Use Auto Fill without overwriting work

Auto Fill on the schedule board toolbar builds teams and distributes a day’s jobs across them. It is the fastest way to lay out a heavy day, and the fastest way to undo an afternoon of manual assignment. Both are worth understanding before you use it.

The dialog

The button says Auto Fill; the dialog it opens is headed Smart Assign. They are the same thing.

You pick unit groups from a tree, and for each one set Group to Assign Cleans — the number of teams to split that group’s work across. The grid shows the unassigned and assigned job counts per group and the cleaners available.

Preview shows the proposed teams with their jobs, total clean count and total hours. Nothing is written until you confirm from that preview.

The switch is a view filter, not a safety net

This is the trap. Show Only Unassigned Cleans controls what the tree displays. It does not limit what Auto Fill will touch.

With the switch off, jobs that already have teams and assignees can be selected, and confirming re-teams them with no warning and no confirmation prompt. Work you assigned by hand earlier in the day is simply replaced.

Always use the preview screen as your check — it lists exactly which jobs are being re-teamed. If a preview contains jobs you had already arranged, go back rather than confirming.

Reset clears more than you ticked

The Reset button on a group row asks Are you sure you want to reset these jobs? The phrase “these jobs” is misleading: it clears the team from every assigned job under that group, regardless of what you have ticked and regardless of any filter you have applied to the view.

There is no partial reset. If you only want to free up a few jobs, move them individually on the board instead.

What the preview is telling you

The team composition comes from the server, not from choices you make in the dialog — the client sends the jobs and the number of teams, and receives a proposed split back. You are approving a proposal rather than configuring a rule, which is why the preview is the only place to catch a bad outcome.

Two rough edges

Pressing Preview with nothing selected produces a plain browser alert rather than the usual in-app notification.

If the server returns no teams, the dialog shows Team generation failed. Please try again later. and the red button in the confirm position changes to Close. It looks like a confirm button but only dismisses the dialog — nothing is saved and nothing is retried.

Treat Auto Fill as a first pass on an empty day rather than a top-up on a partly arranged one. It has no notion of “leave the ones I already did”: the only thing separating a helpful bulk assignment from wiping your morning’s work is which rows are ticked when you confirm, and the switch that appears to protect you does not.