KarmaSchedule Sign in

Shift swapping

Swap requests are where a schedule actually goes wrong. The generated schedule is correct; the version being worked in three weeks later is the generated schedule plus forty email threads, and nobody has checked what the combination adds up to.

The problem with doing it by email

A swap looks local and is not. Moving one night shift changes the rest interval before and after it, the consecutive-day count for two people, both of their call tallies, and possibly a supervision requirement. Checking that by hand, for every swap, is work nobody does — so the real schedule drifts out of compliance one reasonable-looking favour at a time.

The drift is invisible, too. There is no moment where the schedule becomes illegal; there is a moment, months later, when somebody audits it.

How it works here

A swap is proposed in the product, between two specific assignments. Before it is offered to the other person, the same rule engine that built the schedule evaluates the result:

If it fails, the proposer sees which rule and why, immediately, rather than after an approver works it out. If it passes, the other person accepts or declines, and the schedule updates.

Soft preferences are reported rather than enforced: a swap that satisfies every hard rule but leaves someone with their fourth weekend in a row goes through, with the imbalance recorded in the tally where it will be corrected next cycle.

Approval, where you want it

Some departments want every swap approved; some want staff to arrange cover among themselves and only hear about it if a rule is at stake. Both are configurable per site.

Where approval is on, the approver is looking at a swap that is already known to be legal. Their decision is about judgement — service cover, who is on with whom — not about re-deriving rest hours.

Every swap is recorded

A completed swap leaves an audit entry: who proposed it, who accepted, which assignments moved, and when. The schedule's history is not a mailbox.

Audit trails

Common questions

Do swaps need admin approval?

That is configurable per site. Either way the swap is checked against the schedule's own rules first, so an approver is deciding on a swap that is already known to be legal rather than checking rest hours by hand.

What stops two people swapping into an illegal schedule?

The same rule engine that generated the schedule evaluates the proposed swap before it is offered for acceptance. A swap that would exceed consecutive-day limits, break minimum rest, or put someone on a shift they are not eligible for is refused, with the specific rule named.