Schichtplanung — Shift Planning Guide

What it does

Shift Planning is a visual grid where managers build and publish work schedules. The grid shows teams as rows and dates as columns. Managers place shifts using reusable shift patterns (templates with a start time, end time, break, colour, and default headcount), assign employees to those slots, and then publish the schedule. Published shifts appear in each employee's personal schedule view.

The module also supports open shifts that employees can claim themselves, and shift rules — a flexible rule engine for encoding scheduling constraints like "no early shift the day after a night shift."

How to set up

1. Create shift patterns — go to Shift Patterns > New. Each pattern has a name, start and end time, optional break window, a colour, and a default headcount. Patterns can apply globally, to a specific location, or to a specific event.
2. Set up teams — go to Teams > New. Teams form the rows of the schedule grid. Assign team leaders here.
3. Define shift rules (optional) — go to Shift Rules > New. Build visual WHEN/THEN constraints, for example: "When an employee has a night shift, block an early shift the next day." Rules can be hard blocks or soft warnings that allow override.
4. Choose your scheduling context — schedules are built either inside an event (bounded by the event's dates) or for a location (an ongoing weekly rolling view).

Daily use

1. Open the schedule grid for an event or location.
2. Click an empty cell to create a shift — pick a pattern, adjust headcount if needed, and save.
3. Click a shift to open the assignment panel. Assign employees to it. The system highlights conflicts and rule violations — hard blocks are greyed out, warnings appear in yellow.
4. Mark a shift as open if you want employees to self-claim it.
5. When the schedule is ready, click Publish and choose the date range. All affected employees receive a notification. A summary shows how many shifts and people are included before you confirm.
6. Employees open My Shifts > My Assignments to see their published shifts.
7. Employees can claim open shifts under My Shifts > Open Shifts. A claimed shift closes automatically when it reaches its required headcount.
8. Employees can unclaim a shift, but only more than 24 hours before it starts.

Works together with

• Shift Patterns — reusable time templates that are the building blocks of every shift slot.
• Shift Rules — your custom business constraints, applied visually during assignment.
• Events — events provide a separate scheduling context with their own teams and shift patterns.
• Teams — form the rows of location-based schedules.
• My Shifts — where employees see their published assignments and claim open shifts.
• Time Tracking — planned shifts and clocked hours should align; managers can spot discrepancies in the team timesheet view.
• Leave & Absences — managers can see who is on approved leave when building the schedule.

Tips

• Open shifts must be published to appear for employees. Marking a shift as open while it is still in draft does nothing until you publish.
• Publishing covers a date range, not the whole schedule. Republishing a single week only affects that week — earlier published weeks are untouched.
• Conflict checking happens when you open the assignment panel, not before. Cells don't highlight until you click into them.
• Shift rules and Swiss labour law compliance are separate checks. Shift rules are your own constraints (configurable severity). Legal compliance rules are a fixed baseline and always apply.
• When multiple rules apply to the same shift, a hard block always wins over a warning.
• The 24-hour unclaim window is intentional — it prevents last-minute no-shows from disrupting the schedule.
• Event teams and tenant-wide teams are separate. A team created inside an event is not the same as a standing team in your organisation, even if they share a name.