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Shift planning

Rotating shifts are the case ordinary calendars handle worst. The usual workaround is a pile of separate entries, re-entered every time the rota changes.

Calendite has two ways to hold one, and picking the right one is most of the work.

Your rota Use
Has a normal week, with exceptions Variants on one event
Has no normal week: you copy out whatever is published An event group

The question to ask is whether you can finish the sentence "I usually work…". If you can, that sentence is the base schedule and the shifts are variations of it. If the honest answer is "it depends what the rota says", there is nothing for them to vary from.

When there is a normal week: variants

One Work event holds the whole rota as variants.

  1. Create a Work event with the rule WD (every weekday).
  2. Add an Early variant: Mon Wed Fri, starting 06:00.
  3. Add a Late variant: Tue Thu, starting 14:00.

Variants replace the base schedule between them, so the same event shows the right time on the right day. See the rule reference for the syntax.

Everything hangs off the one event: change the location and all of it moves, add an inner event for a handover and it lands only on days you are actually in.

When there isn't: an event group

Six earlies, six lates and six nights, in an order that changes every month, is not a pattern with exceptions. It is a rota you are handed.

  1. Tap NEW and pick the Event Group tile.
  2. Step one: what every shift shares: the name (Ward 6), the tag, the location, the alerts.
  3. Step two: name the shifts and give them their hours. Early 06:00, Late 14:00, Night 22:00.
  4. Fill in the rota with the shift keys under the grid. With One Day At A Time ticked, tap the first day, then each day's shift key in turn, copying the printed rota straight down.

Each new rota is painted rather than re-entered, and the full-size ROTA screen marks the days you have nothing else on, which is the screen you want when someone asks you to pick up an extra night.

See event groups for the whole feature.

Which one you end up with

Neither is a lesser version of the other. A group is what you want when the schedule genuinely comes from outside; variants are what you want when it comes from you. A shift in a group can still carry a pattern (a Night that is always a Friday keeps Fri and gets painted around), so a rota that is half fixed and half chaos doesn't have to choose.

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