Auto-fill

Auto-fill staffs the week's open coverage for you – it proposes assignments, shows you exactly what it would do, and saves nothing until you publish.

Where to find it

The Auto-fill button lives in the Schedule toolbar and is available to owners and managers. Clicking it opens the "Auto-fill this week" dialog, which builds a proposed week for you: "We pre-fill open coverage from who usually works each shift and recent weeks – keeping approved time off clear, never breaking a scheduling rule set to block, and spreading hours evenly. Nothing is saved until you publish."

Preview before anything happens

The draft always previews first. You'll see:

• A summary line – "Filling X of Y open shifts", or "No open coverage this week – nothing to fill." if the week is already covered.
• The proposed assignments, grouped by day: who, what time, which role.
• A "Pending time-off conflict" warning if anyone in the draft has a time-off request still waiting on you – resolve those before you send.
• A "Still open (no one available)" list for the gaps it couldn't fill – those stay as open shifts for you to handle by hand.

Then you choose:

• Discard – nothing happens, the schedule is untouched.
• Publish only – the proposed shifts are created, quietly.
• Publish & notify – the shifts are created and the people on them are told.

What auto-fill respects

Auto-fill does more than put whoever is free into a gap. It works around:

• Days off and time off – nobody is assigned on a day they're unavailable.
• Your scheduling rules – for example, max hours per week and required rest between shifts.
• Fairness – hours are spread across the team rather than piled onto whoever is listed first.
• History – the people who usually work a slot are preferred for it, so the draft tends to keep those people rather than rearranging everyone.
• Pending time off – if someone has a time-off request still waiting for approval, the draft steers around them where it can and flags the clash in the preview, so you don't publish over a request you haven't decided on yet.

So if Liam already has a full week at Northside Inn, auto-fill looks elsewhere before adding more hours for him.

It needs coverage targets

Auto-fill staffs against your coverage targets – that's how it knows what "open" means. If you haven't set any, the dialog tells you: "Set up coverage targets first – that's what auto-fill staffs against." with a link to the Coverage page. See setting up coverage to get targets in place.

A good rhythm

Many teams copy last week as a base, adjust for absences, then run auto-fill to close the remaining gaps. Review the preview and publish.