How do I publish the rota and tell my team?

Publish sends each person their own shifts by email with two private links — one adds their shifts to their phone's calendar, one opens their rota page. After that, changes wait on the grid (staff keep seeing what they were sent) until you press Send changes, which tells everyone affected at once with just their changes.

Until you publish, the week is a draft and your staff can't see it. Choose Publish on the Rota page to see who will be told and how, a check of the week's warnings and open shifts, and a box for an optional message to the team.

What your team gets

Each person with shifts that week gets one email with just their own shifts and two private links:

• Add to my calendar — their shifts appear in their phone's own calendar and move on their own when the rota changes.
• Open my rota — their personal rota page, with no sign-in.

The links are theirs alone and show only their own shifts. Someone without an email address on the Staff page sees the rota on the venue's own devices only. Untick Email each person their shifts to publish without emails.

If someone replies to a rota email ("I can't do Saturday"), the reply comes to your venue, not to ResoFlow: to the address set in Settings → Messages (Where should guest replies go? on Free and Plus, Copy to on Pro and Complete), else your venue's notification email, else the owner. The same goes for the open-shift, swap and request emails, the staff welcome and the PIN emails.

A reminder when next week isn't published

So nobody forgets, ResoFlow reminds the people who can publish when next week still isn't published — every Thursday at 12:00 to start. They get an alert: "Next week’s rota isn’t published yet". Change the day and time, or switch it off, under Remind us to publish next week in Settings → Team → Rota → The week. Each person chooses whether they get it (and whether on their phone) in Alerts and sounds.

Changing a published week

Once a week is published, change it as much as you like — nothing pops up and nothing is sent while you work. Each change waits on the grid with a dashed "not sent yet" mark (a shift you delete shows struck through as "Removed — not sent yet"), and your staff keep seeing the week exactly as it was last sent: on their own rota page, in their calendar, on the venue's devices and on the PIN pad.

When you're ready, press Send changes at the top of the Rota page. The number beside it is how many people have a change waiting. It lists each person with what changed for them ("2 added · 1 changed · 1 removed"); one press tells them all at once — each person gets one email with just their changes (a new shift, a changed one, one that's gone, or one given to someone else — both people are told), and from then on they see the new version. Open shifts you've added or changed go on the rota with it. Nothing is ever marked as sent without telling the person. A "Seen" tick only goes back to waiting for the people you've just told — everyone else's stays.

To send everyone their whole week again (someone lost their email, say), choose Send the whole week again in the rota's More (⋯).

Nothing on the rota asks for a password or a PIN — not deleting a shift or a whole week, not Undo, not marking someone off. Everything you delete waits in Recently deleted for 30 days, so it can always be put back. Deleting a whole published week takes it off your staff's rota straight away (nobody is emailed) — the rota asks first and says so.

Marking someone Off, Sick or On holiday on a day they have a shift asks what happens to it: Make it an open shift (someone else can take it) or Remove the shift — or, if your venue has open shifts switched off, it is removed. Either way the person keeps seeing it until you send changes.

Put back something you deleted

Straight after you delete a shift or a week, the message at the bottom of the screen has Undo for about ten seconds — it puts everything back exactly as it was, and nobody is emailed.

After that, open Recently deleted in the rota's More (⋯). Every shift and week deleted in the last 30 days is there; Restore puts one back. Putting back a sent shift is a change like any other: it waits for Send changes, and the people on it hear about it then. After 30 days it's gone for good.

Who sees the whole rota

Owners, admins and anyone with the rota permission see everyone's shifts. Everyone else sees the whole published rota too while Staff can see the whole team's rota is on in the rota settings — on the Rota page of the venue's own devices, and on the Whole team tab of their own rota page (sickness shows as "Off", and nobody sees pay). It's on unless you switch it off; switched off, each member of staff sees only their own shifts on the Rota page and their own rota page — Home's On today still shows everyone who's on today, so the team knows who's in.

If a link goes astray

Ask the person's manager to renew their links: the old calendar link and personal page stop working at once, and the new ones can be emailed straight to them.

Related: How do I build the rota? · Where do I see my shifts?