Plan and publish a staff schedule

Staff Scheduling is marked Coming soon. Only Magpie administrators can access it.

Staff Scheduling plans shifts for the people who work them in the selected Personal or team context. You plan in drafts; employees see a shift only after you publish it. Team admins manage the schedule, and a team admin can give other members a scheduling role (see Scheduling rules, roles and settings).

Set up

Open Staff Scheduling. While nothing has been published, Getting started lists the steps.

1. Add positions, the jobs people do on a shift, such as Kitchen or Cashier. On Settings, open Positions and locations, or start from a business type to add the usual positions and shift times at once. A team starts with one location named after it; add others there too.
2. Add the people who work shifts on Staff. See Add staff and invite them to see their shifts.
3. Add shifts to a week, then publish it.

Example schedule shows a made-up week. Nothing on it can be changed or published.

Add shifts

Choose Add shift, or the + in a person's row on a day. Enter the date and times; the person, position, location, breaks and instructions are optional. A shift with nobody on it is an open shift. An open shift can have up to 50 openings, each filled separately.

Type times as you would say them, such as 9-5 or 10pm-6am. An end before the start finishes the next day. Breaks are unpaid unless they say paid, such as 30 unpaid or 15 paid at 10am.

Every shift will be checked against the team's rules when you save it: overlapping shifts, time off, availability, positions, qualifications and the hour limits you set. A rule that blocks will stop the shift; a manager can override some rules with a reason, which will be recorded. A warning will let the shift be saved and will be shown on it.

To repeat a shift, choose how under Repeat when you add it. Repeating shifts will be created as drafts 12 weeks ahead and listed on Templates.

Change shifts

Click a shift to open it beside the schedule, and click any detail to change it. Drag a shift to another day or person to move it; hold Alt (Option on a Mac) while you drop it to copy it. If the move breaks a rule, the shift will not move, and you will see why.

Select shifts chooses several for one change: who works them, the day, the times, the position or the location. Every selected shift will change, or none will. One change can include up to 1,000 shifts. Undo and Redo step back through your changes on the page.

To fill a week quickly, choose More and then Copy a week into this one, apply a week template, or Auto-fill open shifts. Auto-fill proposes people for open shifts using availability, preferred hours and fairness; nothing changes until you apply the proposals, and applied proposals are drafts. Copied and templated shifts are drafts too. Anyone who cannot work a copied shift will be taken off it, and the shift will be left open.

See what is short

On Coverage, add how many people you need and when, such as 2 Kitchen from 11 AM to 2 PM on weekdays. The schedule will list the times the planned shifts fall short under Short of people, the Positions view will show each need, and the Day view will show how many people are on at each half hour.

Publish

Choose Publish. The review lists every shift that will be added, changed or cancelled, the people who will be told, and anything to look at. A conflict must be fixed or overridden before you can publish. Publishing with warnings needs a reason, which is recorded with the publication.

When you publish, each person will get one notification about their changes, by email and on their phone, as they chose. People who have not accepted their invitation will not be told. Drafts never reach anyone.

After publishing, a change to a shift is a draft until you publish again: the person keeps seeing the published version. Cancelling a published shift drafts the cancellation, and the person will be told when you publish it.

More and then Publication history lists every publication: when, by whom, and what changed for each shift. Download the published week as a PDF prints the published schedule only.

Reports

Reports covers the published schedule for a period: hours by person, position or location, times short of people, open shifts, hours over a limit, time off, publications, and labour cost for people allowed to see pay rates. When the team compares the schedule with Time Tracking, Scheduled and worked shows when each person started and stopped against their shift. Every report downloads as CSV.

For access questions, contact Contact support.