FAQ's

What is EPSKED Assist?

EPSKED becomes EPSKED Assist when it is run on an unregistered machine using a registered database. At no additional charge, EPSKED Assist can be installed on as many computers as you need. In order to permit administrative access to schedules using EPSKED, we have not restricted the ability to retrieve, manually edit, print, or do computerized scheduling of schedules in EPSKED Assist. Only the "Create a new schedule" and "Manually enter a preexisting schedule" are restricted features and are not accessible in EPSKED Assist. (This policy is subject to change in the future, but we do not anticipate imposing any further restrictions.) If you are using EPSKED with WebSked, EPSKED Assist can be used to publish and download schedules to and from WebSked.

As long as you feel comfortable transferring our schedule database between computers and always use your registered machine to create the original unfinished schedule, you can use EPSKED in its EPSKED Assist mode.

Again, note that in order for EPSKED Assist to create request forms for current schedules, you will need to first create an unfinished schedule for that time period on a registered computer (one on which an activation code has been entered), then transfer the database to the computer that uses EPSKED Assist. The new schedule can then be retrieved in EPSKED Assist and used for scheduling, just as if EPSKED Assist had been used to create the original schedule.

How can I send a copy of my schedule for you to look at? I have questions about EPSKED that are difficult to explain unless you can see how I set up EPSKED for my schedule?

You can easily email your schedule information to us directly from the EPSKED scheduling program. Select the Help...Email-to-ByteBloc dropdown menu option, then select the Schedule Database option. (This option can be used even if you do not have EPSKED Email working on your computer.) From the Help...Email-to-ByteBloc dropdown menu you also have the option of sending a copy of any scheduling screen you have questions about, or simply sending a message.

Please be assured that all information sent to us is considered confidential, and will be used by us only for purposes of program development.

I've spent a lot of time playing with the trial version of EPSKED that you sent me, and really like the program. One concern: will I lose all the configuration information and schedules that I created using the trial version when I buy and install the regular version?

No, your previous efforts will not be wasted. The unrestricted program will automatically have full access to all previously entered information. Also, conversion to an unrestricted version of EPSKED is done by means of an activation password, so no reinstallation is required.

When our physicians start their shifts, they put their signature on a sign-in sheet. I spend an hour every month just typing up a blank schedule with signature lines. Is there any way to automate doing this from EPSKED?

EPSKED can print a blank schedule. This feature was designed to allow sign ups for hand scheduled shifts, but should work well for your purpose.

Start to print your schedule as you normally do, but instead of selecting the usual Master, Personalized master or Individual schedule options, select the Blank schedule option at the bottom of the What to Print selections. EPSKED prints a schedule with each shift represented by a blank line which you can use as your signature line. If you use the Shift Name Left option, the abbreviated name of each shift will be printed to the left of each line.

I would like to use EPSKED on my home computer, then transfer the schedule to our department secretary's computer so she can keep track of changes and overtime when the schedule is actually worked. Does this violate my license agreement? How can I safely transfer the schedules?

To allow for this type of use, ByteBloc Software will provide, at no extra charge, unlimited use of additional copies of EPSKED in its EPSKED Assist mode. (EPSKED Assist allows use of one purchased copy of EPSKED on multiple computers without requiring additional activation codes. All EPSKED features are activated in EPSKED Assist except the ability to create new schedule calendars.) However, you should be cautious about doing so. The problem: it is possible to lose schedules or configuration changes unless you unfailingly copy changes made on one computer to the second computer before making more changes from the Customizer or to the changed schedule on the second computer. (Got that?)

That said, the actual process used for transferring data between computers is quite simple. Select the File...Backup dropdown menu option from either the EPSKED scheduling or Customizer, then click the Help button on the EPSKED Backup window that is displayed. From that Select Backup Drive help screen there is a link to Synchronizing data between two computers that contains full instructions.

When I have one of the physician's schedule exactly as I want it, how can I prevent EPSKED from revising it during later computerized schedule revision?

