Build and publish a rota

The Rota page gives managers a Mon–Sun week grid; use the ‹ › arrows to move between weeks and the department dropdown to focus. Each week is draft until you publish — staff only ever see published weeks. Rota scheduling is enabled per organisation; if you see “Rota scheduling isn’t enabled for your organisation”, contact us. Read more about the module on the rota scheduling feature page.

Add shifts

Every day column has an + Add shift control:

• Pick a shift template and the shift drops straight in. Templates (name, times, break, headcount, colour, skill requirements) are managed at Settings → Shift templates — build them once, rota faster forever.
• Pick Custom… for a one-off: name, start/end times, break minutes and headcount.

Each shift card shows its times, filled-vs-required headcount (red when short), any skill quotas (e.g. “2× First aider”), and an indicative labour cost if your organisation tracks pay rates. Edit and Delete live on the card. An empty week has a Copy last week button that clones the previous week’s pattern.

Assign people

Click + Assign on a shift. The candidate picker does the thinking for you — each person is shown with:

• ticks against the shift’s skill requirements,
• On leave / Pending leave badges straight from the leave system,
• their availability: ● Preferred, Available, Not set or Unavailable,
• and Double-booked rows disabled outright.

Assigned people keep their warning badges on the card — including working-time flags (⚠ Rest, ⚠ 48h, ⚠ Break) so you spot compliance problems while planning, not after. Remove someone with ✕.

Publish

Click Publish week. The dialog summarises the whole week — days that are short-staffed, conflicts, and a closing line: “No gaps — ready to publish.” or “N gaps remain — publish anyway?”. You can publish with gaps; it’s your call.

On publish, everyone with a shift that week is notified — the toast confirms it: “Rota published — 9 people notified.” Re-publish after changes and affected people are notified again.

What staff see

Staff open the same Rota page and get their own view: upcoming published shifts grouped by week, plus (if enabled) open shifts to claim and their swap requests. Until you publish, they see “No published shifts yet.”