An overview of all the ways to create shifts in your Schedule from creating a single shift to using Deputy's Smart Scheduling to build your schedule automatically.

• Create a new shift
• Create a single shift for a team member
• Create a shift for your team members to claim
  • Open shifts
  • Offer shifts
• Scheduling from the team member list
• Creating new shifts from existing shifts
• Creating shifts using Auto-scheduling
• How to delete a shift
• Shift history
• Watch a short video on how shifts work in Deputy and how to build a schedule

 

1. Open the Schedule tab and select your desired location and date then either click the "+" symbol or double-click the work area you want to create the shift in.

2. Enter the shift details in the pop-up including:

• Who is working the shift?
• Start and finish time 
• In which area they are working (will default to the area you click in on the Schedule to create the shift but you can change it as required)
• Break duration 
• Any shift notes for the team member completing the shift (this information will be sent to the team member when the shift is published). There is a 1000-character limit on shift notes.

Click here to read more about how Deputy determines the default shift start time, shift length and break duration.

3. Once you enter your required shift details you can click Save and then go on to publish the shift.

Tip: System administrators are able to change what the unpaid meal break and the paid breaks are called in Deputy.

For more information about scheduling breaks please read Break planning.

 

If you know who you want to schedule on the shift you can select their name from the drop-down list at the top of the popup.

The dropdown will display a list of team members to choose from with the most suitable at the top of the list.

Deputy determines the most suitable team member to suggest for a shift based on:

• whether the manager has set the team member as preferred for this work area
• whether they are recommended to work based on Deputy's five factors (running checks based on fatigue, training, availability/leave, permission to work at the location, and whether there is a conflicting shift).

In the example below, Sally and Isabel are recommended for this shift but Andrew is not because he is not trained for this work area. Note that you can still select a team member for a shift if they are not recommended by overriding the warning.

If you know who you want to schedule on the shift then select their name from the list or begin typing it in the field.

Once the team member is selected and the other shift details are completed you can click Save and then go on to publish the shift.

Note: Users with Supervisor level access will not see shift costs when scheduling team members. Only users with Location Manager or System Administrator level access can see team member costs.

 

You also have the option to use Team member view to create a shift. When you click on the cross to create a shift in Team member view, since Deputy already knows who the shift is being created for Deputy will use historical scheduling data for that team member to prepopulate the shift. The shift details:

• start time
• shift length
• break duration
• Area 

will be prefilled with suggested data based on this team member's previous scheduled activity.

Of course, each shift start and finish time, area and break length can be further edited by the scheduling manager before they click Save.

You can tell that Deputy is suggesting shift details based on historical schedules when you see the sparkle icon next to the shift times.

 

If you don't want to specify a team member for a shift, you can select Open Shift or Open shift with approval to create an Open shift or Open shift with approval.

When you publish an open shift, Deputy will notify all recommended team members with the shift details and allow them to claim the shift on either a first come first served basis or with manager approval depending on what the manager has set.

Note: If you need to create multiple identical open shifts for your team members to claim you can use the Clone shifts feature in shift actions.

 

If the scheduling manager would like more control to offer the shift to multiple staff members of their choosing they can select Send Offers from the Shift Actions menu.

A pop-up will appear for the manager to select which team members to invite to claim the shift.

Note that you can still select a team member for a shift if they are not recommended by overriding the warning.

Click the Invite X to work this shift button to send the offer to the selected team member. Managers can cancel the offer by editing the shift again.

Note: If you send an offer for a shift you do not need to then publish this shift.

 

Another way of creating shifts is to drag and drop team members into the schedule from the team member list on the left-hand side of the Schedule tab.

You are able to filter and view your team members in this list by clicking on the drop-down button at the top of the list to reveal the criteria to sort this team member list including:

• display name
• first name
• last name
• total hours
• scheduled cost
• base cost
• stress
• age
• role
• most qualified
• distance
• tenure
• leave/available

You are also able to type in the field at the top to search by team member name or even their training type. For example, typing "Sales" in the search field will filter the list to only show team members trained in Sales.

The team member list will show you a quick cost/hours summary for all team members with hours scheduled in this location for the period selected, as well as team members allowed to work at this location with no hours (found at the bottom of the list).

Note: The shift costs displayed in the team member list are scheduled shift costs but will update when timesheets are approved. If the team member worked more or less hours than scheduled then when this timesheet is approved the actual costs will display for this shift rather then the scheduled costs for the individual shift. If an employee is currently on shift, the costs of that shift might not appear in the team member list (as the timesheet is open). 

Users with Supervisor access level will not have access to team member costs.

Simply click the team member on the left to display their shifts in this location.

You can also drag and drop team members from the list to the schedule to rapidly create shifts for them.

Note that the shifts created using this method will have the default start and finish time and break duration as per settings set here). If you need to change them you can go into the shift to edit the details before publishing the shift. You can use bulk shift update if you have lots of shifts to edit.

Adding new team members in the Schedule

You also have the option of adding a new team members if you have missed anyone out. If you scroll all the way down from the list, you will be able to see the Add team member function, where it will allow you to add multiple team members.

For more information about adding new members, please check out the Add new members guide.

 

Once you have your schedule set up there's no need to create it from scratch each week, fortnight or month, you can use a variety of features to save you time when scheduling.

Once you have created a shift and you know the team member will be working the same shift for the rest of the week you can use repeating shifts by clicking on the drop-down arrow next to the Save button.

It is possible to copy a single shift, a day's worth of shifts or even a 2 or 4 week period from one date period to another date period in the Schedule.

Read Copy shifts for more information.

Once you have a schedule that is set up you can save the schedule as a template to load into another date period as required.

Read Schedule templates for more information.

 

With Deputy's Smart Scheduling utilising your own business data, you can use Auto-scheduling to build a shift structure and fill it with the most suitable team members automatically.

Alternatively, if you have team members who have an agreement to work regular scheduled shifts you can use Auto-schedule regular working hours to automatically build their schedule.

 

If you have created a shift in error there are a number of ways you can remove it:

• Select the shift in the schedule and hit the Delete or Backspace key on your keyboard
• Open the shift in the schedule and click on the Delete button.

If you want to know who created or accepted a shift then click on the shift and click on the three dots button then select View shift history.

You can see information such as when a shift was created an published and by who:

You can see who approved an open shift:

Where shifts have been swapped between team members you will see a shift swap status number in the shift history.

The numbers for the shift swap status correspond as follows:

Swap Status	Description	Notes
0	Not required	Shift swap is not required. Also, 0 appears when the shift swap request has been declined, cancelled or deleted by the user named in the history.
1	Pending Out	a request has been sent out on this shift for another team member to swap but has not yet been actioned by that team member
2	Pending In	a swap request has been received from another team member to work this shift but the request has not yet been actioned by the team member who was originally assigned to work this shift
3	Pending In Out	a request was sent out for another team member to work this shift but that team member then requested a swap with a third team member and no action has been taken to accept or decline the swap yet
4	Pending approval	the shift swap is awaiting manager approval for shift swap if enabled
5	Approved	the shift swap was approved by the manager if manager approval for shift swap is enabled OR  the shift swap was accepted by the requested team member if manager approval for shift swap is not enabled

 

For more information on the shift once it began please see Timesheet history.

 

Watch a short video on how shifts work in Deputy and how to build a schedule