Tack the physician's entire schedule in place from the Highlight One Provider screen. To display that screen, click the Highlight One Provider button from the Schedule Review screen. Select the schedule of the physician that you do not want EPSKED to revise, then click the Tack button (or press the <+> key on your keyboard) to tack all of that physician's scheduled shifts. EPSKED can still add shifts to the physician's schedule during computerized schedule revision (if the physician needs more hours or there is a shift that cannot be otherwise scheduled), but the tacked shifts will not be changed.

I have configured EPSKED's three "requested shifts" so that the number of night, weekend and clinic shifts worked by our physicians is equitable. Sometimes, when I create a schedule, there are some physicians who are scheduled for several swing shifts but few day shifts, others for several day shifts but few swing shifts. How can I get EPSKED to automatically balance these shifts in addition to the "requested shifts"?

[Editor Note: The "requested shift" entry area is the three columns to the right of Requested Hours column in the provider > Entry Form screen, reached by selecting Who are your providers? from the Customizer Main Menu screen, then selecting the Individual Provider option from the Provider Information Customizer Menu.]

EPSKED can improve the balance of these shifts using the "bias" feature. After you create a schedule, press the Summary button from the Schedule Review screen to display the Summary screen, then click the Bias button. Use the arrow keys or the mouse cursor to move the highlighting to a scheduled value that is too high, then click the Negative Bias button to mark it with a down arrow. Positive bias (an up arrow) or double negative biasing (which forces a reduction if at all possible) can also be used. EPSKED will try to reduce the number of scheduled shifts with negative bias and increase the number of scheduled shifts with positive bias during the next computerized schedule revision, allowing you to improve the balance of scheduling.

We schedule in six week blocks, but for pay purposes need to have scheduled hours summarized and balanced every two weeks. Is there any way do to this directly from EPSKED?

When you are scheduling in even numbered, multiweek periods (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, or 12 weeks), a special PAYPERIOD summary category is available. From the Customizer Main Menu screen select the What summary statistics do you want EPSKED to track and display? option to display the Statistics screen. In the Category name area at the top of any blank column select the preset PAYPERIOD option from the dropdown list box. EPSKED will create PAYPERIOD categories matching each two week block in the schedule. (For example, four week schedules have PAYPERIOD1 and PAYPERIOD2 titles; an additional PAYPERIOD3 title is created for six week schedules.) Shifts scheduled in the first two weeks of a schedule are counted in PAYPERIOD1 summary categories, shifts scheduled in the third and fourth weeks of the schedule are counted in PAYPERIOD2 summary categories.

While you cannot request a specific number of hours in a PAYPERIOD, PAYPERIOD summary categories can be "biased", allowing you to request that EPSKED automatically increase or decrease the number of shifts scheduled in a specific PAYPERIOD. See the earlier question and answer about using shift bias entries.

Scheduled statistics for any period of time from one day to several years can be generated using EPSKED's Cumulative Summary capability, and can be used to calculate hours scheduled during a two week pay period even if you are creating monthly schedules.

We schedule in six week blocks, but for pay purposes need to have scheduled hours summarized on a monthly basis. Is there any way do to this using EPSKED?

EPSKED's cumulative summary feature can be used to summarize scheduled shifts and hours for time intervals from one day to as many years as you have saved schedules. From the Scheduler program Main Menu, click the Cumulative Summary option. From the list of available schedules, select the schedule which includes the first day you want to use in your summary, then click the "Start schedule mid summary..." button. From the displayed calendar, select the first day you want to include in the summary, then repeat the process for the last day of the summary.

Some of our physicians want to work two shifts back to back on the same day. I've set "On the Same Day" preferences [first column of the Shift Relations screen, selection "How do your shifts relate to each other?" from the Customizer Main Menu] for these shifts to Prefer for these physicians, but EPSKED seldom schedules these shifts back to back as desired. Any suggestions?

Yes, but first an explanation of what is happening. EPSKED initially attempts to schedule shifts in "cascades" of several days at a time, generating the sequences of shifts that it schedules from the Prefer (and sometimes Okay) shift preferences created for One Day Later and Two Days Later. Depending upon your shifts and how you have set up your shift relations, EPSKED is initially scheduling shifts in Day-Day or Day-Swing sequences for your schedule. Once this sequence is established, the Night shift on the same day as the first scheduled Day shift now conflicts with working the already scheduled Day or the Swing on the following day, and is therefore being not considered for scheduling (since it conflicts with an already scheduled shift).

