Schedule publishing
A schedule period is in exactly one of three states, and the distinction is more useful than it sounds.
Draft
The scheduler's working copy. Generate it, look at it, change a rule, generate it again. Staff cannot see it.
That last point is the whole reason the state exists. Scheduling well means trying several arrangements, and a tool where every attempt is immediately visible to twenty people is a tool nobody experiments in. The first schedule the generator produces is rarely the one to publish — it is the one that shows you which rule you got wrong.
Coverage gaps and rule violations are visible on the draft calendar, in place, with explanations. The point of a draft is to find them.
Published
The live schedule. Staff see it, it syncs to their calendars, and swaps, time-off requests and open-shift claims all operate against it.
Publishing a period with uncovered shifts is possible — sometimes you have to — but it requires an explicit acknowledgement of how many gaps there are. The product will not let a coverage gap ship silently, because the whole cost of a gap is that nobody noticed it until the day.
A published schedule changes in place when it has to. There is no v2: a swap, a granted leave request or an admin edit modifies the live schedule and leaves an audit entry saying what moved.
Archived
A period that is finished. Kept, because the tallies that drive fair distribution over long windows are computed from history, and because "what was the schedule in March" is a question that gets asked for payroll, for credentialing and occasionally for a complaint.
What staff get on publication
- A notification.
- The schedule in the web app, on any device.
- Their shifts in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook, over a standard calendar subscription, so a later change updates the entry they already have rather than creating a second one.
Common questions
Can staff see a draft schedule?
No. A draft is the scheduler's working copy. Staff see a period once it is published, which is what makes it safe to generate, inspect and regenerate a schedule several times without anyone reacting to a version that was never going to ship.
What happens to a published schedule when something changes?
It changes in place, with an audit entry, and the people affected are notified. A published schedule is the live one; the product does not republish or renumber it.
Related
- Audit trails
- Payroll export — what archived periods are good for.