Templates and rotas

A shift template saves one shift’s hours and details. A shift pattern repeats a cycle of shifts. Once assigned, it becomes a person’s rota.

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Save a shift you keep retyping

In Settings → Schedule → Shift templates, name the template and set its hours, position, location, breaks and notes. Clients set on a template, or on a shift pattern’s day with its own hours, go onto every shift made from it (Tagging work with clients). For 24-hour cover, choose 24h in Duration. The end stays at the same local time the next day. Equal clock times alone mean zero hours. Custom pattern entries have the same control; a new 24-hour shift also supports Repeat. Use Add → From template, right-click a person’s day, or choose Apply template in the shift form. Applying to existing shifts replaces their hours, breaks, notes, labels and clients. A template that would leave a required client empty is refused for that shift. Deleting the template leaves those shifts alone. Find templates and patterns by name in Search. Copies keep the name with a translated copy suffix.

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Repeat a whole rota

In Settings → Schedule → Shift patterns, choose Weekly, Fortnightly, or Rotating cycle. Weekly patterns follow weekdays; rotating cycles count from the assignment’s start date. Follow working time and holidays skips holidays and non-working days, and shortens shifts to each person’s daily paid hours. It keeps start times and never adds or lengthens shifts. It starts on for new patterns and Repeat. Existing patterns keep it off; copies preserve the choice. Open shifts are unaffected. Turn it off to generate the full entered 24-hour cover. Across daylight-saving changes, local clock times stay fixed, so a 24-hour entry can span 23 or 25 elapsed hours. For Repeat, enter the same end time on the next date. The shift form’s Duration shows elapsed hours. For hours you will not reuse, choose Custom shift under Pattern. Type the hours, choose Weekly and tick the weekdays, or Rotating cycle and set the days on and off. A custom shift stays out of your saved patterns. On a team it reaches the people in that team today; anyone who joins later is not added. To change the hours afterwards, edit them from one of that person’s shifts; it changes their rota only. A shift with no position or location takes the person’s own when they have only one on that date, for saved patterns too. Someone with several, or none, gets a line to choose for them, and the preview counts any shifts still left empty. The Open shifts row offers the same action where available. Publishing does not offer open shifts to people; offer each shift separately. If your publishing permission excludes any generated shift, Begin refuses the whole published rota. Assign a draft instead.

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Put a whole team on a rota

Assign to a department, position or location through People and teams. New members pick up the rota, unless their shifts would break a Block — no override compliance rule; a rule you can keep anyway does not stop them. Leavers and deactivated people lose future generated shifts. Worked shifts stay. People need not have accepted an invitation. Manage it from the pattern’s second line in Settings, its row menu, or Shift patterns when editing the department, position or location. Check the people and estimated shift count before saving. Removing a team rota asks whether to keep or delete its shifts. Remove it before deleting the pattern. Deleting the team itself ends its rotas and deletes future generated shifts; the confirmation shows how many rotas will end.

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Change a rota that is already running

The assign dialog’s Current patterns lists a person’s rotas. Regenerate shifts rebuilds from today; End this pattern asks whether to keep or delete generated shifts. On a generated shift, open Repeating shift in its context menu, or the Repeating shifts section in its editor:

• Edit pattern changes the shared pattern.
• Edit rota changes this person’s dates and publishing choice.
• Detach this shift keeps one occurrence independent.
• End this pattern stops the rota.

Manage team dates and ending where the rota was applied. On individual team-generated shifts, you can still regenerate or detach. Policy and calendar changes do not redraw existing shifts. Regenerate to apply them. Manually edited shifts carry an Edited badge and survive regeneration, as do past and detached shifts. When saving a pattern, Update existing rotas starts off. Enable it to rebuild running rotas, including after changing policy following. If a long rota exceeds the update limit, save without it and use Edit rota individually.

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