An open shift is a shift created without being assigned to a specific employee.

Depending on the initial setup of open shifts, employees can then request to take the shift, so that it belongs to them only. In this article, we will learn how to enable open shifts, and how to create open shift templates; a pre-defined template of specific requirements for the open shift.

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An open shift template is a pre-defined template of specific criteria that can be applied when creating an open shift. An example of an open shift template could be that we need someone who is capable of handling returns to take this open shift. Or someone who is a key holder and knows the routine of closing the store at night. Or perhaps we need someone who has certain expertise, e.g. "Denim Expert", for this open shift. When using a template with certain requirements, we can make sure we get nothing but the best-fitted people to cover the open shift.

Before we can create the open shift templates, we need to set up what criteria we want to use in them. The criteria are located in the employees' user cards. Typically, it is the department manager's responsibility to fill these out, but only the administration can create them. Below we will cover the following:

NOTE: If you have never created extra sections and extra fields in the user card before, we recommend reading this thorough guide first, as the below description is quite simple.

Start by heading over to Administration - Settings - General Settings. Scroll down to the option called Extra general sections. This will create a new section in the user card, where you can add the criteria that we later will use in the open shift templates.

We have created a section called "Responsibilities" in our example below:

Great! Now, let's learn how to create our criteria so we can put them inside our freshly created section. Head over to Administration - User Settings - Advanced employee data form. Press Create new in the top right corner to create a new field in the user card, and make sure to connect it to your section, as depicted below. You can create as many as you like.

In our example, we have named it "Returns", and the field type is acted upon by selecting Yes/No. We have tied it to our "Responsibilities" section:

Well done. Head over to a user card to have a look at your new section and its fields, to make sure it looks the way you wanted.

In our example, we can see our "Responsibilities" section, with two fields inside; "Key Holder" and the one we just created called "Returns":

The sections above "Responsibilities", called "Uniform Details" and "Trainings", are just two additional examples of the many ways to use extra fields in the user card!

Excellent work! We can now create our open shift templates. Start by heading over to Administration - Schedule - Open shift search templates. Press Create new, at the top right corner. A blank new template will appear:

Name

The name of the open shift template.

Description

A description of what is required for this open shift.

Valid for selected departments

Select the departments that should be able to use this template. If none are selected, it will be valid for all departments.

Search only for selected titles

Select which titles should be able to receive these open shift requests.

Skills/Parameters

Here you'll see a list of all the extra fields located in the user cards. As you select one or more fields, additional options will appear below. In our example, we want a template that filters out the employees who are skilled in handling returns. First, we select the extra field we just created, called "Returns". Because this specific field has a Yes/No setup, we select "Yes" as a mandatory requirement so that only the employees who have answered Yes on this field in their user card will be receiving this open shift request.

Click Create once you're ready, and you're done! 🎉

When the department manager plans an open shift from now on, he/she will have the option to select the template you created, as shown below from the schedule:

Want to learn how open shifts actually work in the schedule? Check out this article on how to create open shifts to see it in action! 🙌

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