Creating a Draft Schedule

What Is a Draft Schedule?

A draft schedule is a work-in-progress schedule that you can build, review, and adjust before making it visible to employees. Drafts let you plan ahead without affecting the live published schedule.

Accessing the Schedule Builder

Navigate to Schedule Builder from the main navigation. The builder dashboard shows:

• Active Drafts: Schedules you are currently working on
• Recent Publish History: The last 10 published schedules with change summaries
• Schedule Templates: Saved templates you can reuse

Creating a New Draft

1. Click Create Schedule from the builder dashboard
2. Walk through the creation wizard:

Step 1: Basics

• Draft Name: Give your schedule a descriptive name (e.g., "Week of March 24" or "April Schedule")
• Location(s): Select one or more locations to schedule
• Date Range: Pick the start and end dates for this schedule period
• Zones: Optionally filter to specific zones within your selected locations
• Roles: Select which roles to include
• Employees: Choose which employees to schedule (opens a picker with all eligible employees)

You can also toggle options for:

• Respect Time Off: Avoid scheduling employees who have approved time off
• Respect Schedule Patterns: Follow employees' assigned work patterns
• Respect Availability: Honor employee availability preferences

Starting from a template: Toggle "Use template" to load an existing schedule template as your starting point.

Step 2: Coverage

• Review coverage requirements for your selected locations and zones
• Adjust AI guidance and constraints if using auto-scheduling
• View active rules (hard constraints that must be met vs. soft preferences)

Step 3: Generation

• If using auto-schedule, the AI generates assignments based on your coverage requirements and constraints
• If starting from scratch, you will have an empty draft to fill manually
• Review the generated schedule and coverage metrics

Working with a Draft

Once your draft is created, you can:

Adding Shifts

• Click an empty cell on the schedule grid to add a shift
• Fill in the shift details: date, start time, end time, location, zone, employee, role, and optional notes
• Overnight shifts are detected automatically when the end time is before the start time

Editing Shifts

• Click an existing shift card to open the edit dialog
• Modify any field and save

Deleting Shifts

• Open a shift and click Delete with confirmation

Coverage Metrics

The draft displays coverage metrics showing:

• Filled slots vs. Total required with a percentage
• Per-zone breakdowns so you can spot gaps

Saving and Returning

Drafts are saved automatically as you make changes. You can close the builder and return later. Your draft will appear in the Active Drafts section.

Next Steps

When your draft is ready, publish it to make it visible to employees.

Tips

• Build drafts ahead of time: Start your next week's schedule early so you have time to handle conflicts
• Use templates for recurring schedules: If your schedule follows a similar pattern each week, save it as a template to speed up future drafts
• Check coverage metrics: Before publishing, verify that all required slots are filled by reviewing the coverage percentage