You have decided to create open shifts and let your employees claim them on a first-come, first-served basis. This approach can streamline your scheduling process. If you still want control over which employee receives which shifts, the required admin approval for capability is the way to go. The admin approval allows you to review and approve shift claims before finalizing the schedule. Let's explore this further!

In this article, we'll cover:

Open shift approval allows an admin to approve shifts claimed by employees before they are published on the schedule. With this capability, any user who is qualified for the job can claim a shift. Instead of the claim being automatically approved and added to the user's schedule, the admin will receive a request and can decide whether or not to approve it. 

This ensures that only approved shifts are published and helps maintain control over the schedule. It prevents employees from claiming too many hours, accumulating overtime, or double-booking shifts on the same day. Additionally, the history of open shift approvals is always available for review, allowing you to track and understand approval decisions if any issues arise.

💡Tip: If you schedule this shift too often, you can save time and effort by saving it as a template or a repeating shift. 

Now that we've covered how to enable the required admin approval for open shifts, it's important to understand how to access and manage the pending requests once users claim shifts. When a user claims an open shift with required admin approval, their request can be viewed from three different places: (1) directly from the schedule, (2) directly from the shift, or (3) from the requests modal.   

Please note: When looking at an open shift with pending requests, you can first see the number of requests sent. Consider that there may be more requests than available spots to claim. This is because any qualified user can claim the shift when using admin approval since, in the end, the admin will have the ultimate say on which users will get the shift.

Now, let's review how to approve an open shift request using each option mentioned while exploring the advantages!  

This option lets you see claimed shifts that require admin approval directly on a user's schedule, making it easy to check for overlapping shifts, unavailability, work preferences, or approved time off.  To view open shift requests directly on the user's schedule, go to the View Options and toggle on the Claim requests setting. If a user claims an open shift that needs admin approval, the shift will appear in a dashed frame within their row on the schedule.

To approve or decline their open shift request, simply hover over the shift, click on the three dots in the top right corner, and click on either Approve or Reject. Take a look at the process illustrated below. 

Please note: Approving a user's shift claim will publish the shift and notify the user. To manage claims without immediate notifications, move the shift to draft first, which will hide it and prevent new claims.

This option takes you directly to the pending requests for the specific shift you selected. It allows for more attention to detail and precise scheduling, as you can accept or decline claim requests, save them as drafts, and then review the schedule. If any adjustments need to be made, you can always go back and make changes before publishing the shift to users. This error-proof method is especially useful for complex scheduling, dealing with a lack of manpower, covering a lot of shifts, and avoiding miscommunication with users.

To access and approve open shift requests with this method:

Please note: once you save it as a draft, users will no longer be able to claim sport for that specific shift, even if not all spots are filled. Therefore, the draft option is recommended for when you have reached the necessary number of claims and are certain that those users will fill in the needed spots.

Now that you know how to access and approve open shift requests using both options and the benefits of each, let's elaborate further on the specific information that is displayed in the Requests section so you can more easily navigate through it.

Sorting and Filtering

You can narrow down and rearrange the displayed requests for a shift by sorting them and/or filtering them. You can sort the requests by:

To filter the requests, click on Filter and choose the determining factor. In the example below, we've filtered according to years of experience, considering that the shift is important for the opening night of the restaurant.

Number of Requests and Spots

At the top right-hand corner, you can see the number of requests you have for a shift and the number of spots you have filled/remaining each time you mark a request as approved.

As an admin, there are many factors considered when choosing to approve a shift request or not. For each request submitted, you can view:

Additionally, if you have set limitations in your job schedule settings to prevent users from being scheduled for more than a certain number of hours or shifts, these will be considered when you approve a request. For example, when approving Carlee's request, you can see that she would enter overtime. As a manager, you can then decide whether to confirm the assignment or decline her request and assign the shift to someone else.

User Availability

To make more informed decisions while considering all factors, you can view users' availability: when they are unavailable or when they prefer to work. To do this, hover over the red or green corners at the bottom left of a shift. Red indicates they are unavailable; green indicates they prefer to work.

This option takes you to all pending requests for open shifts in the schedule. It allows admins to swiftly browse from one week to the next and view any existing open shift claims. This option is recommended for faster and more efficient work, as it enables you to easily review all pending requests and either accept or reject them.

To view the history of open shift approval access the relevant schedule, then click on the Requests button at the top right. You can browse to past or upcoming weeks, view requests that have already been approved or declined, edit their status, and then confirm the assigning. Being able to see the request can come in handy, if somebody calls out sick at the last minute, or drops the shift withing the allocated time, in this case you can easily see the original requesters and ensure that all the spots are filled.

When users claim a shift, they will see the shift status as Pending approval, as illustrated below.

If you approve the user's open shift request, they will receive a notification like the custom one illustrated below and will view their shift on the schedule.  

💡Tip: Share this article with your employees so they can learn how to claim shifts. 

Need more guidance? 🙋 Our LIVE support team (at the bottom right corner of your screen) replies to ANY question.