Many teams need a similar number of people each week, but don't have a regular pattern to how those people are scheduled. By adding Needed Positions, you not only see how many people you need, but when you click, you see all the people assigned to that position, sorted using their preferences and conflicts, with your best options at the top. That smartly-sorted list of people is now loading faster, with bigger teams seeing the most improvements in speed.
Searching for Conflicts
To get that list of people, Planning Center first finds all the times assigned to the position you are filling, and then goes through each person assigned to that position to see if they have any conflicts or scheduling preferences that overlap. Once those are evaluated for everyone on the team, we show the list of people in three potential groups. The first group contains anyone who prefers to be scheduled because a household member is already on the plan. The second group is everyone with no conflicts or preferences, and the last group contains those that do have them.
How We Sped Things Up
The larger the team, the more conflicts and preferences there are to evaluate, and the longer it takes to get your list of people. We were previously calculating all of those in one big group, but after today's change, we're breaking it up into smaller groups that can be processed simultaneously and be ready for use more quickly than before. If your team is small, you might not see a change, but the larger your team, the more sub-groups we can simultaneously evaluate, and the bigger difference you'll likely see in speed.
Happy (faster) scheduling!