Build and Publish Your First Schedule
Building and publishing your first schedule in 7shifts replaces your spreadsheet, puts shift information directly in your team's hands via the mobile app, and gives you a real-time view of labor costs before the week begins.
Where you are: Phase 2 - The First Schedule
Assign Employees to Departments and RolesSend 7shifts Invites and Confirm Employee App Activation- Build and Publish Your First Schedule (you are here!)
Things to know
- Schedules in 7shifts are organized by department. Build one department's schedule at a time and start with the one you manage most directly.
- Shifts in draft mode appear in light yellow and aren't visible to Employees until published.
- Each department publishes independently. You can publish the Kitchen schedule even if the Front of House schedule isn't ready yet.
- Publishing sends a notification to every Employee on that schedule via push notification if they have the app installed, or via email if they don't. Employees are notified the moment you publish.
- Managers will need the "Can manage schedules" permission to build and publish a schedule. Admins have this access by default.
- To prevent employees from requesting time off on specific dates (like a busy Saturday night or a holiday blackout period) use the Blocked Days feature. Go to Schedule > Time Off > Blocked Days to add blocked dates by location or role.
Before you begin
- Employees need department and role assignments before they appear in the schedule builder. See Assign Employees to Departments and Roles
- Confirm your core staff have activated their accounts before publishing. If activation isn't complete, see Send 7shifts Invites and Confirm Employee App Activation if activation isn't complete.
Build your schedule
- In the left navigation bar, select Schedule.
- Use the location filter at the top of the page to select the location you're scheduling.
- Use the department filter to select the department you're scheduling first.
- Use the date navigation to move to the week you want to schedule.
- Your Employees are listed in the leftmost column. Click on an empty shift space (the + cell) at the intersection of an Employee's row and the day you want to schedule them.
- Enter the shift start time, end time, and confirm the role for this shift. Click Save.
- Repeat steps 5–6 for each shift in this department's schedule.
- Review the completed schedule. Shifts flagged with a warning indicator signal issues like overtime risk, availability conflict, or a labor compliance exception. Click any warning to see the specific issue and the resolution options available.
- Resolve any flagged warnings before publishing.
Tip: Use this when you want to quickly reuse shifts instead of rebuilding them:
- To copy a single shift, hold the Shift key (or Option on a Mac), then click and drag the shift to another day/employee.
- Use the Copy icon on the Schedule page to duplicate an entire week in seconds. After publishing your first schedule, you can reuse it each week or save it as a Scheduling Templates to avoid rebuilding from scratch.
An on-call shift means the employee is expected to be available and reachable, but only comes in if the restaurant needs them. For example, if it's unexpectedly busy on a Friday night or another team member calls out sick. 7shifts handles on-call scheduling by treating "On Call" as a role that you create and assign like any other position.
To set up on-call scheduling, create the role first, then assign employees to it, then schedule as normal:
- In the left navigation bar, go to Settings > Locations / Departments / Roles.
- Select the Roles tab and click + Add Role.
- Name the role On Call and click Save. You can use any name -"On Call" is the recommended convention so the role is immediately recognizable to managers building the schedule.
- Assign the relevant employees to the On Call role. Go to Team, open each employee's profile, select the Assignments tab, and check the box next to the On Call role.
- Return to the Schedule page and schedule employees for On Call shifts the same way you would any other shift - select the employee row, set the shift time, and choose the On Call role.
Publish your schedule
- Review your draft shifts (in light yellow) one final time. Confirm all shifts are assigned to the correct Employees, roles, and days:
- Click Publish Schedule at the top right of the schedule page.
- Select your notification preference:
- Notify everyone: All scheduled Employees immediately receive an SMS, push notification, and email with their weekly shifts.
-
Notify only those with changes: Only Employees whose shifts have been edited since the last publish receive a notification. This option appears only after the schedule has been published at least once.
Note: The Notify only those with changes option appears only after the schedule has been published at least once. For your first publish, select Notify everyone. - Don't notify anyone: Shifts go live silently, without notifying staff.
- Click Publish Now. Published shifts will turn white.
- To print the schedule, click the tool icon
and select Print. You can filter by location, department, role, or individual employee, and download a PDF if you prefer a digital copy.
Tip: After publishing, ask one or two Employees to confirm they received their shift notification. A confirmed notification is the clearest signal that the full setup (account structure, employee assignment, invite, and schedule) is working end to end.
Delete a shift from the schedule
Remove a shift that was added in error or is no longer needed. Deleted shifts are removed from the schedule immediately, but your team won't know until you republish. Always publish after making changes so your staff see the updated floor coverage.
- Log in to the web app as an Admin or Manager with permissions.
- In the left navigation bar, go to Schedule.
- Use the filters at the top of the page to select the correct location, department, and date range.
- Click the shift you want to remove to expand its details.
- Click Delete.
- Click Publish Changes to update the schedule for your team.
Tip: Use Notify only those with changes when republishing after a deletion. This sends a notification only to the employee whose shift was removed, rather than alerting the entire floor.
Troubleshooting
An employee doesn't appear in the staff list when building the schedule
The employee is missing a department or role assignment for the department being scheduled. Go to Team, open the Employee's profile, select the Assignments tab, and add the correct department and role. Return to the schedule builder and they'll appear.
An employee didn't receive a notification after the schedule was published
The employee may not have activated their 7shifts account, or may not have notifications enabled on their device. Confirm the Employee's activation status on the Team page and ask them to enable push notifications in their phone settings for the 7shifts app.
Labor cost shown on the schedule is zero or unexpectedly high
Labor cost calculations need wage data on employee profiles or roles. To fix it now, update the Wages and Payment tab within an employee profile. The schedule's cost summaries will update immediately. Wages, labor targets, and cost reporting are covered in Phase 3: Run your business. If this isn't blocking your first publish, you can set wages there.
You need to make changes to a published schedule
Published schedules can be edited at any time. Return to the Schedule page, make your changes directly to the published shifts, then click Publish Schedule again. Use the Notify only those with changes option to alert only the employees whose shifts were affected.
You need to add a break to an employee's shift
Open the shift from the Schedule page, click + Add break, select a break type from the dropdown, and optionally set a start time. Click Save when done. Break types are set up by Admins under Settings > Company Settings > Labor & Compliance > Breaks.Adding and editing scheduled breaks is only possible in the web app. For the full setup and scheduling steps, see Scheduled Breaks. If you want breaks to be automatically enforced through 7punches rather than manually added to shifts, see Enforced Breaks.
Shifts auto-assigned to employees when filling from a template
When you fill a schedule from a template, 7shifts automatically assigns available employees to shifts based on their approved availability and approved time-off requests — this is expected behavior, not an error. To place shifts on the schedule without auto-assigning them to specific staff, set the shift type to Open Shift when building your template. Open shifts land in the Unassigned section of the schedule, where you can drag and drop them manually to the right employees. To update an existing template, go to Schedule > Copy icon > Manage Templates, select the template, and change the shift type from Specific Person or Skill Level to Open Shift.
What's next
Congrats! Your first schedule is live 🎉 Your team has their shifts, and Phase 2 is complete. Below is a 7shifts Product Overview video so that you can further familiarize with the various areas in 7shifts:
Your next step is Connect the Stack: Time Clocking and Labor Reports. Phase 3 connects 7shifts to your payroll workflow and confirms time tracking is running accurately.