What are calendars, work schedules, and shifts?

Whether they're set at the organization unit, bucket or resource level, overall calendar options are made up of combinations of work schedules, shifts, working, and non-working time. They represent a holistic view of who's available or not available for work at any given time on any given day.

Here are a few rules regarding the hierarchy of calendars in general, and their levels of precedence:

Work schedules, shifts, and working time applied to a bucket or an organization unit, by default, also apply to all resources that are part of bucket or organization unit.
Calendars created or adjusted at a lower level override the calendar at a higher level. That is, the calendar that you've set up at a resource level overrides the calendar that the resource may have inherited from its parent entity. However, the work schedule defined at the child level doesn't override the shift, custom working time, and non-working time defined at the parent level. To override custom working time, you must delete any existing custom working time.
A calendar at the individual resource level applies only to that resource and overrides all other calendars.

To understand calendars and their potential components better, we must define the different options. The components of a calendar are:

Work Schedules: Work schedules contain multiple shifts and non-working times. Work schedules are the mechanisms for grouping these items, so that they can be applied to a single resource, a bucket, or an entire organization unit. Work schedules represent the highest level of calendar options.
Shifts: Shifts are used to define the different working times as defined by an organization. They can be created once and used by various work schedules, simplifying the assignment of schedules. In addition to work schedules, shifts can also be assigned directly to organization units, buckets, or resources.
Working Time: The time frame in which a resource is scheduled to work that doesn't comply with one of a company’s standard shift definitions.
Non-working Time: Non-working time is used to identify known absences such as bereavement, illness, holidays, and vacations.

Earlier portions of this guide covered the creation of work schedules, shifts, and non-working time. This section will concentrate on assigning those calendar options to entities on the Resource Tree (organization units, buckets, resources). While the process is the same for each, depending on what you select on the Resource Tree, the implications differ. This ties back in with the explanation of the calendar hierarchy.