Antly

Rota

Working in Rota

Day-to-day planning, publish, self-service, approvals, and presence for Rota.

Daily operating model

Treat the published assignment as the source of truth for who should work. Treat Attendance punches as the source of truth for who arrived. Draft shifts are rehearsal. Help (/help) in the product walks a new planner through the same flows with animated captures of the board.

Flow 1: Plan and publish a week

  1. Open Scheduler and select the board. Rows are the members of the groups on that rota.
  2. Drag templates from the palette onto person-and-day cells. Overnight windows keep a single start and end; do not split them by hand.
  3. Click a block to assign, unassign, retiming, or inspect understaffing and compliance facts.
  4. Use the open-shifts row as a pool. Dragging a named assignment there frees one slot; dragging a person onto an open block fills one remaining slot.
  5. Optionally apply a pattern or copy the previous week, then edit exceptions.
  6. Open Conflicts. Double-booking detail shows both shift dates when a person is already assigned elsewhere.
  7. Publish the range. Staff My Schedule updates. When settings allow, publish mail is queued. Attendance expected names refresh for those dates.
  8. Watch coverage: planned headcount versus punched (non-shadow) assignees.

Flow 2: Staff week

  1. Open My Schedule. Published assignments for the signed-in employee appear with times in the tenant timezone.
  2. Presence on each block is punch-based: scheduled before the window, due after start with no clock-in, live after clock-in, done after clock-out.
  3. Open Shifts lists published slots that still need people. Claim according to claimRequiresApproval.
  4. Swaps propose an exchange of compatible published work. Approval follows swapRequiresApproval.
  5. Availability records dates or windows the planner should not use.

Flow 3: Approve claims and swaps

  1. Open Approvals.
  2. Check the shift dates, both parties (for a swap), role requirements, and existing conflicts.
  3. Approve or reject with a reason. Approved claims assign the claimant and close the slot when headcount is met.
  4. Notify the requester if your workflow does not already do so.
  5. Re-open the Scheduler only if the week now needs a further edit and re-publish.

Flow 4: Reconcile presence with Attendance

  1. On the Scheduler, compact presence is a corner dot: amber due, pulsing green live, grey done. Scheduled is omitted so the board stays quiet.
  2. The info control on a block lists due time, clock in/out, understaffing, and violations.
  3. In Attendance, On shift is the published roster for a chosen date — not a place to edit policy shifts.
  4. The Attendance dashboard lists people expected from the rota (or the office window) who have not punched in.
  5. Correct the roster if the name should not have been expected. Correct the punch if they did work. Do not invent a third status in a custom object.

Day-to-day controls

  • Plan in draft, publish in a bounded range, then stop editing that range unless you intend staff to see a change.
  • Prefer templates over one-off times so colour, role, and attendance policy stay consistent.
  • Use groups to add or remove board rows. Adding a person only in HCM is not enough.
  • Use reports for coverage reviews rather than exporting the board every morning.
  • Keep shadow assignments out of “actual” coverage; they train, they do not fill the count.

Exception handling

  • Empty board: check groups on the rota, then group membership, then that the employees exist in the same tenant.
  • Person missing from one day only: they may be filtered by the date range, on leave, or simply unassigned — not a permissions bug.
  • 00:00–00:00 on day view: the shift is missing a usable start/end. Confirm startAt / endAt on the shift (camel or snake) and that the calendar date is a YYYY-MM-DD for that cell.
  • Drag landing on the wrong day: each pill is keyed by day plus shift plus assignment. Refresh if you still see a collision after a deploy that predates that fix.
  • Expected in Attendance but not rostered: syncAttendanceExpectations plus a published assignment, or the default office workday. Check both.
  • Live never appears: they have not punched. Login is ignored.

Reporting rhythm

  • Daily: unfilled published slots, due-not-in, open claims.
  • Weekly: hours versus maxWeeklyHours, swap volume, pattern drift.
  • Monthly: whether templates still match operating hours, and whether groups still match the real team.

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Rota setup

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Rota data & automation