If desired, you can avoid this difficulty by disabling EPSKED's cascade scheduling feature. From the scheduling program, select the Options...Scheduling dropdown menu to display a Scheduling Options window. Select the "Improve automatic same day scheduling for providers who want to work more than one shift in a day." option, then restart scheduling from a blank schedule. (You can clear the current schedule by clicking the "Clear computer scheduled shifts..." option button on the Schedule Review screen.)

This procedure should increase the number of same day back-to-back shifts that are initially scheduled by EPSKED. If this is still not satisfactory, you can easily reschedule shifts manually to create the same day back-to-back sequences (and tack them in place to make sure they are not rescheduled). Next have EPSKED revise the schedule (click the "Do computerized schedule revision" button from the Schedule Review screen) to correct imbalances in hours and shifts that were created by the manual revision.

We create a year's worth of resident physician schedules at a time, which are distributed on the first day of the residency. While the balance of shifts in each month's schedule is pretty close, the year end totals are not as equitable as we would like. How can I ensure that everyone has worked the same number of hours and shifts at the end of the year?

After every one or two months of schedules are created, use the Cumulative Summary feature (select the Cumulative Summary option from the Scheduler program Main Menu screen) to monitor the physicians' cumulative totals of scheduled hours and shifts. Click the "Show sums and targets" button to display the requested (target) values for your Total Hours summary category and for any request shift categories that you configured. Values for each provider are shown to the right of the cumulative summary values, separated by a slash mark (/). If a provider has been scheduled for significantly more total hours or shifts than requested, the scheduled value is shaded in light red with a preceding plus sign (+). If a provider has been scheduled for significantly fewer hours or shifts than requested, the scheduled value is shaded in light green with a preceding minus sign (-). This color highlighting is done to bring to your attention the over-scheduling (red with a plus sign) or under-scheduling (green with a minus sign) of a provider.

If one physician is being scheduled for too many of a certain type of shift (for example, weekend shifts), click the Bias button while the cumulative summary is being displayed and apply a "negative bias" to the physician for that summary category. Bias entries made from the cumulative summary screen are automatically applied to all retrieved and newly created schedules. During all subsequent schedule creations and revisions, EPSKED tries to schedule the physician for fewer of the negative biased shift, resulting in improved long term balance of scheduled shifts.

If you have already created all the schedules for the year but not yet distributed them, retrieve and computer revise individual monthly schedules with the long term bias entries in place. Review the cumulative summary for the year after each revision and revise bias entries as needed until the cumulative summary is as equitable as desired. You should be able to achieve a nearly exact balance for the year's schedules in a short period of time!

We create a year's worth of resident physician schedules at a time. Our residents rotate every six weeks for eight rotations (=48 weeks), then the last rotation is only four weeks in length. I configured EPSKED to schedule in six week blocks. What should I do for the final four weeks?

The easiest way to handle this is to maintain the six week scheduling period. In the Customizer you'll need to define a Day Type that has no shifts (select the "Which days of the week are your shifts normally scheduled?" option from the Customizer - Main Menu screen), then return to the scheduling program. When you start to schedule the four week rotation, the first screen that displays the shifts that need to be scheduled is titled Pre-scheduling calendar. From that screen, click the "Do you need to change the shifts used on any days?" Click on the first day of the fifth week, change its Day Type to the Day Type that you created that has no shifts, then do the same for all the following days of the schedule to change them to the same blank Day Type.

Note that when you start the next year of resident schedules, you will need to enter a new sample start date for the schedule (select the "What appearance do you want for your schedule?" option from the Customizer - Main Menu screen, then change the start date from that screen). This is needed since your six week scheduling period is now starting two weeks earlier than if you had continued scheduling in six week blocks from the previous year.

I want to run EPSKED on a Mac. How can I accomplish this?

