Project Overview
Days-off Scheduler is a mobile scheduling project designed to assist with one specific part of workforce planning: creating days-off schedules for employees.
The project explores how a practical heuristic algorithm can be used to calculate employee days off, reduce manual scheduling effort, and support more consistent workforce allocation from week to week.
The app is not intended to replace a complete workforce management system. Instead, it is designed as a complementary tool that can generate days-off schedules and support integration with existing business systems.
Mobile Scheduling App
At this stage, the project provides a way to create an automated days-off schedule in the iPhone app and integrate the generated schedule with a back-end system.
The app employs a workforce allocation and personnel assignment heuristic algorithm to calculate employees' days off. By assigning days off, it also determines how many employees are scheduled to be present each day of the week.
The generated schedule is cyclic and is calculated one week at a time.
Days-off Scheduler on the App Store
What the App Does
- Creates automated days-off schedules for employees.
- Uses a heuristic approach for workforce allocation and personnel assignment.
- Calculates how many employees are scheduled to be present each day of the week.
- Generates schedules one week at a time.
- Supports back-end integration for additional processing or customization.
Why a Heuristic Approach
The scheduling problem addressed by this project does not necessarily require a large or complex artificial intelligence model. A heuristic approach can provide a practical, predictable, and computationally efficient way to generate useful scheduling results.
This makes the project easier to understand, easier to test, and more suitable for situations where the scheduling rules are known and the goal is to produce consistent results.
Algorithm Background
The Days-off Scheduler app is an implementation of the heuristic Days-Off Scheduling algorithm described in the Workforce Scheduling chapter of Michael Pinedo's book Planning and Scheduling in Manufacturing and Systems.
Written permission was obtained to publish the app based on this algorithmic approach.
The app is an independent implementation by Columba Jacobi and is not presented as an endorsement by the author or publisher.
Integration
Generated schedules can be integrated with back-end systems for storage, processing, reporting, or additional business-specific logic.
The integration page provides technical details about schedule posting, JSON and HTML payload formats, encryption, and server-side data handling.
View Integration DetailsAvailability
Days-off Scheduler is available as an iPhone app on the App Store. Pricing and subscription options are managed through the App Store listing.
View on the App StoreProject Background
Days-off Scheduler builds on earlier experience with employee scheduling software. Prior to this project, related scheduling work included a Windows-based manual employee scheduler and a later online scheduling system developed under Timecurve Software.
TimeCurve Scheduler was mentioned in Entrepreneur in an article about simplifying business operations and employee scheduling software: 25 Ways to Simplify Your Business.
That earlier work provided practical experience with workforce scheduling problems, user workflows, software integration, and the challenges of building scheduling tools for real businesses.
This project grew out of prior experience with manual employee scheduling and an interest in heuristic algorithms for practical business problems.
Days-off Scheduler was designed as a complementary tool to improve scheduling efficiency while keeping the process understandable and maintainable.
