An open shift is a shift with no employee assigned that you post to a shared pool. Instead of ringing round for a volunteer, you publish the free slot and eligible employees put themselves forward — first come, first served. You can also assign the shift to a specific person at any moment. The pool is managed by the Organisation Administrator, the Advisor, the Location Manager and the Manager.

Before you start: switch the feature on at the location

Open shifts work separately for each location and are off by default. Turn them on in the location editor, on the "Working hours" tab, in the "Shift swaps & giveaways" section — the "Open shifts" switch.

Where to find the pool

In the schedule, right below the "Unassigned" row, an "Open shifts" row appears. Under its name you can see a counter: the number of open shifts in the current range and the sum of their hours.

The row is visible to managers running the pool and to employees who may take shifts. A regular employee has no actions in it other than taking a shift.

Creating an open shift

1. Click an empty cell in the "Open shifts" row on the day you want.
2. The "New change" window opens with the "Employees" field set to "Open shift".
3. Fill in the hours, the position and any tags and breaks. The arrows by the counter at the bottom set how many identical shifts to create at once.
4. At "Share with" choose All eligible employees, or click "Change" and pick specific people.
5. Click "Save".

Publishing the pool

Publishing puts the shift in the pool and sends a notification to eligible employees. The bulk actions are in the menu (the three-dot icon) by the row name:

• "Publish all" — publishes every draft in the current range and notifies employees.
• "Unpublish all" — takes published shifts out of the pool. They go back to draft and employees get no notification.
• "Delete all" — removes every open shift in the range.

Who can take a shift

An open shift only reaches employees who really can take it over. An employee has to simultaneously:

• be active in the schedule,
• belong to that location (as their main or an additional one),
• not be hidden from that location's schedule,
• hold the position given on the shift.

If you picked specific people while creating the shift, only they will see it. A clash with another shift or with leave does not block the take, but the employee gets a warning and has to confirm it. The shift goes to the first person who clicks — the others see a message that someone already took it.

Assigning, editing and deleting

Hovering over an open shift tile brings up three manager actions:

• Assign person — opens the list of employees eligible for that shift, ranked by how well they fit. The person you pick gets the shift without waiting for volunteers.
• Edit shift — changes the hours, the position or the breaks.
• Delete — removes the shift from the pool. When several identical shifts are grouped into one tile with a counter, you choose whether to delete one or all of them.

Reviewing submissions outside the schedule

Every submission about passing shifts around is collected on the "Shift swaps & giveaways" tab in the "Requests" module. The "Type" filter narrows the list down to open shifts alone, and the status, location, employee and date-range filters find a specific submission.

Turning a planned shift into an open one

You do not have to delete a shift to hand it to the pool. There are two routes:

• in the menu on a planned shift tile choose "Make open",
• or open the shift and set the "Employees" field to "Open shift".

Either way the employee is detached and the shift moves to the pool row as a draft ready to publish.

Updated on: 13/08/2026