Publishing a roster
Send your drafted shifts to staff, choose who gets notified, publish a single shift, and resend or clear a week.
Shifts you add, copy or edit start as drafts — only you can see them. Publishing sends the roster to your team and locks in what they'll see. This guide covers the publish button, choosing who gets notified, publishing a single shift, the extra send options, 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 with access to the location you're rostering.
- 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 scheduler. Its label tells you the state of the week you're viewing.
| Button says | What it means |
|---|---|
| Publish schedule | This week has never been published and has draft shifts ready to send. |
| 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). |
| Unpublished | The week has never been published and there's nothing to send yet (greyed out). |
Whenever there are no unpublished changes, the button is disabled — there's simply nothing to publish.
Publish your roster
Open the publish window
Select the main publish button (Publish schedule or Publish updates). A 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 rostered at this location is emailed their schedule.
- Send updates only — only people whose shifts actually changed are emailed. This option is available once the week has been published at least once, so it's greyed out on a first publish.
- No notification — the shifts go live, but no emails are sent.
Publish
Select Publish. The drafted shifts become published, the week is marked as published, and any notifications you chose go out. You'll see Roster published successfully.
Publish a single shift
To send out just one shift without publishing the whole week, right-click it and choose Publish this shift (available on any shift that isn't already published).
You can Send updates only (notify the assigned person — available once the week has been published before) or pick No notification. Once every shift on the week is published, the week itself flips to Published.
More publish actions
The arrow beside the publish button opens a few extra options.
- Send open shifts to all staff — emails every eligible staff member about the unfilled shifts on this week so they can claim them. Only staff who don't already have a clashing shift are emailed. Greyed out when there are no open shifts. See Open shifts.
- Resend roster to all staff — re-sends the full published roster to everyone (handy if someone says they didn't get it). Greyed out until the week has been published.
- Clear all internal shifts — deletes every shift on this week. Shiftly asks you to confirm first (Delete shifts). This can't be undone, so use it only when you want to start the week over.
What your staff receive
When you publish with notifications on, each affected person gets an email — New Roster Published the first time, then targeted ones like Shifts Updated, New Shifts Assigned, Shifts Cancelled or Shifts Reassigned when you publish changes. The email lists their shifts for the week and any open shifts they could pick up.
They also get a notification in the Shiftly Me app, so staff who have it installed see roster changes live on their phone. (Shiftly Me is the staff app — see The Shiftly apps.)
Related
Copying & repeating shifts
Copy and paste a shift into another slot, repeat it across the week, duplicate it as you drag, stack a second shift in a cell, and create a timesheet from a shift.
Roster templates
Save a week's shifts as a reusable template, then load it onto another week to rebuild the same schedule in seconds.