Workforce Settings

Each WorkRoster workforce has multiple settings that can be changed to enable or disable the various software features and how they work.

The workforce owner or any workforce roster manager can change the workforce settings.

Any change the workforce settings will affect all users.

The workforce name (e.g. Your Company or Business name) and description can be changed in Workforce settings. The description is optional.

The "First day of week" is the day when your new weekly roster normally starts. Weekly totals of assigned hours shown on the assignment menus are calculated starting from this day. Quick data navigation using the 'jump-to' data menus are to this day of the week. On the web User Interface and also PDF printouts a thin green line will show just before this first day of the week.

The Roster (Business) Hours can be set. These roster hours settings control what hours are displayed on the online and printed rosters. You should include all hours that you need to show on the roster, including the time from your earliest shift start though until the end of your latest shift.

We recommend that the Roster Business Hours Start be set to start one hour earlier than earliest shift starts. Roster Business Hours Finish should be set to one hour after your last shift ends. This makes the roster easier to use and easier to read. It also helps when daylight savings starts and finishes - these are days with either 23 or 25 hours and are otherwise difficult to display accurately.

To allow shifts to extend past midnight the Roster Business Hours Finish must be set to be into the Next Day.

Please note: Shifts are not allowed to start past midnight - instead, these shifts must start early on the following day.

Shift Time Precision controls the minimum increments of time that shifts can start and finish at. If all of your shifts always start and finish on the hour or half hour, then this setting can be set to 30 minutes. If you need a finer granularity of time for your shift start and end times then choose a lower value.

A higher value for Shift Time Precision makes using the web and mobile interfaces easier and less finicky to use.

The 'Show Sundays', 'Show Mondays', etc. settings control which days appear on the web roster.

If you never schedule shifts on a certain days (e.g. the weekend) then turning off the display of these days might be a good idea.

Normally shifts are created with a 'draft' status. Draft status provides an indication to employees that shift planning is not yet complete and further changes might be made. Shifts can be 'confirmed' by clicking on the clock face icon.

If you prefer that shifts instead be created with an automatic 'confirmed' status then turn this Confirmed Status for New Shifts setting to on.

This Workforce Setting controls if employees can see shifts that are currently in draft status. Setting 'Draft Shifts Visible' to off will allow roster managers to plan and schedule new shifts without allowing employees to see them until they are confirmed. The draft shifts are completely hidden from employees.

When 'Draft Shifts Visible' is set to off then the other Workforce Setting 'Auto Confirm Shifts Day Before' is automatically turned on. This is to make sure the shifts will be visible to the employees at some stage (in case the roster manager forgets to confirm the shifts).

Auto Confirm Shifts Days Before, can be used to automatically confirm shifts a selected number of days before each shift is scheduled to begin.

It's good practice for roster managers to confirm shifts (rather than leave them with draft status) and this setting can be used to automatically confirm shifts when they have not already been manually confirmed (i.e. by clicking on the clock-face icon).

Warn About Empty Shifts, when turned on, will cause empty shifts (i.e. shifts without any employees assigned) that are scheduled to begin within the next 48 hours to flash with a red warning colour on the roster view.

Resource Double Assignments, Client Double Assignments, and Employee Double Assignments settings are used to control what happens with a double-booked assignment, ie. when an employee (or client or resource) is booked to work two different shifts at the same time.

By default, these settings are set to warn and any double-booked assignment will be marked on the roster with a strike through the employee name (and resource or client names).

Each of these settings can be set to:

warn - Double assignments can be made, but WorkRoster will mark them with a strike-through the name. This is the default WorkRoster behaviour.
allow - Double assignments can be made. WorkRoster will not mark or warn about these double-booked assignments.
block - Double assignment is not allowed. If the resource/client/employee is already scheduled then their name will not appear in the shift assignment menu for any conflicting shifts.

Using the allow setting is useful for when it's okay for Resource or Client records to be assigned concurrently.

When the block setting is used there are still some circumstances when a double-booking might occur (such as automatically repeating shifts), should this happen then the double assignments are shown with the traditional strike-through treatment.

Use this setting to restrict the list of Resources shown to employees. Employees can be given access to the full list or just a reduced list of any Resource Records that they have been co-assigned with within the past (12 months) or future (12 months). 

Managers will always see the full list of Resources.


The default setting for Show All Resources to Employees is No.

Use this setting to restrict the list of Clients shown to employees. Employees can be given access to the full list or just a reduced list of any Client Records that they have been co-assigned with within the past (12 months) or future (12 months).

Managers will always see the full list of Clients.

The default setting for Show All Clients to Employees is No.

Use this setting to restrict the list of Employees shown to other employees. Employees can be given access to the full list or just a reduced list of any Employee Records that they have been co-assigned with within the past (12 months) or future (12 months).

Managers will always see the full list of Employees.

Note: Employees will always see the full list of Managers.

The default setting for Show All Employees to Employees is No.

Any Holiday Requests posted to the roster by an employee will be as a request (draft status). Holidays can only be confirmed by roster managers. When this setting is set to 'No' then only managers can add holidays and holiday requests to the roster.

You can also set whether you want holiday requests (and approved holidays) to be show to all employees or just managers (and the employees concerned).

Employees' Holidays (and Sickness) can be allocated and counted using either units of days or hours.  Use this setting to set the default holiday unit for new employees.

Changing this setting will not affect existing employees. To change the Holiday Counting Method for an existing employee, please edit their individual employee record. 

