Famly’s Staff Schedule is a shift planning tool that will help you to:

If you'd like to take a look at this feature in action, Josie will guide you through it in the video below:

The Staff Schedule is an insightful and easy-to-manage staff planning tool for creating shifts and schedules that meet ratio requirements while providing a single source of truth for what is planned for staff resourcing in the coming days, weeks and months.

There are two view of the Staff Schedule, which can be configured for roles in the the Famly settings page by going to General → Staff → Manage roles/permissions.

The Staff schedule default view is a weekly calendar-style grid (either five days or seven depending on your configuration) with the ability to view a single day by clicking on the top row of the grid under the date. You can go forward and backwards in dates by clicking on the date picker at the top of the page.

There are two primary views available, which can be selected from above

To add a shift, you can click on + New shift at the top of the page or click on any cell in the schedule. If the cell is empty (meaning no shifts have been added yet) a blue highlight and plus sign will appear. If there is a shift already assigned, click on the blue highlight around the shift card.

Creating a shift from clicking on a cell means that the new info will be added, including the date and assigned staff. To create more shifts with similar info (e.g. start and end time, break, room, staff member), you can select Create another shift and the same info will be duplicated, allowing you to make updates (e.g. change the date) before saving.

You can also click on Add Manager Note to enter additional information about this shift:

If your shift patterns are recurring, week by week, you have the option to copy and paste shifts from one week to other weeks.

To do so, add a week of shifts, click on Copy shifts at the top of the page and choose which rooms and weeks you'd like to paste onto other weeks.

With the shift recurrence feature, you can select for a shift to reoccur on specific days (whether that be every day, or just one day of the week for example), and you can select the number of weeks a shift pattern should repeat for (every week, every two weeks, it's totally up to you!). You can also set an end date for the recurrence series. Once you've created a recurring schedule, you can still edit a single shift in a series (for example, reassign or change the shift time, work tag or delete it) or edit the recurrence series (for example, reassign or change the time, work tag or delete them). And of course, you have the option to publish recurring shifts week by week or all future shifts in the schedule.

Recurring shifts will be marked by a turning arrow symbol in your schedule overview:

A key feature of the Staff schedule is the concept of Open shifts.

These are shifts that do not have a staff member assigned to them. This is helpful when considering the shifts needed for a room, before assigning to staff based on availability - as well as if there is a change and a staff can no longer fulfil the shift. For managers, the open shifts indicate areas to focus on to find staff, whether within the nursery or from external sources.

Open shifts can be easily assigned to a staff member by clicking on the shift card and selecting the staff from the drop-down list (shown in alphabetical order). Similarly, any shifts that need to be re-assigned can be easily done by selecting a staff member from the Staff drop-down within shifts. Once saved, the shift will be assigned to the new staff member

All existing rooms configured in Famly are available to assign shifts to. Just like assigning and reassigning staff members, rooms can be changed by clicking on the shift card and selecting a new location then saving the change.

As staff can be assigned shifts across multiple rooms at any time of day, it's important to see when there are conflicting shifts. Perhaps a staff member is not available to work at the time, or they've already been assigned to work another shift in a different room. Whatever the conflict, Famly will let you know with a little warning symbol in the schedule overview, and an explanation in the shift creator.

You can also be informed of any conflicting shifts from the Overview in your sidebar. The Needs your attention section will highlight if any shifts include double bookings, or if shifts are assigned outside a staff member's available hours (set in the Contract section on their profile), or if they're on leave.

Creating work tags allows you to categorise the different types of shift work. This information is included in export and API data. For example you may want to communicate to staff that specific time periods are for "Classroom time", "Prep time" and "Training" — and add that to attendance as needed.

To set up work tags, Staff schedule users with the manage feature permission can go to Settings → Staff → Staff hours and Add a work tag

For each shift, select and start and end times for the day. Multiple shifts can be created for a staff per day. This can be used to indicate room switches at specific times. Shift times can overlap, so please keep in mind when planning the schedule.

Adding break time is optional and can be selected from the shift modal. Any number of minutes can be selected. This amount will be deducted from the total working time indicated and shown as minus hours in the CSV file available for download from the Staff Schedule page.

For nurseries using age groups, an indication of the staff ratio is shown for the day (red means you're under ratio, blue means you're over ratio, and green indicates you're on ratio). If you are out of ratio, you can always make adjustments based on ratio needs and staff availability.

To get more details on when the room is out of ratio during the day, the top row of the table can be clicked to show the single-day views. The graph highlights the periods of the day (down to 15 minutes) where the room is on ratio (green), over ratio (blue), under ratio (red) - or where there is no ratio requirement. By hovering over the graph, you will also be able to see the specific staff ratio decimal.

New shifts can be created and assigned to ensure the ratio is met.

Once users with edit permission are happy with the shifts and schedule created for your nursery, the schedule can be published—meaning the shifts become visible to all staff. You can publish the shifts for the current week or all coming weeks.

In-app notifications are sent after shifts are published to staff assigned to the added, edited or deleted shifts. These notifications can be turned on or off from My Account → Notifications and Messaging → Staff schedule updates.

In-app notifications of shifts will look something like this:

You can also print off your schedule to have hard copy by clicking on the Options dropdown and selecting Print

Made a mistake? No problem. You can delete shifts in bulk by selecting the shifts you'd like to remove and deleting them all in one go. You can select shifts across the week, across rooms, for an entire day, or all for a single staff member.

Just click on the Delete shifts button, select the room and date range you'd like to remove shifts for and confirm.

The shifts assigned are shown in the following locations in the app: