GA
Help Desk Agent
Answers employee questions from policy and the system of record.
75%1 (modeled outcome) of HR case volume deflected
HR agent
GAScheduling Agent
The Scheduling Agent is a governed AI agent that fills open shifts with eligible, willing staff in minutes.
How it works
What the Scheduling Agent does
Finds the right people for an open shift by rule, skill, and preference, offers it by text, and books the first acceptance. Managers stop making phone calls.
- 01
Load rules, skills, and preferences
The agent reads schedules, certifications, labor rules, union provisions, and each employee's availability and contact preferences from your workforce management and HRIS systems.
- 02
Detect the gap
A call-out, an approved leave, or a demand spike opens a shift. The agent builds the eligible list in seconds and ranks it by rule compliance, preference, seniority policy, and cost.
- 03
Offer and confirm
Offers go out by SMS or app in rank order, in waves you configure. The first acceptance is booked, the schedule updates, and the manager is notified.
- 04
Escalate or report
Unfilled shifts escalate to the manager at your deadline with a full offer history. The Registry reports fill rate, time to fill, and overtime avoided by location.
app.meridian.example/agents/scheduling/coverage
Coverage · week of 2026-09-14
18 gaps16 filled
| Shift | Location | State | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sat 06:00–14:00 | Dock 4 · Northwind DC-7 | Filled | K. Mbeki · accepted in 6 min |
| Sat 14:00–22:00 | Dock 4 · Northwind DC-7 | Filled | L. Duarte · accepted in 11 min |
| Sun 22:00–06:00 | Cold storage · DC-7 | Offered | 3 eligible · 2 offers out |
| Mon 06:00–14:00 | Returns · DC-3 | Filled | P. Ivanov · accepted in 4 min |
| Mon 14:00–22:00 | Dock 1 · DC-3 | Open | Overtime threshold reached for 4 |
The agent contract
Six terms, applied to this agent
Every Meridian agent runs under the same six terms, enforced at the Gateway below the agent. Here is what each one means for the Scheduling Agent.
Scoped to one workflow
Covers open shifts in the published schedule. It does not build the base schedule.
Reads only permitted data
Reads schedules, certifications, labor rules, and the preferences employees opted in to share.
Every action logged
Every offer, acceptance, decline, and escalation logged for scheduling-law compliance.
Consequential actions require human approval
Overtime fills above your threshold pause for manager approval. No shift books without the employee's yes.
Measurable outcome
Fill rate, time to fill, and overtime avoided reported by location.
Runs on your chosen model
Eligibility rules are hard constraints enforced in code, whichever model you choose.
Scope
Data, actions, and approvals
What the Scheduling Agent reads, what it does on its own, and where a person signs.
Data it reads
- Published schedules and open shifts
- Employee availability, preferences, and quiet hours
- Skills, licenses, and certifications with expiry dates
- Labor rules: rest periods, maximum hours, minor-labor limits, union provisions
- Hours worked to date, overtime status, and approved time off
- Location, department, and cost center
Actions it takes
- Build and rank the eligible list for an open shift
- Offer the shift by SMS, Slack, Teams, or mobile push in waves
- Book the first acceptance and update the schedule and time system
- Pause for manager approval when a fill would trigger premium overtime
- Escalate unfilled shifts with the complete offer history
- Forecast coverage gaps for the coming week by location
What needs approval
- Eligibility rules are hard constraints; the agent cannot offer a shift that violates rest, certification, minor-labor, or union rules
- No shift is assigned without the employee's explicit acceptance
- Employees opt in to be contacted and set quiet hours; declines carry no penalty and are not reported individually
- Overtime fills above your threshold require manager approval before the offer
- Every offer, acceptance, decline, and escalation is logged for scheduling-law compliance
Outcomes
Numbers the Scheduling Agent is accountable for
Modeled outcomes from design-partner deployments. The Registry reports your actuals from the first week an agent is live.
−90%
time to fill an open shift1
12min
median time from open shift to confirmed fill1
0
rest-period or certification violations in agent-filled shifts
−18%
premium overtime spend on backfills1
- 1.Modeled outcome from design-partner deployments. ↩
“A dispatcher at 4 a.m. should not be working a phone tree. The agent knows who is certified, who is rested, and who said they want hours. It asks them in that order and books the first yes.”
11min
median time to fill an open shift at Northwind Logistics1
Integrations
Systems it works with
Connected through prebuilt connectors and zero-copy warehouse access in Data Fabric. The agent acts as the user and inherits each system’s permissions on every read.
- Workforce management and scheduling
- HRIS
- Time and attendance
- SMS
- Slack
- Microsoft Teams
- Mobile push
Credits
What the Scheduling Agent costs
Included on every plan: Starter with 5,000 credits per month, Growth with 30,000, and Enterprise with custom pools. Credits are consumed per completed action, never per message. Usage beyond the plan is billed at $0.12 per credit.
| Action | Credits |
|---|---|
| Shift filled | 1 |
| Coverage forecast, per location per week | 2 |
Questions
Questions about the Scheduling Agent
Answered the way buyers ask them. Each answer is also published as structured data.
Related terms
It is software that fills open shifts by identifying eligible employees, offering the shift to them directly, and booking the first acceptance. It replaces the phone tree a manager runs when someone calls out. It does not build the base schedule; it covers the gaps in it.
Rules are enforced before an offer is made, not checked afterward. The agent will not offer a shift that breaks a rest period, exceeds maximum hours, requires a certification the employee lacks, or violates a union provision. Fills that would trigger premium overtime pause for manager approval.
No. Employees opt in to receive offers, set quiet hours, and decline freely. The agent does not report individual declines to managers. Design partners saw acceptance rates rise because offers reached people who had said they wanted extra hours.
Healthcare, logistics and warehousing, retail, food production, and manufacturing. Any operation with hourly staff, credential requirements, and same-day call-outs.
Yes. The agent reads schedules and writes fills back to your workforce management system through its API. Managers keep using the tool they know; the agent removes the manual work of finding coverage.
Related agents
Agents most often deployed alongside the Scheduling Agent, on the same data and the same approval policy.
Get started
Put the Scheduling Agent to work.
Start with one workflow, one approver, and one number to move. Most design partners were live in five weeks.