Creating and Publishing a Roster

1. Click on the Roster tab on the top menu.

2. Then, Select a Week and Select a Site. This action will redirect you to the daily rostering view.

Note:  Any site that already has a roster published will display with a green Published banner, and Sites that have been saved (but not published) will display with a Saved banner.


If you are yet to either save or publish a roster for any site, you have the option to create a roster for all sites simultaneously.

3. If anyone is on leave during the rostering cycle, you will see an alert on the screen that shows the number of employees on leave. You can click on that alert to see the list of employees and the dates they are on leave.

4. To add your first shift,  click the Plus (+) button in the middle of the roster view.

5. Next, select the Position you want to fill from the list of positions you have created on your account.

6. Once selected, click the Select Employee in the bottom right corner or you can create an Open Shift to offer the shift up to your staff to nominate for.

Note: You can also enter the shift's start and finish time on this view in the top left-hand corner of the window.

7. The following window will provide a list of employees to select from. RosterElf's clever 'Perfect Match System' will do most of the thinking for you, highlighting the qualified and available employees using a green, grey and red colour coding system.

Green = Available to work

Grey = Unavailable to work

Red = On Leave OR already rostered on another site at the same time.

To select an employee, click on their name and the Update Roster button.

8. Now that you have added the first shift to the roster, you can use the sliding bars to adjust the start and finish time to suit requirements. 
Click and drag the arrows on either side of the shift to do so.

9. If you wish to copy all shifts created on any given day to another day, click on the day you want to copy and then click on the day you want the shifts to be copied. You can still amend the shifts as you see fit, including adjusting start and finish times.

10. Once you have created all the shifts for each day, a great way to do a final review of the complete roster is to click the Weekly tab option at the top left of the screen.

This view will help you visualise all the shifts across the seven-day week, enabling you to understand overall coverage and also do a final check of how hours have been shared between employees. Any final tweaks can be made at this stage, including adjusting shift times or changing shifts between employees.

11. Once you have reviewed your roster, there are two options - Save or Publish.

Either can be selected by clicking either button on the bottom right of the screen.

Save: Will save your roster without communicating it to employees. You can come back and make further changes later.

Publish: This will move you to finalise the roster and select from staff communication options.

12. If there are shift conflicts, RosterElf will give you another warning before publishing the roster. This warning will appear if you have rostered a staff member on two shifts on the one day, rostered a staff member when they are already rostered to work at another site or if there is a shift assigned to an employee who has approved leave. The conflicting shifts will be clearly shown in red, which can be fixed or ignored.

13. This is the final step. You will have the option to leave a comment for employees and select how you want to notify them of the roster (Email, SMS and App Push Notification). Once published, employees will be notified, and the assigned shifts will appear in their My Shifts section.