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This is where your staff rota lives: who is working, when, and what happens when someone needs cover. It sits inside Settings rather than its own page, next to Staff & Teams.

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What this tab controls

A staff member who cannot manage the rota sees a simple My shifts view instead: their own upcoming shifts, a Request swap or cover button on each, and the requests they are part of.

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Assign a shift

1

Open the Rota tab

Choose Week or Month, and By person or By department, ward or unit. The filter next to it lists the places your shifts use in separate groups. Use the arrows to move between periods.
2

Select a slot or a shift type

Click an empty slot for that day and person, or New shift to pick anyone. Choosing a shift type fills in the hours for you; you can still adjust them.
3

Assign and save

Pick who it belongs to — or leave it Open (unassigned) for someone to claim later — and save. The shift appears on the rota immediately, and the person gets a notification. The email and calendar invite that come with it, and the reminder before the shift starts, name the shift’s department, ward, unit and any place you typed.

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Say where a shift is

A new shift needs a place, under Where is this shift?: a Department, a Ward (if you set up wards), a Unit, or an Other place you type (up to 80 characters, for example Front entrance — a place, never a client’s name). Choose at least one; with none, the panel says Choose where this shift is — a department, ward, unit, or type a place. and nothing is saved. Shift types and coverage rules have the same four fields, all optional, and choosing a shift type fills them in for you. The rota, My shifts and the lists show every place a shift names.

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Ask for time off

Anyone with a staff profile can ask for leave from Time off in this tab (a staff member who cannot manage the rota sees it beside My shifts).
1

Choose the days

Select Request time off. Under Days, choose the first and last day (up to 31 days at a time; for one day, pick it twice). Turn off All day to take part of a single day, and choose From and Until.
2

Say what kind, and send

Choose the Type (Vacation, Sick leave, Personal or Other), add a note if it helps, and select Send request. The people who approve time off are told. Only you and they can read your note and your type.
3

Watch the answer

Your requests are under My requests, newest first, with Waiting for a decision, Approved, Declined or Cancelled. You are told when it is decided. Select Cancel request to withdraw one that is waiting, or an approved one that has not ended. Cancelling an approved request frees your calendar for that time again.
You cannot have two open requests on the same days. A request that has already ended cannot be made.

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Approve or decline time off

Owners and managers always see two more tabs under Time off: To decide (waiting requests, soonest first, with a count) and Decided. Anyone else needs the Approve time off permission, ticked under Staff & Teams → a person’s Permissions; a person who has not been given it does not see them.
  • Approve shows how many bookings are already in that time (appointments and classes, with the day and time, never a client’s name) before you confirm. They stay exactly as they are: nothing is moved or cancelled, so you move or cancel those yourself. You can add a reply for the person.
  • Decline asks for an optional reply and tells the person.
  • Withdraw approval (under Decided) declines an approved request that has not ended and removes that person’s Out of Office again.
  • Nobody approves their own request, except the clinic owner.
An approved request puts an Out of office on that person’s calendar for those days, exactly as if they had added it themselves: online booking cannot book them and staff are asked to confirm before booking them. It shows on the Rota as a Time off marker on their row and in a Time off in this period line above the grid, with the dates only, never the type or the note.

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Build a repeating pattern

Instead of assigning the same shift week after week, create a shift type once, then a pattern that says which days it repeats on and how far into the future to generate it. The tab shows how many shifts a pattern will add before you confirm. Running it again later only adds what’s missing — it never duplicates a shift already on the rota. Copy week duplicates a whole week’s rota to another week in one step, for the whole team or one person.

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Upload a rota from a spreadsheet

If your rota already lives in a spreadsheet, Upload rota adds many shifts at once instead of entering them one by one.
  1. Open Upload rota and choose Download template. It is a CSV with one row per shift: Staff email, Staff name, Department or ward, Date, Start time, End time, and optional Title and Notes. Times are your clinic’s local time, and an end time earlier than the start means the shift ends the next day.
  2. Fill it in and choose your file. CSV and Excel (XLSX) files both work, up to 500 shifts at a time.
  3. Check the preview. Every row is listed with what will happen to it. Nothing is saved until you choose Import.
How people and places are matched:
  • A person is found by Staff email first. Only if the email is blank is the full name used, and it must match one active staff member exactly. A name shared by two people is not guessed; use the email.
  • A department or ward is found by its name or its code, as set up in your departments. An inactive department is not used.
  • Dates are read day first (02/11/2026) or as 2026-11-02.
Rows that cannot be used are listed with the reason and left out, never guessed: staff or department not found, a date or time that is not readable, a row repeated in the file, or a shift that overlaps another shift the same person already has. Fix them in your file and upload it again. Uploading the same file twice is safe: shifts that are already on the rota are recognised and not added again. If a person is marked Out of Office at that time, that row is reported as not saved so you can confirm it from the rota yourself. Each person gets one notice that shifts were added, not an email for every shift. You need to be an owner or manager, or have the Shifts permission, to upload a rota.

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Request and approve cover

1

Ask for cover

From your own shift, or a colleague’s if you manage the rota, select Request swap or cover and add a reason, then Ask for cover. The panel closes and Request sent appears; the request is under Cover & swaps.
2

A colleague accepts

Anyone the request was sent to — or anyone at all, for an open request — can accept it from Cover & swaps. Accepting does not move the shift yet.
3

A manager approves

Only once a manager approves does the shift actually reassign. Approving or declining notifies both people.
A shift fills in a day that has NO working hours set at all — it does not add to a day that already has some. If a person has no Availability schedule covering a given weekday (a day off in their regular hours, for example), a shift you assign them on that date makes them bookable for exactly the shift’s hours. But on a day they DO already have a working-hours schedule — even a narrow one — an extra shift on that same day changes nothing about what clients can book; their regular hours are what’s offered. To make someone bookable for LONGER on a day they already work, widen their Availability schedule for that day rather than adding a shift. If your clinic never uses shifts, nothing about booking changes.
Cancelling a shift removes it from the rota permanently, along with any open swap or cover request for it. This cannot be undone — assign a replacement shift afterward if the work still needs covering.