Publishing a roster
Send your drafted shifts to staff, choose who gets notified, publish a single shift or several weeks at once, and resend or clear a week.
Shifts you add, copy or change start as drafts that only managers can see. Publishing sends the roster to your team and sets what they see in Shiftly Me. This guide covers the publish button, choosing who gets notified, publishing a single shift, publishing several weeks at once, the other options in the publish menu, and what staff receive.
Who this is for
Owners and managers using the Shiftly web platform to run your business.
Before you start
- You're an owner or a manager who can edit the roster at the location.
- Open Roster from the main navigation, pick the location at the top left, and move to the week you want to publish.
- You've got at least one drafted shift. See Creating & editing shifts and Copying & repeating shifts.
The publish button
The publish button sits at the top right of the roster. Its label tells you the state of the week you're viewing.
| Button says | What it means |
|---|---|
| Publish schedule | The week has never been published. This shows even on an empty week. |
| Publish updates | The week was published before, and you've made changes since. |
| Published | Everything's published and there's nothing new to send. The button is greyed out. |
In the Day view the button reads Publish day, and publishes only the shifts on that day.
When the button is greyed out, so is the arrow beside it, so the options in its menu are only available while the week has something to publish.
Publish your roster
Open the publish window
Select the publish button (Publish schedule or Publish updates). The Publish your roster window opens, showing the week's dates and how you'd like to notify staff.
Choose who gets notified
Pick one:
- Send roster to all employees: everyone at this location with a shift that week is sent their roster.
- Send updates only: only people whose shifts were added, changed, taken away or moved to someone else are notified. The first time you publish a week, everyone with a shift counts as changed, so this works like the option above.
- No notification: the shifts go live in Shiftly Me, but nobody is sent anything.
Check for availability clashes
If any shift you're about to publish is assigned to someone who's unavailable at that time, the window says so at the top, for example Publish roster with 2 availability clashes? and 2 shifts are assigned to people who are unavailable at those times. You can still publish. Only shifts that haven't been published yet are counted.
To see which shifts they are, look for the warning triangle on shift cards; hover it to read Marked as unavailable. See See availability, leave and weather on the roster.
Publish
Select Publish. Every shift in that week at this location is published, even ones hidden by filters, and you'll see Roster published successfully.
Any change you save to a published shift, in the shift form or on the card, turns it back into a draft, and the button goes back to Publish updates. Staff keep seeing the version you last published until you publish again.
Publish a single shift
To send out one shift without publishing the whole week, open its menu (the ⋮ button on the card, or right-click it) and choose Publish this shift. It's greyed out on a shift that's already published.
Choose Send updates only to tell the person on the shift, or No notification. For a shift with someone on it, Send updates only is selected for you; for an open shift, No notification is. If the person is unavailable then, the window asks Publish shift with 1 availability clash?; you can still publish. The same check in Day view reads Publish day with, followed by the count. Once every shift in the week is published, the week itself shows Published.
Publish several weeks at once
If you've built more than one week ahead, you can publish them all together.
Choose Publish all
Open the arrow beside the publish button and choose Publish all. It shows how many weeks have unpublished shifts at this location, counting from this week, for example Publish all (2 weeks). It's greyed out when fewer than two weeks need publishing.
Check the summary and choose who's notified
The Publish all schedules window shows how many weeks and shifts it will publish and the dates they cover. If any of those shifts are assigned to someone who's unavailable at that time, it also asks, for example, Publish 2 weeks with 2 availability clashes? and lists each week that has them, such as Week of Mon 5 Oct: 2 clashes. You can still publish. Choose who's notified:
- Send to all employees: everyone at this location with a shift in those weeks gets one message covering all of them.
- Send updates only: only people whose shifts changed are notified.
- No notification: nobody is sent anything.
Publish and carry on
Select Publish with the number of weeks. Publishing runs in the background, so you can keep working or leave the page. You'll see Publishing 2 weeks. We'll let you know when it's done., and the menu item reads Publishing 2 weeks... until it finishes.
When it's done you get a Schedules published notification, for example 2 weeks published. No notifications sent. The publish button may still read Publish updates until you move to another week and back.
If a week can't be published, the others still go out, and the notification Some weeks need attention tells you which week and why. Publish all covers up to 12 weeks at a time; anything beyond that is left for the next run.
Other options in the publish menu
- Send open shifts to all staff emails the team about the open shifts on screen, so they can ask for them. Each person's list leaves out shifts that clash with theirs or that they're unavailable for. See Get a shift covered.
- Resend roster to all staff sends everyone with a shift the version of the week you last published again. It doesn't include changes you haven't published yet.
- Clear all internal shifts deletes every shift on screen for this week (or this day, in Day view). Filters apply, so hidden shifts stay. Shiftly asks you to confirm with Delete shifts first. This can't be undone, so use it only when you want to start the week again. Staff lose any published shifts from Shiftly Me straight away, and are notified that they were cancelled the next time you publish.
What your staff receive
When you publish with notifications on, each person gets an email, a notification on their phone and a message in Shiftly Me, depending on their notification settings. The first time a week is published, they get New Roster Published with their shifts for the week. After that, publishing changes sends Shift Updated, New Shift Assigned, Shift Cancelled or Shift Reassigned (or the plural), and a resend sends Roster Update. The email also lists open shifts they could pick up, leaving out any that clash with their own shifts or that they're unavailable for. With Publish all, each person instead gets one Your roster has been published message covering every week.
Shiftly Me shows each person the roster as you last published it. Draft changes don't reach their phone until you publish. (Shiftly Me is the staff app. See The Shiftly apps.)
Related
Creating & editing shifts
Add and change the shifts that make up the roster.
Copying & repeating shifts
Fill the week quickly before you publish.
Get a shift covered
Leave shifts open for staff to claim, and find cover.
Find your way around the roster
Read the roster and its shift statuses.
On the Shiftly website
Rostering
Build and publish staff rosters.
Track sales and labour cost on the roster
Enter a sales forecast or actual sales for each day, and see the day's labour cost and labour percentage against your target right on the roster.
Roster templates
Save a week's shifts as a reusable template, then load it onto another week to rebuild the same schedule in seconds.