Working Patterns

A working pattern is the shape of somebody’s ordinary week. Someone who works Mondays and half of Friday can say so, and Runnit books work around it.

Until you set a pattern, Runnit assumes a person works your organisation’s Daily capacity on every weekday. That is fine for most people and nothing changes for them.

Patterns and blocked dates are different

Both affect when Runnit will schedule work, and mixing them up is expensive.

	Working pattern	Blocked-out date
Answers	What is your ordinary week?	When are you away?
Repeats	Yes, until you change it	No, it has dates
Example	“I work Mondays and half of Friday”	“I am away next Tuesday”
Role	The baseline	An exception to the baseline

A pattern is the baseline that leave is taken off, not another deduction. Four hours of leave on a four-hour Friday removes the whole day, not half of one.

For one-off absences, see Blocked-Out Dates.

Set your own working pattern

Any organisation member can set their own:

1. Open Schedule and choose Working pattern.
2. Pick a preset, or type the hours for each day. The days start on Monday, and 0 means you do not work that day.
3. Check the summary line, which reads back something like Mon, Fri 4h (12h a week).
4. Set the date the pattern starts under Effective from. Weeks before that date keep the hours they already had.
5. Add a note if it helps, for example where the change came from.
6. Choose Save working pattern.

The presets cover the shapes people usually describe: a full week, four days, three days, Mondays and half Friday, and school hours.

Note

The dialog opens on you, not on whoever is first alphabetically, because saving a pattern onto the wrong person is an expensive mistake to unpick.

Changing a pattern later

Setting a new pattern does not rewrite the old one. Runnit closes the previous pattern the day before the new one starts and keeps it in the history, so last month’s capacity does not change when someone goes part time.

That matters for utilisation and capacity reporting: the hours a week had are the hours that week actually had.

Removing the pattern currently in force reopens the one before it. If there was no earlier pattern, the person returns to the organisation’s daily capacity.

Set a pattern for someone else

You need schedule management access (Manage Schedule). Managers, admins, and owners have it by default.

On Schedule, choose Working pattern and pick the team member before entering their hours. People without that access see only themselves.

The note on a pattern is private in the same way a blocked date’s reason is: it is visible to the person themself and to users with schedule management access.

Where a pattern shows up

• The Schedule calendar tints the days a person does not work, and shows a chip such as 4h day on a short day. The tint is deliberately different from the one used for leave, because a day you never work is not an absence.
• The Capacity view sizes each day’s bar to that day’s real hours, so five hours booked on a four-hour Friday reads as overloaded instead of looking like spare room. The row header names the day lengths in view, for example Working pattern: 8h, 4h days.
• The schedule Gantt shades the days a person’s week does not include.
• The Set daily hours editor on a task caps a short day at its own hours and labels it, and refuses hours that will not fit.
• Automatic scheduling spreads work across only the days a person works, filling a short day to its own length and moving the rest to the next day they work.
• Availability checks and brief resource planning count the hours a part week really has, rather than five full days.

Caution

Turning on weekend scheduling for a task does not put work on a day a person’s pattern says they do not work, and that includes their weekend. A recorded pattern is a statement about their week, so Runnit does not override it.

Limits

• A pattern sets hours per day, not times of day. Someone works four hours on Friday, not “Friday afternoon”. Runnit schedules by daily hours.
• Hours are the same on a given weekday every week. Alternating weeks and fortnightly cycles are not supported.
• At least one day must have hours. A week of all zeroes is refused, because that person could never be scheduled and nothing would explain why.
• Work already booked on a day a new pattern makes shorter is not moved for you. Check the schedule after a change.

Ask the Chat Assistant

Ru can set a working pattern in chat, and it will act on a passing mention. Tell it “from the 21st I’m dropping to four days a week, Monday to Thursday” and it records the pattern from that date and tells you what changes. Ask “what are my working days?” to read it back.

Ru knows the difference between a pattern and leave, so “I’m away next Tuesday” creates a blocked date instead.

Sync from an HR system

Organisations that manage contracted hours in an HR system can sync them into Runnit through the REST API, alongside leave. See the Scheduling API.

Next steps

For one-off absences, see Blocked-Out Dates. For how booked hours and capacity are reported, see Time Tracking & Planning.