Publishing Rosters

Publishing a roster makes shifts visible to employees. After publishing, changes are still possible but each one needs a reason and notifies the employee.

:::note Required role Publishing a roster window requires Manager or Company Admin. Supervisors can create and edit shifts on a draft roster but cannot publish it — they must hand off to a Manager or Company Admin for the final publish step. Managers can only publish windows for the locations they are assigned to. See User Roles & Access. :::

How to Publish

Publishing happens from the Window list on the Roster page, not from inside the window.

1. Open the Roster page and select the location.
2. Review the shifts in the draft window you want to publish.
3. Back on the Window list, click Publish on that window's row.
4. Confirm the action in the dialog.

If the window has active compliance violations, the dialog changes to Publish with warnings? and lists them. You can go back and fix them, or click Publish anyway.

All draft shifts in the window become published. The window's version number increments automatically.

What Happens When You Publish

• Shifts become visible on each employee's personal schedule, their team schedule, and their calendar subscription if they use one.
• Employees receive a Roster published notification.
• Compliance violations are rechecked across the entire window to catch any issues introduced since the last check.
• Budget warnings are shown if any week in the window exceeds the location's hour budget. Budget warnings are informational and do not block publishing.
• The window status changes from Draft to Published.

Editing After Publishing

You can still make changes to a published roster, but with additional safeguards:

• When updating an existing shift, you must provide a reason for the change. This reason is logged and visible to the affected employee.
• Employees are notified when a shift assigned to them is changed.
• You can add new shifts to a published window. New shifts are automatically created with published status and the assigned employee is notified immediately.
• Published shifts can't be deleted. Use Cancel Shift and pick a cancellation category instead — see Deleting vs. Cancelling a Shift.
• Drag-and-drop and copy/paste are turned off. To exchange two employees' shifts in one step, use Swap two employees — see Supervisor-Brokered Swaps.

Locking a Roster

When a published roster is final, a Manager or Company Admin can click Lock on its row in the Window list and confirm "Lock this roster? A locked roster cannot be modified." Locking cannot be undone from the UI.

Locking the roster window is separate from locking a payroll period. A locked payroll period blocks swaps and offer claims on its shifts even if the roster window itself is still only Published. See Running Payroll.

Roster Window Statuses

A roster window moves through the following statuses over its lifecycle:

Status	Description
Draft	Initial state. Shifts can be freely added, edited, moved, and deleted. Not visible to employees.
Published	Shifts are visible to employees. Edits require a reason and are tracked.
Locked	A Manager or Company Admin has locked the roster. No further changes are allowed.

The status flow is always: Draft → Published → Locked.