- What are Open shifts with approval?
- Create Open shifts with approval
- Viewing Open shifts on the Schedule
- Team members can request, decline or withdraw from Open shifts with approval
- How to edit the details of Open shifts with approval after requests have already been submitted
- How to approve and manage Open shift requests
- Open shifts with approval and manager notifications
What are Open shifts with approval?
- Approve open shifts requested by team members.
- Approve shifts based on team members' attributes. You can select from a list of team members, based on the cost of the shift, hours worked this week or those that were the earliest to request the shift.
Note: you can not use the Send offers feature in conjunction with Open shifts with approval. If you wish to send offers to specific team members please instead add an Open shift.
Create Open shifts with approval
1. On the Schedule page, you can drag the Open Shift into the area and day you want to create the shift.
Alternatively, you can click the + icon in the area you want to create a new shift.
2. In the popup that appears, click the drop-down menu at the top of the popup and select Open Shift with approval from the list.
3. In the same window, fill in the rest of the details of the shift such as start, break and finish times, as well as any notes to the team member who takes the shift. When you are finished, click Save.
4. Ensure that you publish your schedule when you are finished.
Viewing Open shifts on the Schedule
Open Shifts display in the schedule as:
- Open Shifts (not requiring approval) will display OPEN
- Open shifts requiring approval (but with no requests to work yet) will have a person icon next to OPEN
- Open Shifts with requests already against them will say how many people have submitted requests for that shift
as shown below:
Tip: copy one shift to make another by hovering your mouse over the shift and selecting ‘Copy’ (or pressing C on your keyboard) on the shift you want to copy then clicking on the past icon (or pressing V on your keyboard) after selecting the appropriate slot on the schedule.
Team members can request or decline (or withdraw an earlier request) for Open shifts with approval
Team members can request and decline open shifts with approval via their email or mobile application.
Open Shift requests allows team members to express interest in an Open Shift. Managers can view who has requested to pick up the Open Shift and select to approve a team member to work the shift.
How to request an Open shift with approval via Deputy website
To do this via web browser, you can log into Deputy at once.deputy.com
Click on the Me tab and in the Calendar section, the Open shift will appear on the relevant day on the calendar or click on Available shifts.
Note: You are also able to see open shifts by clicking on the Schedule page.
If the manager has created an Open shift you can click on Claim Shift to indicate you will work this shift.
If the manager has set the Open shift up to require a manager's approval on who claims the shift, then you can click Request Shift.
Now, your shift request, along with other team members' requests for the open shift will await approval by the manager who will select a team member to take the shift.
This system does not rely on first in, first served.
You can see in the example below there is a shift on Wednesday that is pending manager approval. If you no longer wish to request this shift you can withdraw the shift request again if you need to by clicking Withdraw Shift.
How to request an Open shift with approval via the Deputy mobile app
If you have notifications turned on for your Deputy app you will receive a notification whenever there is a new Open shift. You can tap on this notification to open the Deputy app.
In the Deputy app and tap the Home tab. On this screen, tap Available Shifts then tap on the Open Shift you want to claim. You can see that open shifts that are free to claim have a person icon on the left of them and open shifts that require manager approval to assign have an icon with a tick.
If the manager has set the Open shift up to require a manager's approval on who claims the shift, then when you tap on the shift you can see the option to Request Shift or you can Decline shift if you know you don't want to work this shift. If you tap Decline shift, it will disappear from your available shift list. If you tap Request shift the status will change to Pending Approval while you wait for the manager to review all requests.
If you later decide you don't want to work this shift (before the manager has actioned the requests) you will need to tap Withdraw request and then you can tap Decline shift and this will remove the shift from your
If you were not approved to work the shift you will receive a push notification informing you and the shift will not be visible to you in Deputy.
or you may receive this message saying the shift has been assigned to someone else.
How to request an Open shift with approval via email
Open shifts will be sent to recommended team members via email. Team members can claim the shift directly from their email without needing to login Deputy (unless they choose to by clicking Log in with Deputy)
1. Click View in your email and another browser window on your device will be opened.
2. A list of all your upcoming and available shifts will be displayed. Click on Request to claim an open shift with approval.
