Shifty manual

To configure the app switch to the edit view by tapping the cog in the top right corner, from there you can add staff, duties and shifts.

The shift patterns can be set up to be different for different days. The sample data for example is for a business which is closed on Monday, has reduced opening hours on Sunday and has an extra evening shift on Saturday. Shifts can run overnight too if needed.

There's also other options to customise the app and the ability to set up more groups, which you may need to do depending on the size of your business.

The groups feature allows you to make multiple schedules. Each group can have its own shift patterns, staff and duties.

They can be used in a multitude of ways, by another name they could be called: 'departments', 'locations', 'teams', 'zones', etc. They are very useful for organising complicated schedules. For example the sample data uses 2 groups, one for the schedule and one to keep track of staff availability.

If you use more than 6 shifts patterns per day or you have more than 25 staff then create more groups. For example, if you have 15 staff and 12 shifts per day you could create an 'AM' group and a 'PM' group. Using groups you can have 500 staff and 120 shift patterns per day!

Staff can also be shared between groups. This saves retyping staff names and email addresses more than once. But more importantly this method prevents staff being double-booked across multiple groups.

Create as many groups as you need, switching between them only takes 1 tap.

To assign a staff member, drag their name from the staff list onto a shift. To unassign staff drag their name out of the shift.

To assign a duty to a staff member, drag the duty name from the duty list onto a staff member in the staff list. This changes the default duty for that staff member. If you just want to change a staff member's duty for a shift, then drag a duty onto an assigned staff member.

In short - duties drop onto staff and staff drop onto shifts.

However! If you prefer you can assign duties by tapping on staff. Just choose "Duties Key Inline" in the options.

By default staff can't work multiple shifts at the same time. This prevents double-booking staff. However, there is an option to turn off "Staff Protection", useful if you need overlapping shifts for hand over or you need to schedule breaks.

You can change the headers "Staff" and "Duties" in the options. For example you could have "Team" & "Locations" or "Family" & "Chores".

As well as the navigation menu at the top there are alternative ways to navigate.

In month view tapping on a date will go to day view. Note: dates are displayed below shifts in the bottom right corner.

In week view or day view tapping on the date on the left will go to day view. If in day view, tapping on the selected date on the left will toggle to week view.

A left to right 2 finger swipe in month view will skip to the next month. The same gesture in week or day view will skip forward 7 days.

In the staff list, tap on the count next to a staff member's name, this opens the days working calendar. It's used for quickly seeing which days that staff member is working that month. It can also be used for navigating around the month without having to go into month view.

Tap on the month name in the top left corner, this opens the month navigation. Month navigation shows 8 months into the past and 8 months into the future. If you want to look back several months it's quicker than using previous and next buttons. It also has a 'today' option that will switch you to day view on today's date.

In week view the duty counts are useful for seeing that there is enough staff performing a certain duty, for example a business might need a minimum of 4 barmen and 1 manager for a Thursday evening shift.

Instead of duty counts you can display staff names or staff initials. Choose the option best for you, e.g. using staff names for a schedule which has up to 15 staff per shift won't work, as there isn't enough screen space to display all the information.

In week view the staff total shows how many hours they are working for that week. When in day view, it shows the number of hours they are are working for that day.

If you have more than one group you will see the groups nav at the bottom of the screen. The count next to the group name is the total for the view you are looking at, so when in week view it will represent all entries for the week and in month view it will be the total for a 6 week period.

In month view the shift count shows the number of staff assigned to the shift. This can be useful when comparing weeks, e.g. Sundays might always need a minimum of 5 staff.

In the month navigation there are totals for each month that has entries. If you're using groups then there's second count which shows the total number of entries that are in other groups. The counts are useful for finding where data has been entered in the year and acts as a mini usage report.

In edit view there's an option to switch between shift counts, hour counts and cost totals. For those who use these different counts there's a short cut for switching between them, instead of going back into the options you can just do a four-finger tap to switch.

In day or week view, if a there are entries you'll see the repeats icon in the bottom right. Tap to open, then stroke the days/weeks you want the to repeat to. Tap somewhere else on screen to close the repeats modal and your changes will be committed.

The current day or week being repeated is displayed in the middle. 17 weeks are shown in total. This allows you to repeat up to 8 weeks into the future or the past.

Deleting or moving entries from one day to another (aka 'cut and paste') can also be done with repeats feature. For example, tap the current date to unselect it and tap another date to select it. This will move all of today's entries to the other date.

The repeats modal also shows you which days and weeks are identical. This is really handy for checking your repeat patterns are exactly how you want them.

Greyed out days/weeks can't be repeated to. Either because the target day has incompatible shift patterns or it has other data that is being protected.

In edit view there are options to change the repeats behaviour. You can choose to repeat all groups or just the current group, and you can turn off 'Repeats Protection' which prevents you from replacing existing data.

If you have staff paid hourly then you can set their hourly wage in the staff edit view.

Cost totals can now be displayed.
The calculation used is hourly wage multiplied by shift hours (minus breaks).

If your pay system is more complicated then use the wage adjustments feature in edit duties view. It can be used to calculate: salaried staff, tiered rates, bonuses, wage multipliers and more.

Example: Mike normally gets paid $20 but when standing in for 'Manager' gets $25. When 'On Call' he is not paid by the hour, instead he gets a $42 fixed bonus. He gets 1.5× pay when working the 'Overtime' duty. And, he is not paid when 'Unavailable'.

After you have finished scheduling you can email a day, week or month schedule to your staff from the edit view.

The time range is set by the schedule view you came from. So if you were in week view before switching to edit view - the time range would be 'Week'.

The email can contains all groups or a single group or multiple groups. For example, you might want to email all groups apart from a holiday group. Groups that are greyed out don't contain any schedule data for the selected time range, so won't be included in the email.

You can change who receives the email, either all staff or just the staff that have been scheduled. In some cases it's better if a staff member receives an email regardless so that they know for sure that they are not scheduled to work. In other cases, particularly if managing a lot of staff who only work occasionally, not sending them an email if they aren't scheduled is better.

The schedule email can be structured in different ways. 'By Staff' has an individual focus and is quicker for staff to see when they are working. 'By Shift' has a relationship focus and is easier for staff to answer questions like "who is working the same shift?" and "who is scheduled to relieve me?". You can include both structures.

There's also an option to include a summary. This shows staff at a glance the days they are working. It acts as an index for the whole schedule, making it quicker for staff to find their entries and reduces the risk of staff missing when they are meant to be working.

You can print a day, week or month schedule. The time range is set by the schedule view you came from.

To print you will need an 'AirPrint' compatible printer. Or if you don't have this feature on your printer then you could use software such as Printopia (Mac). It works by installing an AirPrint server on your computer, so when you print from your iPad it gets sent to your computer which then sends it to the printer. It can also be used create PDFs of the print schedule. Both methods work great.

The schedule can been printed in 'Visual' or 'Tabular' format. The visual format is like how it appears onscreen and is better for seeing overall coverage. Tabular format is a traditional style of schedule and is generally quicker for staff to find their shifts.

There are other differences between the print formats: When printing multiple groups the visual format displays each group on a separate page, whereas the tabular format combines groups together. Another difference is the duty key, the visual format uses the same onscreen colors, whereas the tabular format uses a abbreviation key instead. This makes the tabular format suitable for black & white printing. It's also worth noting that the month time range in visual format displays 6 weeks of data, whereas the tabular format only displays the current month.

Within the print options you can choose to include the 'Totals'. If using tabular format then this will include the total hours for each staff, and if using visual format this will include whichever onscreen totals have been set in the options (e.g. 'Hours Counts', 'Shift Counts', 'Cost').

Shifty will print to the paper size you are using, typically US letter or A4.

Between the print formats and time ranges there are actually 6 different print layouts. Here are some example PDFs (A4) using a simple 7 day 1 group schedule so you can see the differences.

• visual day.pdf
• tabular day.pdf
• visual week.pdf
• tabular week.pdf
• visual month.pdf
• tabular month.pdf

Use the database export feature to keep regular backups. To back up, tap the export button, this generates an email containing the database, send this email to yourself.

To import the database, slow tap (finger on screen for 2 seconds) on the contents of an export email to bring up the standard iOS text controls, choose 'Select All' then 'Copy'. Now within Shifty tap the import button, Shifty will analyse the database you copied. If the database is valid the 'Replace Database' button will become available, tap that to complete the import.

The database import / export feature can also be used to send the database to another Shifty user. Useful if your business has multiple iPads.

Note: As a precaution you should create a backup before upgrading Shifty or iOS.

There are 2 instructional videos (with subtitles for 22 languages including English for the hard of hearing) and 1 overview video. If you're a beginner you should watch all the videos. If you're an experienced user then they're still worth watching. You'll probably learn some new tricks and you get to see my hand!