Publishing schedules and notifying staff

Last reviewed: 2026-07-14

Shifts start out as drafts when you create them, and drafts are invisible to staff. Publishing makes a week's shifts visible and, if the setting is on, sends staff an email letting them know.

What publishing does

When you click Publish week, Team Shift changes every draft shift for that location and week to published. Published shifts:

• Are visually distinct from drafts on the schedule grid.
• Are the only shifts that a clock-in on POS can automatically link to (see Clocking in without a scheduled shift for what happens with draft or unscheduled shifts).

The Publish Week window

Clicking Publish week opens a window titled Publish week showing a summary for the week you're about to publish — team members affected, how many draft shifts will be published, and total hours. Below that, two notification options:

• Notify all team members
• Notify only affected team members (the default)

Click Publish shifts to confirm.

The Schedule Published email

If the "Email staff when a schedule is published" setting is turned on (see Team Shift settings reference — it's off by default), each staff member with a published shift in that week gets a single email covering their whole week, not one email per shift. The email tells them a new schedule has been published for your shop and points them to check the POS app for their upcoming shifts.

A couple of things that affect whether someone gets this email:

• The setting has to be turned on in Settings.
• The staff member needs an email address on file — staff without one are silently skipped.

Next steps

• Understanding the weekly schedule grid
• Team Shift settings reference
• Troubleshooting and frequently asked questions