Signing in & your password

Your manager creates your account for you — there's no self-signup. You'll be given an email address and a password to sign in with.

First time signing in

If you were given the shared starter password, ShiftOps24 will stop you right after login and require you to set a real password of your own before you can do anything else. This only happens once.

Changing your password anytime

Click your initials in the top-right corner and choose Change password. You'll need to enter your current password once, then your new one.

Forgot your password?

On the sign-in screen, click Forgot password? and enter your email. If email notifications are turned on for your team, you'll receive a message with a code — paste that code into the password field on the normal sign-in form to log in, then set a new password when prompted.

Viewing your schedule

My Shifts is the tab you land on after signing in. It shows one week of just your own schedule at a time — today's week by default.

• Use the arrows next to the week label to look at upcoming weeks.
• Each day shows your shift's start and end time. An overnight shift (one that crosses midnight) is shown under the day it starts.
• A day you've been approved off for reads Time off instead of a dash.
• Click Print this schedule (or use your browser's normal Print) for a clean printout without the on-screen menus.

Team Shifts

The Team Shifts tab, right next to My Shifts, shows the whole team's week at once — everyone's name down the left side, the week's days across the top — so you can see who else is working a given day without asking around.

• On a narrow screen, names stay pinned to the left as you slide the schedule sideways to reach later days — slide right for Friday/Saturday/Sunday.
• Only posted shifts show here, same as My Shifts — nobody's still-draft schedule is visible to teammates.
• Hours worked aren't shown here, for anyone — this tab is for seeing who's on which day, not for comparing schedules.

Viewing & claiming open shifts

The Open Shifts tab lists shifts nobody is currently assigned to, for the next 30 days — either because a manager needs extra coverage, or because someone who was scheduled can no longer work it.

• Click Claim on any shift you want. It's first-come-first-served — no manager approval needed, it's yours the moment you claim it.
• If someone else claimed it a moment before you, you'll see a message telling you it's no longer available, and the list refreshes.
• If a shift already in progress needs someone (for example, a same-day call-out), it can still appear here — but only for the time still remaining, not the part that's already passed.

Requesting time off

Open the menu under your initials (top right) and choose Request time off — or use the + Request Time Off button on the Time Off tab.

• All day (the default) — pick a start and end date for one or more full days off.
• Uncheck All day for a partial day — e.g. off from 2pm–6pm on a single day.
• Add an optional reason, then submit.

Your requests and their status (Pending, Approved, or Denied) show under your Time Off tab.

• You can cancel a request yourself as long as it's still Pending.
• Once it's approved, only a manager can undo it (they'd "revoke" it) — ask them if your plans change.
• Once approved, it shows up automatically on your schedule and on the manager's schedule view.

Building the Day schedule

The Schedule → Day view is the main place you build and adjust the schedule: one row per team member, hours of the day across the top.

Adding a shift

Click (or right-click) an empty spot in someone's row and enter a start and end time. If the end time is earlier than the start time, it's automatically treated as an overnight shift ending the next morning.

Adjusting a shift

• Drag either edge of a shift bar to shorten or lengthen it.
• Drag the middle of a bar to move the whole shift earlier or later, keeping its length the same.
• Everything snaps to 15-minute increments.

Reading coverage

• The headcount row across the top shows how many people are on at a glance. Switch it between an hourly view and a more detailed 15-minute view using the dropdown.
• Sort the rows by start time, first name, or last name using the Sort By dropdown.
• Use the arrows to move to the previous or next day.

You'll also see a gentle warning (not a hard block) if a shift leaves someone with too little rest before or after another shift, or overlaps their own approved time off — you can still save it if that's intentional.

Target headcount & Import/Export

The Target row sits directly above Scheduled on the Day view and shows how many people you need on at each interval, so you can see coverage gaps at a glance — a Scheduled cell turns green whenever it matches Target for that same slot.

Setting one value by hand

Click any cell in the Target row (in either Hourly or 15-minute mode) and type in a new number. Handy for a quick touch-up; for setting a lot of values at once, use Import instead.

Import

From your menu (top right) go to Targets → Import and upload a CSV file: a Date column (YYYY-MM-DD) plus one column per 15-minute interval from 00:00 through 23:45, in any order, with a header row. This wide, one-row-per-date shape is meant to be filled in a normal spreadsheet.

• Importing a date replaces every value already stored for that date, including anything you've hand-edited on the Target row — treat re-importing a date as "start that day over," not a merge.
• Each date is checked independently: a date with a bad or missing value is skipped with the specific reason shown, while every other valid date in the file still imports.

Export

From the same menu, Targets → Export asks for a start and end date, then downloads a CSV in the exact format Import expects. Each cell reflects the effective number for that slot right now — whatever you've imported or hand-edited, or (for anything you haven't touched) the current Scheduled count — so it's safe to edit only the cells you want to change and re-import the file unchanged otherwise.

Export Scheduled as Targets

A third option in the same menu, meant for setting up targets for the first time on a schedule you've already built. It downloads the same CSV shape as Export, but every cell is the actual number of people currently scheduled for that slot — ignoring any target already set, unlike plain Export's fallback. Open the file, adjust the numbers to what staffing should really be, then Import it back as your targets — saves typing in a target grid from scratch when your real schedule is already a reasonable starting point.

