Shifts and positions

A shiftA block of time that needs to be staffed, with a label, an optional location, and a start and end. A shift belongs to one group and holds one or more positions. Shifts are capped at 24 hours and must fall within a week either side of the event dates, which leaves room for setup and teardown. is a block of time that needs staffing. A positionA role needed on a shift, such as First Aider or Door. A position carries how many people it needs, which ticket tags make someone eligible, and the list of people assigned to it. A shift with no positions cannot hold anybody. is a role on that shift. This page assumes you have already created at least one groupA named, colour-coded set of shifts within an event, such as Ops, Registration, or Bar. Groups are how the roster is divided up: each one becomes a lane on the roster calendar, and you can set a planning status across a whole group at once.; if not, start with Groups.

Go to Roster in the sidebar for your event, then View.

Roster → View

The roster calendar fills the left side. The right side has four tabs: Edit, Assign, New, and Bulk Create. Click a shift on the calendar to load it into the tabs.

Two calendar layouts are available from the toggle above it:

• Day shows every group side by side as lanes, one day at a time. This is the view for balancing a single busy day across areas.
• Group shows one group across all of your event days. This is the view for checking a single team’s coverage end to end.

Note

All roster times are entered and shown in your event’s timezone, whatever display timezone you have chosen elsewhere in the admin.

Create a shift

Open the New tab and fill in:

• Group: which area of work the shift belongs to.
• Label: what the shift is called, such as “Front Door”.
• Location: optional, where it happens.
• Start time and End time: when it runs. A shift cannot be longer than 24 hours.
• Status: the planning status. Defaults to Draft.

Choose Create shift. The new shift is selected and the panel switches to the Edit tab so you can add positions straight away.

Shifts do not have to sit inside your event dates, so setup and teardown days are easy to roster. You have a week either side to work with. Going more than a day outside your event dates shows a prompt to double-check the date, which you can carry on past.

Create many shifts at once

The Bulk Create tab builds a repeating pattern, which is much faster than hand-entering a week of two-hour door shifts.

Work down the tab:

1. Shift template: the target group, the shift label, and the default status every created shift gets.
2. Daily window: the Window start and Window end times, and a Block length in hours. The window is divided into blocks of that length. A live count shows how many shifts you are about to create.
3. Days: the date range, then tick the individual days you want. Days start unticked, so pick the ones you need or use Select all.
4. Position templates: the positions applied to every shift created. These start empty; use Add position template for each role.

The button at the bottom shows the exact count, for example Create 42 shifts. Progress is listed block by block, and anything that fails can be retried without redoing the successful ones.

Note

If your window does not divide evenly by the block length, the last block of each day is shortened to fit rather than running past your window end. A 09:00 to 17:00 window in three-hour blocks gives you 09:00, 12:00, and a two-hour 15:00 block.

A window whose end is earlier than its start is treated as crossing midnight, and the shifts end the next day. The tab tells you when this is happening.

Edit a shift

Select a shift on the calendar and use the Edit tab. You can change the label, location, times, status, and group. Changing the group moves the shift to that group’s lane.

Duplicate shift, on the Edit tab and on each calendar block, copies a shift into any group at any time you choose. It copies the label, location, status, and all the positions, but not the people assigned. Use it to clone a well-structured shift rather than rebuilding its positions each time.

Delete shift asks for confirmation and removes the shift, its positions, and every assignment on it.

Positions

Positions are managed from the Edit tab, below the shift form. Choose + Add position, or click an existing one.

• Label: the role name, such as “First Aider”.
• Eligibility tags and Eligibility mode: which ticket tags someone should hold. All tags required means they need every tag listed; Any tag means one is enough. Leave the tags empty and everyone is eligible.
• Required, Desired, and Max: how many people the position needs.

Required, desired, and max

These three numbers drive the staffing chips shown throughout the roster, and they must satisfy required, then desired, then max in ascending order.

• Required is your minimum. Below this the position shows in red as understaffed.
• Desired is your comfortable number. This is what auto-fill aims for.
• Max is the hard ceiling. Assignments are refused once it is reached. Set it to 0 for no ceiling.

Note

Deleting a position also cancels the assignments on it and takes the shift off those volunteers’ agendas. If the roster was already published, let the affected people know.