of this feature may be something like a Department Supervisor, who has individual Line managers that manage Employees. Each week, the Line managers submit their Employees' working pattern for the next week to the Department Supervisor, who reviews the shift patterns. The Department Manager then locks these shifts, preventing the plan from being changed by the Line managers.

To utilise this new feature, a new Menu right has been added to User profiles labelled PlannerLockTo. This Menu right needs to be enabled for the Supervisors that can lock and unlock Planners. The Menu rights screen can be accessed from WinTMS, by going to the System menu, clicking Maintain users, opening the Profiles menu and clicking the Menu rights option:

Right click the Planner Lock To (web only) Menu right to enable it for a User profile. The new Menu right can be found under TMS > Group > Future work planner.

Locking Shifts

Planners can be locked on the Employee planner or the Group planner pages in TMS 8. On one of these pages, click on a Shift in the future, and a new menu option is available in the right-hand details pane: Lock to

Once clicked, this will lock all Shifts up to and including the date of the selected Shift.

Note: this would include any shifts that occur after the selected Shift, but on the same day. For example, if an Employee works two separate Shifts in one day (e.g. a morning and an evening Shift), then clicking Lock to with the morning Shift selected would still lock the evening Shift. The Shifts on the following day would be unaffected.

Once a Planner has been locked, this is displayed on locked days with a padlock to all users (including Employees and Supervisors without the PlannerLockTo Menu right. Note the lack of a padlock symbol on the shift on the 25th, as well as the padlock in the right-hand details pane:

If a Supervisor without the PlannerLockTo Menu right tries to alter a locked shift, they get the following message:

Similarly, if a Supervisor or Employee tries to book an Absence on a locked Shift:

Unlocking a Shift

There is no option to Unlock a specific Shift – all Shifts are simply locked up to and inclusive of a specific date. However, in order to unlock a shift, the Supervisor with the PlannerLockTo Menu right needs to use the Lock to menu option on a date previous to the Shift that needs changing. An easy way of making all future Shifts editable again is using the Lock to option on a Shift that has already been processed.