You can currently use EPSKED on a Mac, as long as you are able to install the Windows operating system on the computer.

The latest Mac operating system comes with Boot Camp, a software included with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard that lets you run compatible versions of Microsoft Windows on an Intel-based Mac.

In addition to Boot Camp, there are other software programs, if purchased and installed, which will allow you to run the Windows operating sytem on a Mac. Two of these programs are Parallels and VMWare Fusion.

Like many other software companies who have a small niche market, we, too, would face a cost dilemma to convert the EPSKED program to a Mac. The cost to do so is greater than the return we would hope to get in sales from Mac users. However, I do want you to know that we will be releasing a new product -- "EPSKED on the Web" -- in 2011 for those groups who would like a fully web-based scheduling program. The advantage of "EPSKED on the Web" is that you could access it from a Mac.

I created a schedule, then realized I had forgotten to enter "off" information for one of our physicians. What should I do?

"Off" (provider availability) information can be entered even after a schedule has been created. To enter new off information for an already completed schedule, click the "Show off requests" button from the Schedule Review screen to display the Provider Availability screen. You can enter off requests from there. If a provider is already scheduled for a shift that you label as off you are also offered the option of removing the provider from the scheduled shift.

Our physicians sometimes split a shift. For example, instead of Dr. Smith working 9am - 9pm we might use Dr. Smith working 9am - 3pm and Dr. Jones working 3pm - 9pm. How can this be printed?

If your providers regularly split certain shifts, you should create additional shifts and a new Day Type to accommodate the split shifts. Click the "What are your shifts?" selection from the Customizer Main Menu screen to create the shifts, then press the "Forward" button from each screen to update all Customizer screens for the added shifts.

The key steps are: From the "What are your shifts?" screen, create shifts named "9AM - 3PM", and "3PM - 9PM". From the "Which days of the week are your shifts normally scheduled?" screen, create a new Day Type titled "Split 9-9" that includes the 9AM - 3PM and 3PM - 9PM shifts, but not the 9AM - 9PM shift. Note that you do not need to assign the newly created Day Type for any days of the week. From the Shift Printing screen, identify the lines on which you want to print the names of the physicians scheduled for the new shifts. You may also need to update other screens for shift relations, summary categories, and provider information as needed.

When you create a schedule, if you know ahead of time that you want to schedule split shifts on a day, change that day to the "Split 9-9" Day Type. (The first screen in the Scheduler that displays the shifts that need to be scheduled is titled Pre-scheduling calendar. From that screen, click the "Do you need to change the shifts used on any days?" button to show the "Change shifts used in a schedule" screen. Click the the day you want to change, then select the "Split 9-9" Day Type.

If you need to change the Day Types after scheduling has been completed, do so from the Schedule Review screen by clicking the day you want to modify, changing the display to the "Review One Schedule Day" screen. Click on the "Change the shifts used this day" side button. A window is displayed from which you can add and subtract shifts from the day; remove the 9AM-9PM shift and add in the 9AM - 3PM and 3PM - 9PM shifts.

When I change the Day Type used on a day after scheduling, I notice that some shifts are marked as "off" even though the doc was available to work. What happened?

[Editor Note: To change Day Types from the Schedule Review screen, click the day you want to modify, changing the display to the "Review One Schedule Day" screen. Click on the "Change the shifts used this day" side button. A window is displayed from which you can add and subtract shifts from the day.]

EPSKED allows you to add or remove shifts from a day even after scheduling has been completed. If you use this feature, it can cause unexpected effects upon the shifts your physician have requested off unless you understand the following information.

When you first enter a date on which a provider has requested shifts off, EPSKED internally marks *all* shifts in the day as "Off", including all shifts not currently being used (scheduled) by the Day Type assigned to the day.

If the provider requested the entire day off, this is what you want. If, however, the provider requested only certain shifts as Off in the day and you initially clicked the day (to mark all shifts Off), then clicked the shifts the provider was available (to toggle them back to available), EPSKED still keeps the provider Off for the undisplayed shifts that are not currently being used. This causes no difficulties unless you later change the shifts used in the day to shifts that includes one of the previously undisplayed shifts, which is then unexpectedly marked as Off. You can avoid this problem by initially clicking only the shifts that a provider wants off. This solution can, however, cause a new difficulty if the physician *did* want one of the previously undisplayed shifts Off.

