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Managing Team Shifts and Schedules

Learn how to manage your team's schedules by creating, editing, and deleting shifts in the Time and Attendance section of your dashboard

Tamara Filipovic Djordjevic avatar
Written by Tamara Filipovic Djordjevic
Updated over a week ago

By creating, editing and deleting shifts in the Time and Attendance section of your Insightful application, you ensure that the time of your workforce s effectively allocated and managed.

Whether it's adding shifts manually or through bulk upload, adjusting shift details or removing unnecessary shifts, this feature streamlines the process of scheduling and helps maintain clarity and accuracy in your team's work routines.

Creating Shifts

There are two ways to create new shifts:

Manually

Click the Add Shift button in the top right corner of the Time and Attendance → Scheduled Shifts tab of the dashboard, or the “+” sign on the timeline. Here, you can specify the Start and End date/time, and time zone, and assign it to specific teams or employees.

Only Admins or Managers with permission can create, edit, delete Shift and create or edit a note.

When you click on Add New Shift, a pop-up window appears where you need to fill in details such as:

  • Teams and Employees - Here you can select whether a shift will apply to an individual employee, multiple employees, a single team, or multiple teams.

An employee can belong to only one team at a time.

  • Start Date and Time

  • End Date and Time

  • Time zone

  • Repeats

    • No Repeat

    • Weekly

    • Bi-Weekly - select specific days of the week for shifts to repeat, as well as set an end date for the repetition.

  • You can add additional information or comments related to a shift, work session, or employee activity. If a note is added, it will appear in the shift details window.

  • Notes cannot be added via CSV.

When you click on a shift, you’ll see the details, including the scheduled date, scheduled start time, actual hours worked, and any associated notes. Details are available for past, ongoing, and future shifts (date, hours, and actual time worked).

Uploading Shift Schedule via CSV

Download a pre-formatted CSV template from your account or the provided link. Fill it with your desired shifts and import it back into the dashboard. Remember to use the correct time zone format as listed. That's how you can import multiple shifts at once, in bulk.

  • To schedule a shift, it must be at least 1 hour long.

  • You can schedule a shift up to two and a half hours before it starts.

Users can choose to overwrite overlapping Scheduled Shifts/Time Off directly on the conflict screen during import or creation. By selecting an optional checkbox, you can decide whether to skip or overwrite overlapping shifts.

CSV import templates for Scheduled Shifts and Time Off include an identifier column to help avoid issues with employees who have the same name.

The identifier column is optional and not required for import, but you can export it from the Employee page to help prepare your CSV files.

Editing Shifts

Editing shifts is possible only for one shift at a time. The information that can be edited is:

  • Start date and time.

  • End date and time.

  • Time zone.

  • Note.

This applies to the recurring shifts as well.

Deleting Shifts

There are three ways to remove scheduled shifts:

Individual

To delete a shift, click the three-dot menu and select Remove Shift. Only shifts scheduled for the future can be deleted.

Remove Shifts In Bulk

To detele Shifts in a certain period for Employees or Teams, click the trash can icon in the Time and Attendance → Schedules, click Remove Shifts and choose which Teams/Employees and time range you want to delete from.

On the Employee page, you can select an individual employee and open the Schedules tab. There, a bulk removal button (trash can in the upper right corner) will be available—visible only to managers who have the "Manager can schedule and delete shifts" permission, regardless of their time off permissions.

Remove Selection In Bulk

To delete multiple shifts, which can be randomly selected, go to Time and Attendance → Schedules and click the trash can icon. Then, click Remove Selection, choose the shifts to delete, and confirm by clicking Remove.

  • Shifts can be modified and deleted until 30 minutes before the start. Once the shift begins, it cannot be modified or deleted.

  • A scheduled shift can be deleted if necessary, but it can only be modified once. If you're unsure whether you can schedule a shift, a red popup will appear indicating how many hours in advance you can do it.

  • If you have set a recurring shift and want to modify its hours, you can only make changes to the shift for a single date.

  • You can delete both individual Scheduled Shifts and bulk Scheduled Shifts.

  • Users can now delete Time Off or Scheduled Shifts entries within a specific date range.

  • Only the start and end dates of the deletion range need to be selected.

  • There’s no need to input a specific time.

  • There’s no need to input a time zone — the system uses the user’s point-of-view time zone (either Employee or Organizational Time Zone).

  • Some Scheduled Shifts within the range are not deleted due to technical limitations:

    • Ongoing Scheduled Shifts

    • Future Scheduled Shifts with less than 30 minutes remaining before the earliest clock-in time

    • Past Scheduled Shifts with employee activity

    • Past Scheduled Shifts within the last 24-hour window

Ability to delete historical Scheduled Shifts

  1. Users can now delete Scheduled Shifts that are in the past, as long as they are empty.

  2. Only Scheduled Shifts without any employee activity — that is, empty or absent shifts — can be deleted.

  3. Past Scheduled Shifts cannot be deleted immediately; they become available for deletion only after midnight on the following day.

You have dropdown option visible only if the manager has both "Manager can schedule and delete shifts" and "Manager can add and delete time off" permissions.

👉 Good to know:

  • Remember to save your changes after creating or editing any shifts.

  • Ensure the time zone is correct for all shifts to avoid confusion.

  • Utilize bulk upload and deletion for efficient management of large numbers of shifts.

Filtering Shifts on the Schedule

You can filter shifts within a customizable time frame using various filters.

To filter shifts in your search in Time and Attendance → Schedules tab or individual Employee tab for Schedules, you can use the following parameters:

  • Employees

  • Teams

  • Time Off Type

  • Work Time

    • Expected

    • Undertime - Adjustable Duration in min

    • Overtime - Adjustable Duration in min

  • Lateness - Display of employees who arrived at least a specified number of minutes late for their shift or more.

    • On Time

    • Late for work - Adjustable Duration in min

Shift Attendance Statuses on the Scheudule

In the top-right corner of each shift, you'll find an icon that provides key shift details when clicked:

  • Ongoing shift - The employee is currently working their scheduled shift.

  • Overtime - The employee worked more hours than scheduled.

  • Undertime - The employee worked fewer hours than scheduled.

  • Late - The employee started the shift later than scheduled.

  • Expected - The employee worked the expected hours as defined in the settings.

  • Absent - The employee did not show up for the scheduled shift.

Scheduled Shift statuses are represented by a specific icon that helps to easily distinguish them. This allows for two statuses to be presented on the same shift, for example, Undertime + Late Clock In.

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