Auto-suggest is an automated recommendation engine that assigns guides to unassigned trip days. It runs from the Guide Board and considers multiple factors to make balanced, appropriate assignments.
How It Works
When you click Suggest on the Guide Board, Hookset evaluates all unassigned trip days for the visible week and recommends a guide for each one. The algorithm weighs four factors:
1. Fairness (Trip Count)
The primary factor is workload balance. Hookset tracks each guide's trip count for the current month and prioritizes guides with fewer trips. This distributes work evenly across your roster over time.
2. Availability
Only guides marked as available for the given date are considered. Guides who are unavailable, inactive, or seasonal (outside their active dates) are excluded.
3. Specialization Match
If the booking specifies an activity type or fishing method, the algorithm prefers guides whose specializations match. A guide who specializes in fly fishing will be recommended for a fly fishing trip over a general-purpose guide, all else being equal.
4. Rest Days
The guide rest days setting defines a minimum gap between a guide's last trip day and their next assignment. If a guide worked yesterday and rest days is set to 1, they won't be suggested for today.
Using Suggestions
After clicking Suggest, recommended assignments appear as highlighted cells on the Guide Board. You can:
- Accept individually -- Click a highlighted cell and confirm the assignment.
- Accept all -- Click Accept All to confirm every suggestion at once.
- Override -- Click a highlighted cell and select a different guide before confirming.
Suggestions are not saved until you confirm them.
When to Use Auto-Suggest vs. Manual
- Auto-suggest works best when you have a full roster and want to quickly fill out a week's schedule with balanced assignments.
- Manual assignment is better when you need specific guide-guest pairings (e.g., a returning client who requested a particular guide).
You can mix both approaches -- use auto-suggest to fill most slots, then manually adjust specific assignments.