Shift scheduling

The Staff module schedules people onto shifts. Departments build shifts made of slots (roles), staff pick up work by claiming open slots or bidding on them, and leadership assigns, reviews bids, and watches coverage. This page covers the whole system, plus the department Schedule Planner for pre-event task planning.

Note

Don’t confuse this with the Schedule module, which handles public programming — panels, rooms, tracks, and digital signage. Everything on this page (Open Shifts, My Shifts, Shift Schedules, Department Schedules, Schedule Planner) lives in the Staff module and is about staffing.

Concepts

Shift

A block of time in one department — a name, a start and end, an optional location, and some behavior flags.

Slot

One position within a shift, with a role name (for example “Lead”, “Runner”, “Radio Operator”) and optional description. A shift with Max Slots = 4 needs four people.

Assignment

A person seated in a slot. Every assignment records how it happened — assigned by leadership, claimed by the person, or won via a bid — and has a status of pending, confirmed, or cancelled.

Bid

A request to work a slot (or a whole shift) that leadership must accept or reject. Bids can carry an optional message from the bidder.

How a shift is offered to staff

Whether staff can pick a shift up themselves depends on the flags set when the shift is created:

Flag

Effect

Open for self-claim

The master switch. Until it is on, the shift never appears on Open Shifts and can only be staffed by direct assignment.

Requires bidding

Slots accept bids instead of instant claims; leadership picks the winners.

Bid on the whole shift

Staff bid on the shift as a unit rather than a specific role; slots just represent how many people are needed. Accepted bidders are seated in the next free slot.

Claimable by all staff

Any staff member of the event can pick the shift up, not just members of the owning department.

For staff & volunteers

Finding and claiming shifts

Staff → Open Shifts lists every open shift you are eligible for — shifts in your own departments, plus any shift marked claimable by all staff. Shifts are grouped by day and can be filtered by department, and each card shows the available roles.

  • On a claimable slot, press Claim — you are seated immediately, no approval needed.

  • On a bid slot (or a whole-shift bid), press Place Bid, optionally adding a message for leadership, and submit. Your bid shows as pending until leadership accepts or rejects it; you can withdraw a pending bid at any time, and re-bid later if you change your mind.

  • If a shift overlaps something you’re already assigned to, the card warns you (“Overlaps with your schedule”). The system will refuse to double-book you.

Shifts that are completely full disappear from Open Shifts.

My Shifts

Staff → My Shifts shows everything you’re assigned to: totals for shifts and hours, a countdown to your next shift, and a day-by-day list. Each entry is tagged with how you got it (Self-Claimed or Assigned) and its status.

To drop a shift, use Release on the entry (available until the shift has started). If you can’t release something, contact your department leadership.

Your assignments also appear on the staff dashboard (today’s and upcoming shifts), on the time clock kiosk when you clock in, and in your assigned-hours total on the Your Hours tile.

For department leadership

Two pages manage the same data from different angles:

  • Staff → Shift Schedules — a day-by-day board of shift cards with a draggable roster sidebar: drag a person onto a slot to assign them.

  • Staff → Department Schedules — a calendar with one column per person plus an amber Open / Unassigned column, so coverage gaps are visible at a glance. Members without management rights see it in view-only mode.

Creating shifts

From the Shift Schedules page, pick your department and create a shift: Shift Name, Start/End (the end must be after the start), Location, Max Slots (1–50), and the flags described above. (The two bidding options only become available once Open for self-claim is checked.)

Slots are generated automatically (“Slot 1”, “Slot 2”, …) — rename them or add proper roles with Add Role, giving each a role name, description, and its own open/bidding settings. Note that changing Max Slots later does not add or remove slots; add or delete roles individually instead.

Copy day duplicates an entire day’s shifts — including all their roles — onto another date, which is the fast way to build out a multi-day schedule.

Assigning people

You can always seat people directly, regardless of the shift’s flags: drag a roster chip onto a slot on the board, or use the slot’s Assign a staff member picker on the calendar. The picker hides anyone already seated in another slot of the same shift, and the system rejects assignments that overlap the person’s existing shifts.

Removing an assignment as leadership deletes it; a person releasing their own assignment cancels it (it stays visible as Cancelled).

Reviewing bids

Slots and shifts with pending bids show a bid count; Review Bids opens the queue. Each bid shows the bidder and their message. On accept you can add a review note; the bidder is seated immediately.

  • Accepting a slot-level bid automatically rejects all other pending bids on that slot (“Another bid was accepted.”).

  • Accepting a shift-level bid seats the bidder in the next free slot; the review dialog stays open so you can keep accepting until the shift is full, at which point remaining bids are rejected (“The shift has been filled.”).

Bids are private: staff see only their own bids (plus overall bid counts); the full list is visible only to that department’s leadership and staff-module admins.

Note

There are no email notifications for shifts, claims, or bid decisions — staff see the result on Open Shifts / My Shifts and via in-app messages. (The only shift-related email is the auto clock-out notice; see Time clock.)

Shifts and the time clock

Scheduling and the time clock connect in three ways:

  • When someone clocks in at a kiosk during (or within an hour of) a shift in their department, the entry is linked to that shift; if they were actually assigned to it, the entry is marked planned.

  • Someone still inside an assigned shift is protected from auto clock-out until the shift ends.

  • The Time Clock dashboard compares expected vs. clocked-in headcount per running shift and flags missed shifts (no clock-in by 15 minutes after the shift ended).

The Schedule Planner

Staff → Schedule Planner is a separate pre-event planning tool: a department task list rendered as a Gantt chart (with drag-to-reschedule and finish-to-start dependency arrows) or a kanban board (Not Started / In Progress / Blocked / Completed columns).

  • Every task gets a key like FD26-042, a department, responsible parties, start/due dates, a status, and optional dependencies. Dependency loops and cross-event links are rejected.

  • Filter by department, or group by department or responsible party.

  • Who can do what: any staff member can view the planner for their departments. Department leadership can edit their department’s tasks and grant edit access to specific members (Manage Access). Event admins, tenant superusers, and leadership of a board-level department (an organizer-designated oversight department) can see and edit everything.

  • Emails: responsible parties are notified when assigned to a task, and reminder emails go out when a task is due soon (about 48 hours ahead) or overdue. Status changes do not send email.

Rules & edge cases

  • One seat per person per slot. Claims are first-come, first-served — a slot with an active assignment refuses further claims and bids.

  • No double-booking. Claims, bids, bid acceptance, and direct assignment all reject anything overlapping the person’s existing shifts. The Open Shifts page warns before you try, but the server is the enforcer.

  • Eligibility. You can self-serve a shift if you belong to its department in any role (including volunteer); claimable by all staff widens that to any department member of the event.

  • Re-bidding is fine. A withdrawn or rejected bid can be placed again; the new bid replaces the old one.

  • Times are shown in the event’s timezone everywhere — Open Shifts, My Shifts, and the schedule pages.

  • All shift, slot, assignment, and bid changes are recorded in the staff audit log.

Permissions summary

Action

Who

View Open Shifts, claim, bid, release own assignment

Any department member (any role, volunteers included)

View a department’s schedule pages

Members of that department (view-only) and staff-module admins

Create/edit shifts and roles, copy days, assign people, review bids

That department’s leadership (oversight, lead, second, and deputies) or staff-module admin/superadmin

Planner board (see & edit everything)

Event admins, tenant superusers, leadership of a board-level department

Note the deputy nuance: deputies count as leadership for scheduling, even though they are excluded from HR actions — see HR & permissions.