Find your way around the roster
Find your way around the roster — switch between week and day views, move between dates, filter, read shift statuses, and assign your team.
The scheduler is where your whole roster comes together. Open it from Roster in the main navigation. This guide is a tour of the roster itself — how to read it, switch between the week and day views, move between dates, filter, and assign staff. Building, publishing, and copying shifts each have their own guide, linked at the end.
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 at least one location.
- Open Roster from the main navigation.
- Each location has its own roster. Switch location using the selector at the top left — the examples below are Bondi Beach.
What you can do here depends on your access. If you can view the roster but not change it, the Roster Template and Publish schedule controls and the row-adding footer are hidden, and shifts are read-only. See Sharing access.
Find your way around
Read the week grid
The roster opens on Week. Each column is a day, and each row is a position (for example Bartender or Waitstaff). Every shift sits in the cell for its day and position.
Each day header shows that day's totals — hours scheduled, number of shifts, and people assigned — along with the weather forecast. Each row shows the same totals for that position across the week.
Check the summary bar
The bar above the roster sums up what you're looking at: total hours, shifts, and how many people are currently working. If any open shifts have been requested, an open shift requests count appears here too.
On the right is the status legend — Unpublished, Assigned, Open and Active — each with a running count, matching the colours on the shift cards.
Switch between week and day
Pick a time axis
Week and Day sit next to the view menu. Week is the seven-day grid above. Day lays a single date out along a 24-hour timeline, so you can see exactly when people overlap and where the gaps are.
Read the day timeline
Rows are the same positions (or staff), but each shift is now a block positioned by its start and end time. The hour ruler runs from 12am to 11pm across the top. When you're looking at today, a line marks the current time.
Hover a shift for the detail
Hover a shift's time in either view to see its length in paid hours, the position and location, every scheduled break with its duration and whether it's paid, and the shift's status. If you have permission to see pay, the shift's cost shows here too.
Work directly on the day timeline
In Day, you can build the roster by dragging on the timeline itself. Times snap to the nearest 15 minutes.
Drag an empty row to create a shift
Press on an empty part of a row and drag across the hours you want. A dashed outline previews the shift and its times as you go. Let go and the shift form opens with the position, date and times already filled in.
A single click on an empty row does the same thing with a four-hour shift starting at that hour.
Move, stretch and copy
Drag a shift block sideways to change its time, or onto another row to change its position (or, in staff view, who's working it). Drag either end to stretch or shrink it. Hold Alt while dragging to leave the original in place and drop a copy.
If the move would clash with another shift that person already has, the shift form opens with the clash shown instead of saving silently. If they're on approved leave for the whole day, the row won't accept the shift and you'll see Can't schedule a shift — this employee is on approved leave.
A shift that's being worked right now can't be dragged, stretched or deleted until the person clocks out.
Switch between position and staff view
Open the view menu
Use the view menu at the top left (it reads View by position or View by staff). View by position groups the roster by role, so you can spot gaps in each position. View by staff turns each employee into a row instead.
View by staff
In View by staff, every team member is a row with their own hours, unassigned shifts collect in an Open row at the top, and empty cells show each person's availability (for example Only available with a time range) or their approved leave. It's the quickest way to see who is over- or under-booked.
Move between dates
Use the arrows beside the date to step backwards or forwards — a week at a time in Week, a day at a time in Day. Click the date itself to open a calendar and jump anywhere. The current day is marked Today.
Filter what you see
Open the filter panel
Select Filter in the header. You can narrow the roster by Employee (search by name), Status (Unpublished, Published, Active, Open), and Position. Each section shows how many filters are active, the Filter button carries a dot while any filter is on, and Clear All removes them in one go.
If nothing matches, the roster shows No shifts match your filters. Filters reset when you switch location.
The All Cost Centres menu beside the filter narrows the roster to a single project (the menu uses whatever you've named the feature — Projects, Cost centres, Jobs). Each shift card shows its code, like BAR-01, and picking one adds its hours, cost and staff count to the summary bar. See Cost centres & projects.
Read shift statuses and warnings
A shift card's colour tells you where it is in its lifecycle, matching the legend in the summary bar.
Unpublished — drafted but not yet sent to staff. The card is white with a light grey outline.
Assigned — published and assigned to a team member. The card has a dark outline and a pale blue fill.
Open — published with no one assigned, so staff can request it. The card is outlined in orange and reads Open shift.
Active — being worked right now. The card turns green once the assigned person has clocked in, and the summary bar's working count goes up.
One variation sits on top of those four: once a shift's end time has passed, its card fades to grey, so finished work doesn't compete with what's still ahead of you. An open shift that staff have requested keeps its orange card and gains a count of how many people have asked for it — see Open shifts.
A small warning triangle can appear on an assigned card. Hover it to read why:
- No timesheet — the shift has ended but no timesheet was recorded.
- Late by … — the shift's start time has passed and no one has clocked in.
- Marked as unavailable — the assigned person set themselves unavailable for that time.
Act on a shift
Open a shift's menu
Right-click a shift to open its menu: Copy shift, Paste shift, Create timesheet for shift, Find cover for this shift, Publish this shift, Repeat shift on the next day, Repeat shift for rest of the week, Edit shift, and Delete shift. Options that don't apply to that shift are greyed out — Publish this shift on an already-published shift, for example.
You can't edit or delete a shift while the assigned person is clocked in and working it — wait until they clock out. Any other shift, including ones that have already finished, can still be edited or deleted by clicking the card.
Assign staff from the tray
Open the drag-and-drop tray
Open the Drag and drop tray with the sidebar toggle at the top left of the roster. It lists everyone who can work this location with their hours and cost so far, and flags anyone already over weekly limit. The Open shift card at the top lets you drag an unassigned shift onto the roster.
Drag a person onto a day to assign them.
Reorder your rows
Each row has a drag handle on the left. Drag it up or down to set the order rows appear in — handy for putting your busiest roles at the top. The order sticks: staff order is remembered for the location, and position order for the business.
Add a row
At the bottom of the roster, + Add new position (or + Add new employee in staff view) adds another row so you can roster a position or person that isn't shown yet.
If a location has no positions (or, in staff view, no employees) yet, the roster is replaced by a prompt to add your first one — Add positions to get started, or Add employees to get started.
The first time you open the roster
A brand-new business sees a short guided tour the first time it opens the roster, walking through the dates, shift cards, views, the tray and publishing. New businesses also start with sample data so the roster isn't empty — when you're ready for your real team, use Remove sample data and confirm Remove demo data?. This permanently clears the sample employees, shifts and rosters.
Related
Creating & editing shifts
Add a shift, set times and breaks, and assign a team member.
Copying & repeating shifts
Copy, paste, repeat, and stack shifts to fill the week faster.
Publishing a roster
Send the schedule to your team and choose who gets notified.
Open shifts
Post shifts for staff to claim, and find cover for a shift.
Availability & weather
How availability and leave shape what you can roster.
Cost centres & projects
Roster against a project and see the codes on each card.
Exporting rosters
Download the visible dates as CSV, PDF, or a calendar file.
Sharing access
Control what your managers can see and change on the roster.
Connecting Xero
Connect payroll — the source of the roster's Connect to Xero banner.
On the Shiftly website
Rostering
Build and publish staff rosters.
Scheduling & rosters
Build, publish, and manage your weekly roster — create shifts, copy and repeat them, save templates, publish to staff, run open shifts, and export the week.
Creating & editing shifts
Add a shift, set its position, staff, times and breaks, read the cost estimate, and edit or delete it.