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Scheduling

The scheduling tool works out who does what, and when, under rules you give it: shift rosters, job assignments, league fixtures, room bookings.

Who can see this: anyone who can open the project. Solving a schedule adds steps, so you need to be able to edit the project.

Solving a shift roster 0:29 A silent walkthrough: the rules go in, the solver assigns every shift, and the result says whether it is provably the best.
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What the video shows. It has no narration, so this is a description rather than a transcript.

Seven nurses, twenty-one shifts and forty-seven rules, laid out as a week of morning, afternoon and night slots, with the question “Can you solve this by hand?”

Step 1, Describe your rules. The rules you typed are sorted into hard constraints, each one a line: every shift needs exactly one nurse, no back-to-back shifts, no morning after a night, and each nurse’s weekly maximum respected. Underneath, the path from what you wrote to what gets solved: prompt, rule extraction, hard and soft classification, then the model.

Step 2, Solve it. The empty roster fills in, and the result reads twenty-one shifts covered, every constraint passed, and OPTIMAL — solved in under half a second.

  1. Result: whether the schedule is the best possible, or just a good one.
  2. Rules Applied: each rule, and whether the schedule meets it.
  3. The schedule: who or what is assigned where.

Use it when you have things to assign and rules to follow:

  • staff shifts with coverage and rest rules
  • jobs across machines or people, with time limits
  • fixtures, bookings or deliveries across slots

Ask in project chat, with the people or resources, the things to assign, and the rules. For example:

Assign these shipments to 3 packers, max 8 hours each.

Your rules can come from two places:

  • A rules table. If one of your tables lists the rules, say which one. Querri reads the rules from it.
  • Your request. Otherwise Querri writes out the rules from your request and your data.

Either way, each rule is either hard (must never be broken) or soft (a preference to aim for). Keep the data and rules as separate tables; don’t join them first.

  1. The Scheduling step reads the rules, then uses a solver to find the best schedule it can — Google’s OR-Tools CP-SAT, which is what the video names on screen. Each attempt gets 60 seconds.
  2. A chart step draws the schedule.

The step’s findings come in four parts:

PartWhat it tells you
ResultOPTIMAL (proven best) or FEASIBLE (a good solution, may not be the best), and how long it took
Rules AppliedEach rule in plain words, marked PASS or FAIL
Key NumbersThe few figures that matter, like shifts per person or total time
What This MeansA short explanation anyone can follow

It also adds a table of the schedule to the project.

If the hard rules contradict each other, there’s no schedule that meets them all. The step stops with “Could not find a feasible schedule.” and suggests which rules to relax. Loosen one, or turn a hard rule into a soft one, and ask again.

To change one thing, like a rule or a preference, use Refine on the result instead of starting over. The solver’s code is split into labeled sections for data, rules, objective and results, so a small change stays small.

Refining changes only that step. Run the project again to update the steps after it, such as the chart.

Asking uses a credit for the question, as usual. The scheduling tool doesn’t add a separate charge. Your plan may differ; see How credits are counted on Monitor usage.

  • Say what “best” means. Balanced workload, fewest late jobs, least travel: name the goal.
  • Mark must-haves as hard, and leave nice-to-haves soft so the solver has room.
  • Try one week or one team first, check Rules Applied, then scale up.