Building a week
The five views of the week grid, how to add and move shifts, the bulk actions that save the most time, and what happens when two managers edit at once.
Five views of the same week
The view switcher above the grid changes how the same shifts are drawn. Your choice is remembered per browser, so pick the one that matches how you think and forget the control exists.
- Team — one row per person, a mini-timeline per day. The default, and the right one for "who is working, and is anyone overloaded".
- Time — the classic time grid, days across and hours down. Best when the exact overlap between shifts matters.
- Coverage — a headcount heatmap by hour. Not for editing; for spotting the Tuesday afternoon where you have four people and needed two.
- Gantt — one continuous horizontal bar per person, across the whole week. Overnight shifts and back-to-back days read correctly here and nowhere else.
- Board — the fill-the-gaps board: every unfilled slot, waiting to be resolved before you publish.
On phones the Team and Coverage views switch to one day at a time with prev/next, and the Time view becomes a day-grouped agenda feed. The grid is not shrunk to fit — it is replaced with something legible.
Adding, moving and deleting shifts
Click an empty cell to create a shift; the form opens pre-filled with that day, that person and a sensible time based on the position's default. Click an existing shift to edit it.
In the Team view you can drag a shift from one person's row to another's — it changes who works it and keeps the time. On desktop that is a normal drag; on touch it is long-press then drag.
Keyboard, once you are building weeks regularly:
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
← → | Previous / next week |
T | Jump to today |
N | New shift |
Ctrl / ⌘ + Z | Undo |
? | Show this list |
Conflicts are checked as you go
Before a shift is written, Weekwright checks it against everything it already knows about that person: an overlapping shift, approved time-off, a stated unavailability, a required skill they do not hold, and each of your compliance rules.
Warnings do not stop you — a manager who knows something the system does not should be able to act on it. Rules you marked blocking do stop you, which is what that setting is for.
The check runs on the server, so it is the same check whether you dragged the shift, typed it into the form, asked the assistant, or posted it through the API.
Bulk actions
These are where the time goes, so they are worth learning even if you use the AI for the first draft.
- Copy week — duplicate an entire week onto another one. The fastest path when next week is basically this week.
- Bulk modify — shift a selection by an hour, reassign a position wholesale, change a batch of end times. One action, one audit entry.
- Wipe week — clear the whole thing and start over. It is undoable: the restore action puts every deleted shift back exactly as it was, which is why the button is safe to press on a draft you dislike.
When two managers edit at once
Everyone editing the same organization sees each other's changes arrive live — no refresh, no "this page is out of date" banner. A shift another manager creates appears in your grid within a second.
You can also see who else is in the week right now, and a shift somebody is actively editing is held briefly so two people don't overwrite one another mid-form.
Common questions
- How are overnight shifts handled?
- A shift that crosses midnight belongs to the day it starts, and every calculation — hours, rest between shifts, consecutive days — uses the real start and end instants rather than the calendar box it is drawn in. The Gantt view is the one that draws it as the single continuous block it actually is.
- What if my locations are in different timezones?
- Each shift stores its own timezone alongside its times, so nothing is normalised to a head-office clock. A 9am shift in one city and a 9am shift in another are both 9am locally, which is what everyone involved means.
Related
Publishing a schedule
What publishing actually does, the compliance pre-flight that runs first, how people confirm they have seen it, and what happens when you need to change a published week.
Schedule templates and recurring weeks
Save a week you like and reuse its layout on any future week — by hand, or automatically every Sunday. Including the guard rails that stop a recurrence from touching real work.
The AI scheduling agent
What the assistant can actually do, how a week gets drafted, why nothing is written without your say-so, and how to talk to it so it gets the week right first time.
Compliance rules
Five rule types, two severities, and one decision that matters more than the rest: which of your rules stop a publish and which only warn.