- Set dates
Try to set period for full month not touching other months. If you select 28DEC-31JAN legality module might not be able to work out valid roster because of DEC part (ie not enough day offs in DEC) - Data source
To run rostering in small batches for testing purposes use only small subset of crew. Ie only captains. - Assign
- Use appropriate fairness bases with scoring system
- Day off fill in is mandatory for legality purposes
- Dynamic grouping optimizer - use this only for empty rosters or rosters with very few activities assigned prior to rostering run
- Don't forget to fill times for morning/evening flights when using morning/evening fairness in scoring system
- Roster patterns are used only for grouping flights
- Ignore some legality rules if crew is dirty
- Score
- Level 1/2/3 fairness corresponds to fairness bases in General tab. Don't use BLH fairness for ref acts, keep attention to that.
- Grouping primary acts - grouping flights using roster pattern from General tab - give this a high value, all rosters are better when using grouping
- Activity count fairness - use if you want fairness basing strictly on assign count
- Morning/evening flights fairness uses morning/evening flights definitions from General tab
- Vacation friendly acts - tries not to put evening flight before day offs or vacations and not to put morning flights after day offs or vacations - very soft rule. Will work only for rosters with plenty enough crew for this fairness to kick in.
- Destination fairness also checks for destinations inside pairing. Tries to equalize different destinations for crew. All destinations are valued the same.
- Days off distribution works with soft rules tab. Soft rule trying to keep days off between duties/assignments in constraints given. Will work only for rosters with plenty enough crew for this fairness to kick in.
General tips
- Don't run rostering for single crew expecting good results. Scoring system is a comparative system thus you need more than 1 crew. Preferably more or less a number of crew required for coverage.
- Experiment with different grouping values in roster pattern. Sometimes 4 flights in a row is good, sometimes 3 etc. When you have different flights with very different flights length you will get better results when doing rostering separately for longhauls and short flights.
- Scoring system doesn't guarantee full coverage with every value. 100% fairness might not give you full coverage. 60% grouping 40% fairness might. Even more: 60% grouping and 40% fairness might give you better fairness than 100% fairness. Experiment and remember grouping is extremely important. Fairness modules don't do grouping. And grouping is good.