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Schedule Tricks and Quick Actions

Explore tips on how to create your schedule easier & faster.

Shoshana Fleischmann avatar
Written by Shoshana Fleischmann
Updated over 2 months ago

From planning to distribution to employee communication, Connecteam’s scheduling app makes everything simple, quick, and intuitive. Simplify your scheduling with quick actions like duplicating shifts, sorting users, dragging and dropping, and more.

Once you have created a schedule and set up the different jobs in it, here are a few actions and tips for you to speed up your scheduling.

This article will go over:

What are Quick Actions and Where Can I Find Them?

Quick Action lets you take certain actions but in bulk. In the schedule, numerous quick actions can help you speed up scheduling. Depending on the view you are in or the type of action you are trying to take the quick action menu can be found either under the actions tab or by hovering and clicking on the 3 dots next to a specific shift or an employee's name. Let's take a look at the different quick actions below.

If you aren't familiar with the different schedule views, we recommend taking a look at this article before continuing.

Daily Quick Actions

To take action for all the shifts in an entire day, use the daily actions. To find these actions, you must be in the schedule's week view. The daily quick actions will be found by hovering over the specific date and clicking on the three dots, then the menu will appear with the same options seen below:

Weekly Quick Actions

To take action for all the shifts in a week, use the weekly quick actions. To find these you must be in the week view and click on the actions tab in the right-hand corner. The weekly quick actions menu will appear with the same options seen below:

Monthly Quick Actions

To take action for all the shifts in a month, use the monthly quick actions. To find these you must be in the month view and click on the actions tab in the right-hand corner. The weekly quick actions menu will appear with the same options seen below:

Quick Actions for Specific Shifts

To take action on a single shift, you need to use the quick shift actions. To find these, you must be in the Day or Week View. Hover over the shift and click on the three dots then, the menu will appear with the same options seen below:

Week View

Day View

Quick Actions for Users

To take action on a specific user in the schedule, you must view the schedule by users or in the day or week view. Hover over the user's name and click on the three dots. The quick actions menu will appear with the same options seen below:

Week View

Day View

The Top Quick Actions & Tips

Since there are many quick actions you can choose from,, we have gathered some of our most useful and time-saving actions below.

Sort Users

If you want to sort the users in your sidebar to be in a certain order this can be done. In the weekly or daily view simply click on the sort icon and choose from the different options. The options are based on the user profile fields you have set up in the account for example: branch, department, role, direct manager etc.

Sort Jobs

You can sort your jobs in any order you need, so when you view your schedule in the jobs view, they will be organized in a practical manner. To sort/re-order your jobs on the schedule, click on Jobs, then on the three dots on the top left side of the modal, and choose how to sort them alphabetically, by creation date, or in a custom order of your choice.

Duplicate & Multi-Duplicate Shifts

Easily duplicate or create multiple duplicates of a shift. Just click the 3 dots at the top-right corner of any shift and click Duplicate or Multi duplicate. The duplicated shifts will remain in draft mode until you publish them.

GIF of duplicating shifts in Connecteam's Job Scheduler admin dashboard

💡Tip: you can also duplicate them faster by holding the 'Option ' on your keyboard and then dragging & dropping shifts where you need them. See an example below:

Copy an Entire Day, Week, or Month's Shift

If your schedule is pretty repetitive or requires only minor changes, a quick way to build it is by simply copying a previous day, week, or month.

Just make sure to go to the relevant view (Daily, weekly, or Monthly), change the dates to the ones you would like to create shifts for, and then you can either copy the entire last period's shifts:

Copy Shifts For A Specific User

If you want to copy shifts for only one user this can be done, by using the quick actions for users. You'll easily be able to copy their shifts from the previous week.

Copy Shifts For One User to Another

If you build the perfect shift for one employee and want to copy those shifts to another employee, this can be done. Simply use the quick actions for users and choose the copy from the user option. Select the user whose shift you want to copy from and that's it. In the example below, you can see I choose to copy from Bryan shifts from Anja.

Select Multiple Shifts and Select Day/Week

Sometimes changes need to be made to more than one shift at once. Using the multi-select capability you can select multiple shifts and edit them together. To access this capability click hover over a shift and click on the 3 dots, then click select and mark the relvent shifts.

To select the shifts for an entire day, use the day's quick actions and click select.

To select all the shifts for a specific user during the week, use the quick actions for users and click select.

Clear Week

If you need to remove all the shifts from a specific week and clean your schedule so you can start scheduling shifts from scratch, this can easily be done with the clear shifts option. Simply click on the actions tab and select the clear week option. All the shifts will be removed from the week and you'll be able to start over.

Editing Multiple Shifts at Once

If multiple shifts need to be edited together, it's possible by using the select quick action we discussed above. Simply, mark the shifts you wish to edit and using the actions button select the edit selected shifts option. Now, you'll be able to edit the shift date, time, timezone, title, job, assigned user, and more. Once you've made the necessary changes, be sure to click on 'confirm edit' to save your changes.

Assign Shifts to a Smart Group

When you create a shift, instead of assigning users to it individually, you can assign it to an entire group. By typing a smart group's name or any option from the user custom fields, users associated with those will appear. Then, just click "Select All", and they will all be added to that shift.

Assign Shifts By Jobs First

Many times, it's easier to create all your shifts according to the jobs that need to be filled by your employees and only assign them later.

In that case, when you'd like to quickly assign shifts to your users, you can simply click the 3 dots on the shift and assign that specific shift to an employee.

GIF of assigning shift in Connecteam's Job Scheduler

You can also enter the job view and drag and drop your employee onto shifts from the user sidebar. You can even see if they have a shift on another date, and what shift that is. Take a look at how this looks below:

Publish a Specific User's Shifts, Groups of Shifts, and All Shifts

It's not rare for managers to work on different departments' shifts separately, or even on a single user's. For those cases, we created the option to publish a specific user's shifts, a group of shifts, or all the shifts in the current view.

Publish a Specific User's Shifts

To publish all the draft shifts for a specific user, just click on the 3-dots next to that user's name and choose "publish shifts":

Publish a Group of Shifts

If you'd like to publish the shifts of a specific job, department, or a few employees together, or maybe just the evening shifts - use the filter to view only the relevant shifts, and the blue "Publish" button at the top-right of the screen will update to the number of shifts you can publish for that filter.

Publish All Shifts

You can always publish all the draft shifts that are in your view at that moment.

For example - if you would like to publish all the draft shifts you created for this week, just make sure to use the weekly view, make sure you didn't create any filter, and hit the blue "Publish" button.

Screenshot of publish button in Connecteam's Job Scheduler

Start a Shift-Based Chat

You can quickly start a chat based on a day's shift; this ensures timely communication, enhances coordination, and fosters real-time problem-solving among colleagues. The chat can either be a team chat with all employees working that specific day or an individual chat. You can do this by clicking on the 3 dots of a specific day or from the Actions menu in the Day view. 

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

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