Best Practices: Building Weekly Schedules

Purpose

The other articles in this module explain each scheduling feature. This one lists the working habits that keep weekly scheduling predictable for you and for your employees. Each practice links to the article with the details.

When to use this: you are about to run scheduling for the first time, or the team is getting surprises (missing shifts, unexpected notifications, blocked clock-ins) and you want to tighten the routine.

Who can do this: users with Full Access to Employee Schedule for the employees they schedule (typically the Employer Admin, or any role granted that access). See Getting Started with Scheduling.

Draft first, publish once

Employees see only published shifts. Build and rearrange the whole week in Draft, then publish in one pass with the Publish button. Each publish sends the Shift publish notification to every affected employee (Email and Push by default). Publishing a few shifts at a time means several notifications for the same week and a schedule that keeps changing under the employee.

Two things to check before you publish:

• The Publish button publishes only the draft shifts on screen. Clear filters and search first if you mean to publish everything.
• An open shift must be published too, or nobody can claim it. Publishing an open shift sends no notification, so tell the team it is posted.

See Managing Shifts and Creating and Filling Open Shifts.

Reuse instead of rebuilding

• Copy Schedule copies the shifts on screen from one week (or day) to another as drafts. A copied shift that would overlap an existing shift is skipped and listed. Review the target week, adjust, and publish.
• Repeat Shift in the Add Shift window creates a recurring shift on the weekdays you choose, up to an end date. Use it instead of creating the same shift five times.
• Schedule Import loads many shifts from an Excel template. It runs in the background, and every failed row is written to an error file in the File Center. Check that file after each import rather than assuming a clean load. Imported shifts arrive unpublished.

See Scheduling Grid: Views, Filters, Budgets and Hours and Using the File Center.

Watch cost and hours while you build

Turn on Show Cost and Show Hours from the Actions menu and set a Wages/Hours Budget per work location. The grid then shows scheduled hours and estimated cost against the budget as you work, and the Publish Shifts confirmation warns you when the range on screen is over budget. Catching an overloaded week here is cheaper than finding the overtime in payroll.

Treat the cost figure as a planning estimate. It multiplies scheduled hours by the employee's rate and does not include overtime or premiums. It appears only for employees whose compensation your role can view; other shifts show "-" and are left out of the total.

See Scheduling Grid: Views, Filters, Budgets and Hours.

Let the validations work for you

• Overlapping shifts for the same employee are rejected when you create, edit, copy, move, or import. If a change is blocked by an overlap, adjust the times or edit the existing shift.
• A shift that crosses midnight is split into two shifts, one ending at 11:59 PM and one starting at 12:00 AM. A single shift over 24 hours is rejected.
• A shift with tracked time cannot be edited or deleted. Correct the time entry on the timesheet instead.

See Managing Shifts.

Know what Save does to a published shift

Opening a published shift and clicking Save turns it back into a Draft. The published version disappears from the employee's schedule until you publish again. Use Save and Publish for a change the employee should see now. Use Save only when you are reworking the week and will publish everything together. To undo draft edits, Clear Unpublished Changes restores what employees last saw.

Editing or deleting a shift also cancels any pending swap, offer, or claim request on it. Deleting a published shift sends no notification. Tell the employee.

See Managing Shifts.

Set the settings before the first week

Under Time Tracking Settings > Schedule:

• Set Schedule view start day to match your workweek. It controls the grid and the budget week.
• Set Shift default timing so new shifts and the import template open with your usual hours.
• Turn on the early and late alerts and their minute thresholds before go-live, so the first week's punctuality data is trustworthy.
• Hold off on the two clock-in restrictions, "Restrict clock in without published shifts." and "Restrict clock in into unscheduled shifts.", until your publishing routine is reliable. They block punches outright. A week you forget to publish becomes a week nobody can clock in.

See Schedule Settings and Notifications.

Let the team fill coverage gaps

For a slot nobody is assigned to, create an open shift and let eligible employees at the location claim it. For a shift the assigned employee cannot work, they can offer it to a coworker or swap it with a coworker's shift. Employees start all three from the UZIO Mobile App; the web schedule is view-only. Every request waits for your approval, under the Need Approval icon for swaps and offers or the shift's Claims icon for open shifts, and every step is recorded on the shift's history. Arrangements made outside UZIO leave no record and do not change the schedule.

Check the Need Approval icon and any open shifts with claims every day. A request is refused at approval if the original employee has already clocked in or the change would create an overlap, so same-day requests need a quick decision.

See Shift Offers and How to Approve Them, Creating and Filling Open Shifts, and Managing Shifts.

Related articles

• Getting Started with Scheduling
• Scheduling Grid: Views, Filters, Budgets and Hours
• Managing Shifts: Creating, Publishing, Editing, and Deleting
• Schedule Settings and Notifications
• Shift Offers and How to Approve Them
• Creating and Filling Open Shifts