Open shifts
Post coverage you cannot fill and let eligible staff claim it. Who is eligible, how the approval gate works, and why a claim can still be refused.
Posting an open shift
An open shift is a slot with a day, a time, a position and an hourly rate — but no person. Post one from the week grid, or from the Board view, which lists every hole in the week in one place.
You can add a note, and you should: "covering Ana's training day" gets claimed considerably faster than an unexplained Tuesday. Everyone eligible is notified when it goes up.
Who can claim it
Eligibility is checked at the moment of claiming, not when the shift is posted. To take it, a person must:
- Hold every skill the position requires — see Skills and qualifications.
- Have no shift of their own overlapping it that week.
Managers can claim past the skill check, on the assumption that a manager assigning themselves knows what they are doing.
Because the check is at claim time, a shift can go from claimable to not claimable while someone is looking at it — they picked up an overlapping shift in another tab, or their certification expired. The refusal explains which condition failed.
The approval gate
One organization setting decides what happens on claim:
- Off (the default) — the claim is immediate. The real shift is created and the open shift closes, in a single transaction, so two people racing for the same slot cannot both win it.
- On — the claim waits as pending approval. Managers are notified, no shift exists yet, and you approve or deny. Denying puts the slot back on the board and tells the claimant.
The same setting governs shift swaps. That is deliberate — an organization that wants oversight of one almost always wants oversight of the other, and two separate toggles is how you end up with a hole in the policy you did not notice.
Assigning it yourself
If nobody claims it, a manager can assign the open shift to somebody directly. That is a different action from a claim — the person is told they were given the shift rather than that their claim succeeded — and it is recorded as such in the audit log.
Cancelling an open shift withdraws it from the board and notifies anyone with a pending claim.
Common questions
- Can I limit an open shift to one location or position?
- It is already scoped: an open shift belongs to a week in a schedule, and carries a position. Anyone whose skills match that position and who has no overlapping shift can claim it.
- What stops two people claiming the same shift?
- The claim and the closing of the slot are one atomic database transaction. The second claimant gets a clear refusal rather than a duplicate shift.
Related
Shift swaps
Let staff trade shifts between themselves, with or without your approval. How candidates are suggested, what each status means, and where reciprocity shows up.
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.
Skills and qualifications
Define what a position requires, record who holds what, set an expiry on the certifications that have one, and let the schedule enforce it instead of your memory.