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Setting up an Auto Duty is a guided, four-step process, similar to the manual roster wizard but focused on what should repeat every cycle.
Only admins can create or edit an Auto Duty.

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Before you begin

  • A Shift Schedule exists for the team this Auto Duty will plan for.
  • Doctors who should be in the pool have their department, pod, and (if you use them) location set correctly on their profiles — this is how the doctor pool is scoped.

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Open the wizard

Go to Auto Duty Planning in the sidebar and select Set Auto Duty. The wizard has four tabs: Basics, Shifts, Department & Pod, and Rules.

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Basics

1

Name it

Enter a Duty plan name your team will recognise — for example, MICU Weekly Planning.
2

Set a location (optional)

Choose a Location, or leave it as No location if this Auto Duty isn’t tied to a specific site.
3

Choose the cadence

Toggle Schedule Cadence to Weekly or Monthly, then set Starts on — a day of the week for weekly, or a day of the month for monthly.
4

Set when planning opens

Under Planning & Automation, set Planning opens — how many days before each period staff can start updating their availability and leave.

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Automation toggles

Still under Planning & Automation:
Leave both off if you’d rather review the roster before it goes anywhere — the cycle will still notify staff and collect availability for you, and wait for you to click Generate Duty Plan and Publish Roster yourself. See Running a planning cycle.

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Shifts

Select the Shift Schedule this Auto Duty generates against every cycle. If none exist yet for your organisation, create one under Shift Schedules first, then come back to the wizard.

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Department & Pod

This step sets the doctor pool the engine draws from — re-queried fresh every cycle, so it never goes stale.
  • Check one or more Departments — leave none checked to include the whole organisation.
  • Check one or more Pods — leave none checked to include every pod.
A live count shows how many active doctors currently match your scope, alongside a summary badge (for example, 2 dept · All pods · Main Hospital) combining department, pod, and the location you set on Basics.

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Rules

Set the same work, rest, and fairness rules used by the manual roster wizard — max consecutive work days, minimum rest days, senior-to-junior ratios, and more. See Roster constraints for what each one does.

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Save

Select Save Auto Duty. It’s active immediately and its next cycle will start on schedule.

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Turning automation off mid-cycle

If you switch off Active or Generate duty plan automatically while a cycle is already in progress, PlanMyRounds asks you to confirm:
Turn off automation? A planning cycle is currently in progress for this Auto Duty. It will run to completion as normal; nothing in progress will be cancelled. This only stops future cycles from starting or auto-generating automatically.
Select Turn Off to confirm, or Cancel to leave automation as it is.

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Next steps

Run a planning cycle

See what happens at each stage, and how to start a cycle manually.

Build a Shift Schedule

Set up the weekly pattern your Auto Duty will generate against.