Vacant Shift Claiming reduces the time it takes to find an available staff member for a shift by offering the shift to all eligible employees.
You can use vacant shift claiming as part of your usual rostering process to fill multiple shifts, or use it to find a replacement for a single shift.
Vacant shift claiming is an optional feature. To turn vacant shift claiming on, navigate to Settings > Feature Management and enable vacant shift claiming.
How it works
A manager publishes a vacant shift
Employees who meet the requirements are notified of the available shift on the mobile app
Depending on your settings for manager approval, either first employee to 'claim' the vacant shift will be automatically allocated into the shift on the roster or, the manager can select from the list of employees who have offered to work the vacant shift.
To determine who meets the requirements for a vacant shift, Tanda considers the location and team an employee can work in, and clashes with existing published shifts or approved leave requests for those employees.
Publish a vacant shift for claiming
To publish vacant shifts as part of your normal roster publishing process, follow the steps below:
Create a vacant shift on the roster. Ensure the shift has a team, start time and finish time allocated
Once you're ready to publish your roster, go to Review and Publish
Check the box for Publish All Shifts and the box for Publish Vacant Shifts (Shift Claiming:
Review your claimable shifts prior to publishing to confirm these are the vacant shifts you would like to publish to staff:
Click Publish
If you have already published your roster, you can do one of the following to publish additional vacant shifts:
Publish a single vacant shift
To publish a single vacant shift:
Click the shift settings in the top right of the vacant shift, and click publish as shown below:
Select publish all shifts and publish vacant shifts. (When publishing a single shift, the publish all shifts option automatically deselects other employees).
Publish multiple vacant shifts after the roster has already been published
To publish more than one vacant shift after the roster has already been published, follow the normal roster publish process, ensuring Publish All Shifts and Publish Vacant Shifts are selected when publishing.
If you prefer to not send already published shifts to your staff again, you can click deselect all from the staff receiving rosters list while publishing as shown below while publishing the vacant shifts:
How employees claim a vacant shift
Employees claim vacant shifts on their mobile app. Employees will be notified of an available vacant shift via a push notification on their mobile phone.
Claiming a shift in the app
Vacant Shifts for claiming will appear in the Pick up shifts tab from the action menu.
To see further details on the Vacant Shift, select 'Available Shifts'. Here, employees can view the team, start time and finish time, and any other staff working at the same time:
To claim the Vacant Shift, click the Claim Shift button, which will ask the employee to confirm the action. Once claimed, the shift will be added to their mobile app, and the roster will update with the claimers details:
Turn on Manager Approvals for Vacant Shift Claims
Manager approval is optional and by default is turned off. To turn on manager approval:
Navigate to Settings > All Settings > Rosters > Vacant shift claiming
Enable vacant shift claiming
Enable Vacant shift claiming requires manager approval
Click Update Settings
Once enabled, make sure to scroll to the bottom of the page and click Update Settings
Approve a vacant shift claim as a manager
Once you've enabled manager approvals, managers approve vacant shift claims on the mobile app.
To approve a vacant shift claim:
Open the mobile app and navigate to Overview
Navigate to Manage replacements & claims
This will take you to the Manage shift coverage page. Click the tab Vacant Shift Claims to see a list of vacant shift claims awaiting approval.
Pick up vacant shifts as an employee
Employees can offer to claim vacant shifts by navigating to Shifts > Pick up shifts on mobile to view any available vacant shifts. From there they can Offer to Cover.
Vacant shifts and shift replacements are indicated by different statuses.
When an employee offers to cover a vacant shift, they will see the status of the shift update to "Offer Pending" on Pick up shifts.
FAQ's and troubleshooting
How can I identify if a 'Vacant Shift' has been broadcasted successfully?
'Vacant Shifts' which have been broadcasted but not yet claimed, will have a blue indicator on the shift card:
Once claimed, the indicator will change colour to green:
Can an employee claim a shift on the web-app (desktop) version?
No, 'Vacant Shifts' can only be claimed on the mobile app.
How close to the start time of a shift can a 'Vacant Shift' be published?
The start time of a 'Vacant Shift' must be more than 1 hour away to be published.
Can employees claim shifts in team/s they're not in?
No, employees can only claim shifts in teams that they are in.
Is a manager required to approve a claimed vacant shift?
Claiming 'Vacant Shifts' do not require manager approval, 'Vacant Shifts' can be claimed first come, first served.