In the example below you can see the team member has:
- one confirmed shift on Wednesday 7th Aug
- an open shift that can be claimed straight away on Friday 9th Aug
- an open shift with approval on Wednesday 14th Aug they have previously requested to work but is awaiting manager approval
- two open shifts with approval on Thursday 15th Aug and Saturday 17th Aug that they can either decline to work or request to work and will be sent to the manager for approval
- If you have been approved to work the shift then the shift will now appear in your Schedule tab and All upcoming shifts list on the Home tab.
- If you were not approved to work the shift you will receive a push notification informing you (or an email if you are not logged into the Deputy mobile app) and the shift will not be visible to you in Deputy.
How to edit the details of Open shifts with approval after requests to work have already been submitted
There may be circumstances where you have already created an open shift with approval and received requests from team members to work that shift but realise you need to update or change some aspects of the shift such as the shift start or end time.
You can do this by opening the shift in the Schedule and updating the relevant details. You will be warned that these changes will remove all recipient responses.
When you click Save on the new shift details Deputy will notify your team members that the original shift has been cancelled.
The team member will be notified the shift has been cancelled.
When you publish the new updated shift details the team members will be notified there is a new open shift with approval to request to work.
Approving an Open Shift
Creating an Open shift with approval means that the manager will need to approve a team member from those who have requested to work the shift. Managers will not be notified when team members request shifts but can check which shifts need approval by clicking on Open shifts that are either unfilled or have requests and need attention from the Me dashboard as shown below.
Note: Open shifts requiring approval will only begin to appear in this list on the Me tab up to 8 days before the shift is due to start. If you need to review and approve an open shift more than 8 days before the shift then please click directly on the shift in the schedule as explained below or use the Deputy mobile app to review and approve open shifts.
Managers can also see Open shifts requiring approval directly in the schedule.
- Open Shifts (not requiring approval) will display OPEN
- Open shifts requiring approval (but with no requests to work yet) will have a person icon next to OPEN
- Open Shifts with requests already against them will say how many people have submitted requests for that shift
Click on the shift with requests.
Under the recipients section, the shift details will show how many team members have requested to work the shift and how many have declined. Click View.
In the window that opens, you can see which team members have requested to work the open shift and who has declined.
You can search for team members by name by typing in the search field or you can sort the team members by clicking on the headers to sort by:
- cost of shift (if you schedule this team member for the shift)
- hours (total hours this team member has already been scheduled this week)
- When the team member requested the shift
Once you have selected a team member to work the shift, click on the purple arrow on the right-hand side of the screen and click on red cross for the other members who have requested to work the shift but have been declined.
If there is a person icon next to the red DECLINED label then that means the team member themselves declined the shift.
If the label DECLINED does not have a person icon next to it, then that means a manager has declined the team member to work the shift.
Team members who are declined (red cross in above screen) to work an open shift will receive a push notification (if they are logged into the Deputy mobile app, or an email if they are not) informing them they were not successful and the shift will no longer be visible to them in Deputy.
If you make no selection (purple tick no red cross) for a specific team member but instead choose to approve a different team member who requested the shift, then all other team members who also requested to work that shift will get this message informing them that the shift has been assigned to someone else.
You can see which manager approved the shift in the Shift history when you click on the three dots icon then View shift history or hit H on the keyboard with the shift open.
Open shifts and manager notifications
Open shifts that do not require approval and go to the first team member to claim them, will trigger a manager notification to inform the manager which team member has claimed the shift. If you'd like to know more about which manager received the notification read more in FAQs for manager notifications.
Due to the fact that Open shifts with approval are not automatically being assigned to the first team member that requests them, managers will not be notified when team member requests to work an Open shift with approval.
Managers still have the ability to view Open shifts requests requiring approval in the dashboard.
If you would like to be notified that an Open Shift hasn’t been filled, you can set up an Un-filled Open Shift extension to send a notification to managers that an Open Shift has not been filled.
You can read more about Notifications and Extensions.