Tentative Shifts

Owned by Victor Macko
Last updated: Jan 29, 2024
4 min read

If someone is unsure they're able to make it (eg. needs to check their calendar), they can be tentatively rostered to the event.

The person being rostered will be reminded via email that they need to confirm their shift, as well as via SMS if they still haven't done-so a week away from the event (which they just need to reply via SMS to confirm they're able to attend).

Confirmation

The person rostered can confirm themselves via the home page.

Confirmation can also be done when viewing the event details;

SMS Replies

Depending on your settings, you might have the system send an SMS to staff rostered tentatively as a way to reduce the time required for staff to confirm they're able to assist for a shift. These messages will come from a random set of phone numbers, in order for us to then receive responses your staff have sent, and match those up to the relevant event they're referring to.

Where replies are expected, other numbers such as your company name, or a central company number can't be used as the system won't receive these responses (your company phone number will get sent these!)

Removing old tentative allocations

The system can be setup to automatically withdraw tentatively-rostered staff from events after a certain period of time that they've not confirmed they are able to attend an event.

Eg. the system can mark a person as "Withdrawn" after giving the staff member or volunteer 1 week to check their availability and confirm they are able to attend the shift. After 1 week, if they are still marked as "Tentative", the system will change the roster status to "Withdrawn".

This time period can be changed in the "Roster settings", and can be enabled/disabled as required.

Re-confirming shifts

At times, people rostered to shifts may need to be re-confirmed on rosters - ie. if they’d been rostered quite far in advance, or it’s required as part of your business and rostering processes.

When a request to re-confirm an allocation is done, the following process will occur;

  1. The platform will mark any ‘Confirmed’ roster allocations as ‘Tentative’, and a corresponding notification will be sent via SMS (or E-Mail if SMS isn’t available or the person doesn’t have a mobile phone number included).

    1. Anyone already marked as ‘Tentative’ will also be sent a notification requesting they confirm their roster allocation

  2. Those people will then need to confirm they’re still able to attend the shift they were rostered to, typically by responding to the SMS message, or confirming via the web platform, or mobile app (as shown under in the ‘Confirmation’ heading).

  3. Once those people have confirmed they’re able to attend still, the system will update their roster allocation back to ‘Confirmed’.

 

Requesting re-confirmation can be done in a few ways;

  • Manually;

    • In the list of events, tick the box on the right-hand-side for the events you would like to have everyone rostered re-confirm their attendance, and then choose ‘Re-confirm allocations’ from the ‘Select an action’ menu at the bottom of the list of events.

    • When viewing a particular event, selecting ‘Re-confirm allocations’ in the ‘Roster’ menu at the top of the page will request everyone rostered to re-confirm their allocations

    • When viewing a list of people rostered for a specific event (ie. the ‘Detailed’ roster report for a single event), certain people can be ticked, and then click ‘Re-confirm allocations' at the bottom of the report in the ‘Select an action’ menu.

  • Automatically;

    • In the ‘Configuration’ page, the ‘Roster settings’ button along the bottom includes a setting to ‘Re-confirm roster entries automatically’.

      Depending on your business needs, you can select how far in advance roster allocations should be re-confirmed, and what time of the morning suits your organisation best.
      For example: selecting ‘1 week in advance’, at ‘9am each day’, will mark rosters 7 days (1 week) from today, selecting anyone rostered from 9am in 1 week’s time, through to 9am the following day.
      This caters for anyone whom might be rostered overnight or early in the morning, allowing enough time to find replacement staff as needed.

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