Help centre · HR
Rota
Open this screen in Saral/hr/rota
The plan half of attendance: for one project and one week, the hours each assigned worker is expected to do each day — typed, copied from last week, or laid down from a shift template — saved as a draft and then published to the workers' phones. Gaps are filled with open shifts the crew claim; swaps and drops are asked for by workers and decided by a manager; the Cost tab prices the plan and compares it with what was recorded; the No-shows tab is the point of it all — who was published on a shift today and has not been seen. The rota never writes the register.
You enter
- Plan: the project, the week, and planned hours per worker per day — or Copy last week, or apply a shift template (times, hours, weekdays) for the whole crew or a few, over one or several weeks.
- Moves: drag a shift's grip to another day or worker (or press Enter on it and use the arrow keys); the move is undoable from the toast.
- Publish, once the draft is saved: the unpublished shifts go to the workers and they are notified (a setting).
- Open shifts: a day, times or hours, how many people, an optional role and a note — published to the eligible crew, who claim it from their phones; you confirm or decline each claim (or the policy confirms by itself).
- Requests: approve or reject a worker's swap (to a named colleague) or drop, with a note they will read.
Saral fills in
- The roster — everyone assigned to the project — and their worker type; days on approved leave shaded amber, days the worker marked unavailable shaded grey.
- Warnings on a cell: on leave, double-booked on another project, a lapsed required ticket, a missing induction, no DBS at the site's level, marked unavailable, or a working-time flag (48-hour average, daily and weekly rest, young workers — red when it is a breach). Warnings by default; the rota policy can make availability and working time refuse the save instead.
- Who may claim an open shift: assigned to the site (or anyone, by setting), the right role, compliant for the site (or warned, by setting), not on leave, not already planned there that day.
- Cost: planned hours × each worker's current rate, actual hours from the register and check-ins, and the totals — with every rate masked exactly as the worker screens mask it.
- No-shows: for the chosen date, every published shift whose worker has no attendance yet — from the register or a check-in.
It produces
- A published week on each worker's phone (/me/shifts) and, if they subscribed, in their calendar app.
- Open shifts filled by the crew, each confirmation a published shift on the grid.
- Decided swap and drop requests, with who decided — a manager or the policy — on the trail.
- The week's planned cost against actual, and the morning no-show list per project.
What this page is for
The register says what happened; the rota says what was meant to happen. The product is the difference between the two: a worker published on a shift who has not appeared by the time you look. Planning is the cost of getting that list — a week per project, hours per day, published so the workers know. The rota writes nothing to attendance records. Attendance is recorded on the Site Register and by the site's check-in method, and the no-show list only reads it.
Draft, publish, move
Hours you type are a draft until Save draft, and a saved draft is invisible to workers until Publish. Publishing sends the unpublished shifts and notifies each worker once (Settings → Rota decides whether). Moving a shift is applied at once and re-checked by the server: a cell already holding a shift is refused, a worker on leave or booked elsewhere is warned about, and a published shift that moves becomes a draft again so the worker is told when you publish — or at once, if the policy says to tell them on every change. Undo is on the toast for ten seconds.
Templates and patterns
A template is a shift you plan often: a name, a start and end or a number of hours, and the weekdays it runs, kept for one site or usable on any. Applying it fills the chosen weeks for the chosen people as drafts and leaves alone any cell that already has a shift, so a template is a starting point you then correct — never a steamroller over what you planned by hand. Rolling patterns that are not weekly (four on, four off) are planned by applying a template and moving shifts; a true rolling cycle is an open decision.
Availability
Workers set the days they cannot work (or the only days they can) on their shifts page: every Saturday, or a run of dates. The planner sees it as a grey cell marked n/a and a warning, and the policy can make it refuse the save instead. Booked leave is never copied there — it is read from the leave module as it always was, so one engine answers who is away.
Open shifts and who may claim
An open shift is a published gap. Who sees it is the policy's: the site's assigned crew (the default) or any worker in the account, narrowed by the shift's role if it names one. Each worker is judged by the same rule the grid warns by — a lapsed required ticket, a missing induction or no DBS at the site's level hides the shift from them (or lets them claim with a warning, by setting); approved leave and a shift already on that site that day always do. Confirming is the office's by default; the policy can confirm the first clean claim by itself.
Swaps and drops
A worker may ask to swap a published shift with a named colleague on the same site, or to drop it. It is a request, never an exchange: nothing moves until a manager approves here — unless the office switched on auto-approval, which approves a swap only when the colleague is eligible with nothing to warn about, and records 'policy' as the decider. An approved drop becomes an open shift. A notice period (hours before the shift) and the whole feature are settings.
Working time while planning
The Working Time Regulations are checked against the planned week across every site, with the weeks before it, the worker's leave and their 48-hour opt-out: the 17-week average, 11 hours' daily rest, the weekly rest day, and the young-worker limits. A flag is a warning on the cell (red when it is a breach), and the policy can refuse to save a breach instead. Shifts planned without times cannot be checked for rest and are counted as hours only.
What the worker sees
Their shifts page (/me/shifts) lists their published shifts for the coming weeks, the open shifts they are eligible for with an 'I can work this' button, their swap and drop requests and the answers, their availability, and a calendar link that keeps their published shifts in their phone's calendar app. Each of those is a switch on Settings → Rota; a switched-off one says so on the page rather than vanishing.
Where the settings live
Every behaviour choice here is on HR → Settings → Time → Money → Rota: who confirms a claim, who may claim, what a compliance gap does, who approves swaps and drops and with how much notice, whether availability and working time warn or block, who is told on publish and on change, the worker-side switches and the cost tab. Who is assigned to a project is HR → Assignments; required tickets, inductions and DBS levels come from HR → Settings → Compliance and the site's record; how a worker is notified is HR → Settings → Notifications.
Next screen: /hr/attendance/sheets
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