The Bottom Line: After changing a Day Type, return to the Schedule Review screen, then click the "Show off requests" button and review your providers' availability to make sure it is what you want on the changed days.

I'd like to keep cumulative summaries both of schedules as they were originally scheduled and as they were worked after all the swaps. Is there any way to do that? The "as worked" cumulative summary is needed for pay purposes, the "as scheduled" cumulative summary is needed to show that the original schedule, before swaps were made, was fair.

For the summaries of single schedules, this is easy. Simply name two schedule variants "as worked" and "as scheduled", or some such names, retrieve the desired schedule variant when needed, and print the summary of that schedule variant. (You can save up to twenty different variants for each schedule.)

For cumulative summaries you must be careful to save your schedules so that the last schedule variant saved is the "as worked" schedule, and that the "as scheduled" variant is the penultimate (second to the last) schedule variant that you have saved. You can check this by starting to retrieve the schedule, then note that these two variants are the top two variants names listed from the possible variants you can retrieve. Your normal cumulative summary will then retrieve the "as worked" summary. (Be careful that you do not actually retrieve a "as scheduled" schedule after the "as worked" schedule has been saved, or the "as scheduled" variant will be made most recent variant, ahead of the "as worked" schedule! If this occurs, simply retrieve the "as worked" schedule again.)

To generate a cumulative summary of the "as scheduled" variants, select the Cumulative Summary option from the scheduling Main Menu screen as usual. Note that there is a checkbox labeled "Latest variant" below the side buttons along the left side of the screen and that this checkbox is normally selected. Click the "Latest variant" option to uncheck it. When you then generate a cumulative summary, EPSKED will use the penultimate (second to the last) schedule variant saved, creating an "as scheduled" cumulative summary.

I really appreciate having all the instant summaries of scheduled hours and shifts when I'm working on the schedule, but when I distribute the individual physician schedules I'd like to have the option of not printing the scheduled summaries on that schedule. (It causes too much bickering.) Is there any way to keep the summary from being printed?

You can elect to either print *no* summary information on the schedules or elect to print only selected summary categories.

If you want to print *no* summary information on the schedules, from the scheduling program click the Options...Printer...General dropdown menu option. Uncheck the "Print a shift and hours summary on personal schedules" checkbox. No summary information will be printed, faxed or emailed on any schedules that you distribute.

If you want to print only selected summary categories, from the scheduling program click the Summary...Categories...To Print dropdown menu option. A "Select Summary Categories To Print" window is displayed where you can select which summary statistics you want printed on your schedules. Note that only the first selected categories that fit on a single line summary is printed on Individual Schedules. The Personalized Master schedule is not affected by the selected summary categories and will print the total hours and total shifts scheduled for the provider (unless the "Print a shift and hours summary on personal schedules" checkbox described above is not selected as described above).

We're trying to create a rotating schedule that gives everybody an equal number of all types of shifts. Can EPSKED automatically generate this schedule for us?

Rotating schedules are entered in the Cycle Scheduling section of EPSKED. (See the Cycle Menu in the Customizer program.) Once you have entered your rotation/cycle sequence, EPSKED automatically generates schedules based on the cycle scheduling information that you provided. For an idea of how to create an equitable rotation, see the article Simple Method of Generating Multiple Rotating Schedule Templates, by Robert Porter, MD, reproduced by permission from an article in the January 1997 issue of Emergency Medicine News. EPSKED will generate schedules based on this method for groups of up to 30 physicians (requiring a 30 week cycle schedule).

Do you have any information about the best way to approach emergency department scheduling in order to minimize problems with circadian rhythms?

The ACEP website has a brief overview on this subject titled How to Design the Optimal Schedule for Working Shifts. For more extensive information on this and related topics, including literature references, please see Optimal Scheduling Strategies for Emergency Medicine, reproduced on our website with permission of the author, Dennis C. Whitehead, MD, FACEP.