This is the default number of annual holidays for each employee. This default allowance can be overridden in each employee's Employee Record.

Depending on the Holiday Counting Method used for the employee, either Days or Hours, then the corresponding workforce setting, Default Holiday Allowance Days or Default Holiday Allowance Hours, will be used. 

The Holiday Allowance is used in the Holiday Report in the Print menu.

Your companies holiday allowance might be for the annual period starting from January 1st.  Or the annual holiday allowance period might start on a different day such as July 1st or April 5th. Use the Holiday Year Start Month and Holiday Year Start Month Day settings to set this date.

When set to 'Yes' then employees will be able to see the Sick Leave records of other employees on the roster.

When set to 'No, just their own' then employees will only see their own Sick Leave records on the roster.

Managers can always see all Sick Leave records.

Normally employees can see all shifts on the rosters. If this is set to "No, just their own" then employees will only be able to see shifts to which they are assigned to.

Managers take note: One thing to consider is that if employees can't see other shifts then won't also won't be able to pre-accept/decline the Agreements for those invisible shifts either.

By default employees can only see the assignments on shifts that they are are also assigned to. Change this setting to "Yes" to allow employees to see assignments on other shifts. Employees will only see the assignments of Clients, Resources, and Employees that are allowed to see as controlled by the "Show All Resources to Employees", "Show All Clients to Employees" and "Show All Employees to Employees" Settings.

This setting is useful if you'd like your employees to see all the shifts (as per the "Show All Shifts to Employees" setting) but you'd only like them to see the assignments of the shifts they are also working.

Employees will always see ALL the assignments of the shifts they are working (this includes other employees assigned to the same shifts and also Clients assigned and Resources assigned).

The Use Availability setting can used to completely turn off the Availability feature for the workforce.

Managers and employees will no longer see the free/busy (red/green) controls on the roster and shift assignments views.

When set to "Yes" then employees can see the availability indicated by other employees.

If this is set to "No, just their own" then employees will only see their own availability.

Managers always see the availability of all employees.

The Use Shift Agreements setting can be used to completely turn off the Shift Agreements feature for the workforce.

Managers and employees will no longer see the Accept/Decline (tick/cross/question-mark) controls on the roster and shift assignments views.

This new Workforce Setting controls if employees are allowed to set 'Shift Agreements' on shifts that they are not yet assigned to, i.e. allowing them to Pre-Accept and Pre-Decline. Turning this setting off will then only allow employees to Accept and Decline shifts to which they are already assigned.

(Note: If the Workforce Setting 'All Shifts Visible to Employees' is off then employees will only see their own shifts and so can't pre-accept/pre-decline other shifts regardless of the 'Allow Pre-Assignment-Agreements' setting).

When set to "Yes" employees can see the Shift Agreements (accepts & declines) indicated by other employees.

If this is set to "No, just their own" then employees will only see their own Agreements.

Managers can always see the Shift Agreements of all employees.

This Workforce Setting controls if employees are allowed to set their 'Shift Agreements' to Declined (and Pre-Declined). Turning this setting off will cause 'Shift Agreements' to be 'Accept (and Pre-Accept) Only' for all employees.

The "Agreement lock on confirmed shifts" option can be set. With this setting set to yes employees are unable to set their agreement to declined when the shift is confirmed and they are already assigned to to it.

So, if an assigned employee tries to update their agreement to declined they will get an error message.

Workforce owners can purchase SMS credits that are used to send SMS messages from WorkRoster. Set 'Employee SMS access' to yes if you'd like your connected employees to be able to receive shift reminders by SMS using your workforce SMS credits.

When set to "YES" employees can see the workforce Activity stream.

The Activity stream always includes details about Shifts, Assignments, Availability and Agreements regardless of the other advanced settings listed above. This setting allows access to the Activity stream to be restricted to managers only if desired.

Email Addresses added to Employee (and Client) Records are hidden from other employees by default. Email Addresses are always visible to roster managers.

Change this setting to allow connected users (employees) to see the Email addresses on all employee records. This is sometimes required If your company provides email accounts or your business requires that each employee has access to others email addresses for work purposes.

Telephone Numbers added to Employee (and Client) Records are hidden from other employees by default. Telephone Numbers are always visible to roster managers.

Change this setting to allow connected users (employees) to see the Telephone Numbers on all employee records. This is sometimes required If your company provides telephones or your business requires that each employee has access to others' telephone numbers for work purposes.

Use Photos setting controls what photos are displayed for resources, clients, and employees. The options are

- Do not show photos - no photos are shown.
- Only show uploaded photos - No default (random) photos are displayed. Only photos uploaded to the Employee Record (by a manager) or User Profile (by the user) are shown.
- Show uploaded and default photos - when no photo has been uploaded then a random image from the WorkRoster image library is used.

Employees (and clients and resources) are usually displayed each with their own colour for easier recognition. The individual colours can be set manually or chosen automatically by WorkRoster.

The 'Use Employees Colors' setting allows individual colours to be turned off for the entire workforce. When set off, all employees will appear the same colour. All clients and all resources will also have the same colour.

The WorkRoster Memo feature allows memo messages to posted to staff.

When the Restricted Memos setting is set to Yes then regular employees are restricted to posting memos to managers only.

When Restricted Memos is set to No then regular employees can post memos to everyone including other regular employees.

Managers can always post memos without any restriction. 

You can replace the default logo image for your workforce with your own by clicking the "Add Logo" button.