How do I plan shifts for my team?

Shift scheduling lets you define working hours once as shift templates, give them to teams or people for a period, and see who works when. It is included in the Growth and Pro plans and in the free trial. Starter does not include it.

Turn on Shift scheduling first

Shift scheduling is a module and it is off by default. An owner or co-owner turns it on under Workspace settings > Tracking > Modules > Shift scheduling. Afterwards Shifts appears under Tracking in the sidebar for everyone in the workspace.

While the module is off, Shifts does not appear under Tracking, and the shift screens say that shift scheduling is turned off. On Starter, the Shift scheduling switch is still listed there but locked, with a Not in your plan badge next to it.

Until you create a shift template and assign it, everyone keeps following the organization's working days and hours, and tracking works as before. Turning the module on changes nothing for anyone by itself.

Who can do what

• Owners and co-owners create and change shift templates and rotating patterns, and plan for the whole workspace.
• Managers can see templates and patterns but cannot change them. They plan their own team and the people in it. A manager without a team can assign only people who have no team, and cannot assign to a team.
• Employees see their own schedule on My schedule and their own days on Attendance, both under Tracking > Shifts.

How do I create a shift template?

A shift template is a reusable set of working hours: a start and end time, an unpaid break, tolerances for late arrival and early leave, and an overtime threshold. Create one on the Templates tab under Tracking > Shifts.

• If the end time is earlier than the start time, the shift ends the next day. A shift from 22:00 to 06:00 is a night shift and needs no special setting.
• The start and end time cannot be the same, and the unpaid break must be shorter than the shift.
• The late arrival tolerance is the number of minutes after the start that still count as on time. The early leave tolerance is the number of minutes before the end that still count as a full shift. Overtime starts counting after the minutes you set past the end.
• A template that is used in an assignment, a rotating pattern or a single-day exception cannot be deleted. Remove it from those places first, then try again.

How do I assign a shift to a team or a person?

On the Assignments tab, choose New assignment. Pick who it is for (a team or a person), a single shift template or a repeating pattern, the start date and an optional end date. The end date is included. Without an end date the assignment continues until you change it.

• When assignments for the same team or person overlap, the one that starts latest wins.
• A person's own assignment is applied before their team's assignment.
• Deleting an assignment sends the schedule back to the next layer: the team shift, or the organization's default working hours.
• Editing an existing assignment changes only that assignment.

Assign to many people or teams at once

To give the same shift and the same dates to several people or teams, turn on Assign to several people at once (or Assign to several teams at once) in the New assignment window and select everyone. You can select at most 100 at a time. Managers can select people and their own team only.

The assignments are saved together: either all of them are created or none. If one is rejected, nothing is saved, and the message names the person or team that was rejected and explains why. If the cause is the selection itself, for example a duplicate target, someone from another team or a deleted person, choose Done and create the assignment again without that target. If the cause is temporary, such as a connection problem, Try again for all sends the same selection again.

How do I check and change a week?

The Schedule tab shows one row per employee and one column per day. Use the arrows to change weeks and the team filter to narrow the list. Each day shows what decided it: Exception (a single-day exception), Person, Team or Default (the default working hours). A cell that comes from a rotating pattern shows the name of the pattern when you hover over it.

• To change one day, open the cell, choose Change for this day and pick a shift template. This saves a single-day exception.
• Mark as day off turns that day into a day off.
• Remove exception brings back what the assignments or the default hours say for that day.
• If nothing is planned for the week, a note says that the default working hours apply and links to Assignments.

What do employees see?

On the My schedule tab under Tracking > Shifts, each employee sees their next two weeks: the shift name, the hours in the organization's time zone, days off and what decided each day. Days that only follow the default hours are labeled Working hours.

Which notifications do shifts send to employees?

Employees get two push notifications about their own shifts, and both are on by default.

• Schedule changes. When shifts in the next 14 days change, the employee gets one combined notification instead of one per change. Worktivity checks every 15 minutes: when it sees a change it waits for the next check, then sends everything that changed in the meantime as one message. A first schedule arrives as a message that the schedule is ready, later edits as a message that it was updated.
• Clock-out reminder. If an employee clocked in but did not clock out, they get a reminder 2 hours after the shift ends. Days off and approved leave do not trigger it.

Nothing is sent between 22:00 and 07:00 in the organization's time zone. Schedule changes wait until the morning, and a reminder is sent from 07:00 on, as long as the shift ended no more than 36 hours earlier. Each person can switch these off in Account settings > Notifications, in the Shifts group: Your shift schedule changes and Clock-out reminders. These rows appear only when the module is on and the workspace has shift assignments or single-day exceptions coming up. The notifications that warn managers about late arrivals and absences are described in the attendance article.

Can the assistant answer questions about shifts?

Yes. The assistant in Worktivity's chat screen, and Claude or ChatGPT linked to Worktivity, can read shifts. Two read-only tools cover the schedule:

• Shift schedule (shift_schedule) shows who works which shift on each day of a date range. Owners and co-owners get the whole workspace. Managers get their own team; a manager who is not assigned to a team is asked to have an owner assign one, and asking about another team is refused. Employees do not get this tool.
• My shift schedule (my_shift_schedule) shows your own shift on each day, up to 14 days starting today. Every role has it, including managers without a team.

Both tools only read: the assistant cannot assign or change a shift. They work in Growth, Pro and the free trial, and only after Shift scheduling is turned on in Workspace settings. Shift schedule covers at most 31 days at a time and looks at the next 7 days unless you name dates. Setup is explained in the AI connections article.

How does it connect to attendance and the timesheet?

Planned shifts feed the Attendance report and the planned hours in the timesheet. A shift does not replace tracking: Worktivity still records the time people actually work and compares it with the plan.