Shift scheduling: drafts, publishing, availability and swaps

The shift schedule is a weekly board: employees against days, roles in colours and open shifts. Managers assign and publish, and everyone on the team sees their own shifts, confirms them and asks for changes — on the website, on iPhone and on Android.

Setting up the board

The board is off until a manager sets it up. A few-minute questionnaire goes through roles, employees, shift types, week and hours, constraints, limits and notifications — and everything can be changed later in “Board settings”.

1. 1

   Open the screen

   Shift scheduling
2. 2

   Click “Set up the scheduling board” and answer the questionnaire.

3. 3

   At the end, click “Turn on the board”.

Assigning and publishing

1. 1

   Add shifts with “Add”, or drag them on the board between employees and days. A shift with no one on it is an open shift.

2. 2

   “Auto-assign” on the bar staffs the open shifts. “Actions” has “Copy last week”, templates, export and print.

3. 3

   When the week is ready, click “Publish” and choose “Publish and send to the team” or “Publish without notifying”.

Shifts that aren’t published yet are a draft, and the team doesn’t see them. On publishing, each person gets an app notification with their shifts, and open shifts go to the whole team. “Unpublish” returns the week to draft.

What the team does

In “My shifts” everyone sees their shifts and confirms they’ve seen them and will come, or declines with a reason. In “Next week’s availability” they mark when they’re unavailable and when they’d rather work, and managers see it while assigning. An open shift is requested with “Claim shift”, and a swap asks a colleague to take a shift — in both cases a manager approves.