Templates and rotas

Two things save you retyping the same shifts. A shift template is a preset for one shift, hours and all. A shift pattern is a cycle of those shifts that repeats, and once you put one on a person the schedule calls it their rota.

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Save a shift you keep retyping

Build it in Settings → Schedule → Shift templates: name it, set the hours, and fill in the position, location, breaks and notes that go with that shift every time. Then reach for it: Add → From template opens a new shift already filled in, right-clicking a day in someone’s row offers the same list, and the shift form’s Apply template menu replaces whatever you have typed. Apply template on a shift you have already made, or on a selection, rewrites them all: everything the template carries replaces what is on the shift, its hours, breaks, notes and labels included. Deleting a template leaves every shift already made from it alone. Find a template or pattern with Search, using its displayed name. A copy keeps the original name and shows its copy suffix in your language.

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Repeat a whole rota

A pattern is a cycle of days with the shifts that fall on each one. In Settings → Schedule → Shift patterns, choose Weekly for the same weekdays whatever date you start from, Fortnightly, or a Rotating cycle of any length, which counts forward from the day you assign it rather than from a weekday. Turn on Follow working time and holidays to skip public holidays and non-working days, and shorten shifts to fit each person’s daily paid hours. The cycle and start times stay as entered. Begin never adds or lengthens a shift. This starts on for new patterns, including Repeat when adding a shift. Existing patterns keep it off until you enable it; copies keep the source’s choice. You can change it in Settings or through Edit pattern on a repeating shift. It does not change open shifts. Where your workspace has open shifts, the Open shifts row header offers the same Assign shift pattern, and Publish the shifts straight away works there too. Publishing does not offer the shifts to anybody: offer each day’s shift from the shift itself when you are ready for it to go out. If your Publish schedule permission covers only some locations, positions or people, Begin refuses a published rota that would put any shift outside them, and writes nothing. Assign it as a draft instead, or publish it only where your permission reaches.

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Put a whole team on a rota

A rota can go on a department, a position or a location rather than on one person at a time. Everyone in it follows the pattern, and the list keeps itself true: somebody who joins picks the rota up, and somebody who leaves, or who you deactivate, has their future shifts taken back. Shifts already worked stay where they are. People can receive shifts before you invite them to Begin or they finish signing up. Apply one from the schedule: in Add → Assign shift pattern, choose the department, position or location in the People and teams list, beside any people. Or apply one from either end of the rule. In Settings → Schedule → Shift patterns, each pattern names where it runs on a second line under its own name, and clicking that line, or the row menu, opens it. On the Departments, Positions and Locations pages, editing one has a Shift patterns section that does the same from that side. Wherever you start, you pick the dates and whether to publish, and the dialog says how many people each team reaches and roughly how many shifts that makes before you commit. Taking a rota off a team asks whether to keep or delete the shifts it made, exactly as ending one person’s does. A pattern still applied to a team cannot be deleted until you lift it off there first. Deleting the department, position or location itself ends its rotas and deletes the future shifts they made; the delete confirmation says how many rotas it ends first.

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Change a rota that is already running

Open the assign dialog on that person and Current patterns lists the rotas they follow. Regenerate shifts rebuilds one from today onwards; End this pattern stops it, and asks whether to keep or delete the shifts it made. A rota’s controls also sit on every shift it created: right-click the shift and open Repeating shift, or open the shift and use the menu on its Repeating shifts section. Both hold Edit pattern and Edit rota, then Detach this shift, which cuts one occurrence loose, and End this pattern, which ends the rota without the assign dialog. A rota somebody follows because of their team is changed where it was applied, not on the person. End this pattern is unavailable on it and says so, and Edit rota is not offered on its shifts; Regenerate shifts and Detach this shift still work. To change or stop one, open the department, position or location it came from, or its row in Settings → Schedule → Shift patterns. Policy and calendar changes affect later planning; they do not redraw existing shifts. Use Regenerate shifts to apply them to a rota already running.

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