Publishing, notifying and locking rosters
What Publish, Notify and Lock each do, how to tell staff about changes, and how to unpublish or unlock a roster.
3 min read
Publish makes a roster visible to your staff. Notify emails your staff their shifts. Lock stops anyone editing the roster. They're separate so you can, for example, publish quietly and notify later, or lock last week's roster once it's final. Most of the time you'll just click Publish & notify.
Every roster shows its status next to the date: Draft (only owners and managers can see it), Published (staff can see it) and, if it's locked, Locked.
Publish
Until a roster is published, employees can't see it. To publish a draft:
- Click Publish & notify to publish and email everyone in one go. On a phone this button just says Publish. A confirmation tells you the week, how many people are rostered for how many hours, and any contracted hours warnings. Click Publish & notify to confirm.
- Or click the arrow next to it and choose Publish without notifying.
If you've already notified staff about this week once (for example, you unpublished it to make changes), the main button is Publish, and the arrow offers Publish and notify everyone again.
To hide a roster again, click More, then Unpublish, and confirm. Staff stop seeing it and nobody is notified.
Notify
Once a roster is published, the main button becomes Notify staff (Notify on a phone). Click it for these options:
- Notify everyone: tells everyone at the store the roster is ready. It shows as Notify everyone again if you've already notified them.
- Notify only rostered staff…: only people with at least one shift that week.
- Notify only staff with changes…: appears after you've edited the roster. It tells just the people whose shifts you changed since you opened the roster.
Each option asks you to confirm first and names who will be told. Click Send notifications to send.
Notifying everyone sends a Roster Published email. The two "only" options send a Roster Changed email. Both list the person's shifts for every day of the week, plus any day notes. Only staff who have verified their email address receive them. See Adding your staff.
Attaching a PDF
To include a PDF copy of the roster in these emails, turn on Attach the roster as a PDF in the store's Settings tab. See Store settings.
Lock
Click More, then Lock roster, to stop any further changes. The roster shows a Locked badge and a banner saying it can't be changed. To edit it again, click Unlock in the banner, or More, then Unlock roster. Locking doesn't hide the roster or email anyone.
From the Rosters tab
On the store's Rosters tab, each week in the Weeks list shows its status (Draft or Published, plus Locked) and a bell if staff have been notified. The ⋯ menu on each week has Open roster, Publish or Unpublish, Notify everyone… (for published weeks) and Lock or Unlock, so you can manage several weeks without opening each one. Publishing from this menu doesn't email anyone.
The cards at the top show this week and next week at a glance, and Drafts ahead counts the coming weeks that aren't published yet.
Who can do this
Owners and managers. Rosters can't be published or notified if the store is archived, or if the owner's subscription has ended. Managers who try are told to ask the owner to restart it. See Starting or changing your subscription.