Groups vs Locations

Shifts can now be created for Groups OR Locations. We call what a Shift gets created for the "Locale." That refers to either the Group or Location belonging to any given Shift. There are a few things to watch out for when dealing with Shifts on the Schedule, and particularly Shifts that have been migrated from Legacy Inteliguide.

Migrated Shifts Were Created Using Groups

Legacy Inteliguide required that one or more Locations be added to a Group before Shifts could be created for them. Creating Shifts for Groups is still something that makes a great deal of sense to us, but forcing the creation of a "Group" of ONE Location never quite did. That’s why we now allow you to create Shifts for Groups OR individual Locations.

That creates some ambiguity, however, when it comes to all sorts of things like nomenclature and actions like Filtering the Schedule & Agenda, to auditing Billing.

As mentioned above, Locales refer to the Groups or Locations associated with Shifts. This is to clarify that they can be one or the other. This duality can introduce confusion, especially for markets that named their Groups, Patrolguide Regions, & Locations identically. For consistency, think of Shifts created for Groups as Group Shifts, and Shifts created for Locations as Location Shifts.

Since migrated Legacy Shifts were all Group Shifts, many of them Groups containing only one Location, we ask that Admins be very mindful of naming conventions and organizing their data as they begin to introduce Location Shifts into their Schedules.

Many many markets named their Locations and their associated Groups very similarly or even exactly the same. If Admins creating Shifts on the Schedule aren’t mindful of how the two differ, there can be consequences from administrative confusion, to double booking, or even inaccurate billing.

All New 'Locale' Labels & Filters

To clarify things and help avoid all the pitfalls and confusion mentioned above, we've made the following adjustments:

• We’ve explicitly labeled Shifts on the Schedule, Agenda, Shift Detail Page, and Billing to emphasize the Locale differences
• We’ve sorted the Detailed Billing Report by Locale Name, so similarly named Shifts will appear adjacent one another, regardless of the Locale
• We’ve made Location & Group filtering more intuitive

Labeling

You can find plenty of visual cues now as to the type of Shift you're working with.

On the Schedule:

On the Agenda:

On Shift Detail:

And on Billing:

Filtering

1. Filtering by a specific Group now bring back Group Shifts created for that Group and repopulates the Locations filter selector to reflect just those active Locations associated with the selected Group
2. Filtering by Location now has the ability to bring back Location Shifts created just for that Location, AND Group Shifts for Groups containing that Location
3. Filtering by both a specific Group AND a specific Location will bring back Groups Shifts and Location Shifts corresponding to both filter selections

Since Regions are Groups, Look Out for Duplicates After Migration

Those markets that have been migrated from legacy may notice that there are duplicate Groups. Regions from legacy Patrolguide became Patrol Groups in Inteliguide. Since Inteliguide Groups and Patrolguide Regions in legacy were completely separate, most folks chose to name the Groups they used to create Shifts for their patrol officers in Inteliguide identically to their Region counterparts in Patrolguide. This means that you may have many Shifts in the past, present, and future that are all named the same as some Region in Patrolguide, but that are now redundant to the Patrol Groups (aka, Regions) from Patrolguide. A good example is:

• West Patrol (Dedicated Group)
• West Patrol (Patrol Group)

There will be plenty of Shifts for the Dedicated Group, but the Patrol Group is really the one you should be using to create Shifts for your patrol officers. We recommend that you make sure no other shifts are associated to the Dedicated Groups of the same Patrol Group name… and Archive them.

Going into the future, that will Cancel any Shift that was Scheduled for those Dedicated Groups. That's why you should use the Bulk Edit feature on the Agenda to swap from the Dedicated to the Patrol Group of the same name before Archiving the Dedicated ones.