Week view & starting a new week

Switch to Week using the toggle at the top of the Schedule panel to see everyone's shift times across all seven days at once, plus weekly hour totals — no drag-and-drop here, this view is for reviewing and starting new weeks.

Starting a brand-new week

When you navigate to a week that's completely empty, you'll see two options:

• Copy Previous Week — clones last week's entire schedule (including split and overnight shifts, and any shift colors you'd set) as a ready-to-edit starting point. This is the option you'll use most weeks. A checkbox lets you also copy that week's Target headcounts, checked by default.
• Start from scratch — leaves the week blank so you can build it from the Day view yourself.

Posting the schedule

Any shift you create or edit starts out as a draft — it's only visible to you, not to the employee, until you post it.

• In Week view, a week with unposted work shows an amber banner with a Post Schedule button. Click it to make the whole week visible to everyone on it — each employee whose shift changed gets an email letting them know.
• Once everything in a week has been posted, the banner turns into a green checkmark and the button disappears.
• In Day view, a shift that's still in draft shows with a dashed amber outline so you can tell at a glance what hasn't gone out yet.

Changing a shift that's already posted

You can still edit or delete a shift after it's been posted — there's no lock. The affected employee gets a "your shift changed" email right away, and the change is recorded for later review (see Change Log).

Posting & managing open shifts

There are two different situations, and two different ways to post an open shift for them:

• Someone already scheduled can't work it (a call-out) — right-click their shift bar in Day view and confirm. It's pulled from them and posted for anyone to claim.
• You just need extra coverage that was never assigned to anyone — go to the Open Shifts tab and click + Post open shift, then enter the date and time.

Every active team member gets an email when a shift opens up — except, for a call-out specifically, the person it was just pulled from. They get a separate email telling them their shift is no longer theirs instead of also being included in the "new open shift" email everyone else gets. You get an email when someone claims it. See Email notifications for the full picture.

Reviewing time-off requests

Your Time Off tab is the review queue for the whole team's requests, defaulting to whatever is still Pending.

• Click Approve or Deny on a request. Denying lets you add a short note explaining why.
• An approved request shows up automatically on that person's schedule (and yours) — no extra step needed.
• If plans change after you've approved something, use Revoke to undo it.
• Scheduling a shift over someone's approved time off is still allowed — you'll just get a warning first, in case it's intentional.

Managing employees

Go to Admin → Employees (from your menu, top right) to see the full team roster.

• + Add employee — adds one person at a time.
• Import CSV — adds many people at once from a spreadsheet with First Name, Last Name, Email, and (optional) Phone columns. Rows with a problem (missing info, an email already in use) are skipped and listed with the specific reason — everything else still goes through.
• Everyone added this way gets a shared starter password and is required to set their own the first time they sign in.
• Click Edit on any row to update someone's details, change their role, or set a brand-new password for them directly (handy if they're locked out and email reset isn't set up).
• Deactivate a person who's left the team — it blocks their login and hides them from the schedule by default, but keeps their history. Reactivate brings them back. You can't deactivate or demote your own account.

Team members brought in through the CSV import are added as plain employees — if any of them should be a manager, promote them afterward with Edit.

Settings

Go to Admin → Settings for three cards:

• Branding — the name (and logo, if set) shown in the app header and browser tab.
• Scheduling — which day the week starts on, the minimum-rest-hours warning threshold, whether direct employee-to-employee shift swapping is turned on, and whether the Target headcount row (and its Import/Export menu) shows up on the Day view at all.
• Email (SMTP) — the outgoing mail server ShiftOps24 uses for notifications (shift changes, open shifts, time-off decisions, password resets). See Email notifications for exactly what triggers a send and who receives it.

Email notifications

ShiftOps24 can email people automatically when certain schedule events happen — but only once an admin turns on the master switch in Admin → Settings → Email (SMTP). Until then, every event below still happens normally in the app (a shift still posts, a request still gets approved) — it just doesn't send anything for it.

The master switch

The Enable email sending checkbox on the Email (SMTP) card is off by default and only visible to admins. Nothing in the list below can send a real email while it's off, regardless of how SMTP itself is configured.

What triggers an email, and who gets it

• Schedule posted — a manager posts a week (see Posting the schedule) → every active employee whose shift in that week actually changed.
• New open shift posted — a call-out converted to open, or a brand-new open shift → every active employee, except that for a call-out, the person it was just pulled from does not also get this one — they get Your shift changed instead (below), not both.
• Open shift claimed → every active manager.
• Your shift changed (edited, deleted, or converted back to open) — only for a shift that had already been posted → that one employee.
• New time-off request → every active manager.
• Time-off request approved, denied, or revoked → that one employee.
• Password reset → that one employee, with a temporary sign-in code.

Planned, not built yet: a text-message option alongside email for these same events, so someone could get an SMS instead of (or in addition to) email once they turn that on for themselves.

Change Log

Admin → Change Log is a running record of edits, deletions, and open-shift conversions made to shifts after they had already been posted to an employee — a plain to-do-list of "who changed what, when."

Each row shows the employee, what happened, the time before and after the change, who made it, and when — useful for tracking down "wait, when did my shift change?" without having to ask around.