Weekly rota
The Rota page plans who works which shifts each week, from Monday to Sunday. Once you publish a week, BioTrack measures that week’s attendance against it instead of the person’s usual schedule. This page is for the administrators who plan rotas, and for operators who read them.
Administrators set up and publish rotas. Operators can open Rota, look at drafts and published weeks, and export them, but cannot change them.
Rotas are optional. Employees without a role, and weeks that are not published, keep using the default hours or their assigned shift as described in Work schedules.
Before your first rota
Section titled “Before your first rota”1. Shifts and their weekdays
Section titled “1. Shifts and their weekdays”In Settings → Work schedules, each shift has a Runs on setting. Edit a shift and tick the Weekdays it runs. A rota can only put people on a shift on the days it runs. See Work schedules.
2. Roles
Section titled “2. Roles”In Settings → Roles & staffing, under Employee roles, select Add role for each kind of work, such as Chef or Waiter.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Role name | Shown on the rota and in exports. |
| Days off per week | How many days off each person in this role gets in a Monday–Sunday week. A person works at most 7 minus this number of days. |
| Allow two shifts on the same day | Lets the rota give someone a double: two shifts on one day that do not overlap. |
| Maximum doubles per week | The most doubles one person in this role may work in a week. |
| Minimum rest between days | Hours of rest needed between the end of one working day and the start of the next. |
| Display order | Where the role appears in lists. |
Select Save role. To stop using a role, reassign its employees first, then archive it. Published weeks keep the role’s name.
3. Staffing per shift
Section titled “3. Staffing per shift”Under Staffing per shift, choose a shift and enter, for each role and weekday, the minimum number of people needed. Ideal is optional; leave it empty to use the minimum. Ideal must be at least the minimum. Select Save changes.
4. Give each employee a role
Section titled “4. Give each employee a role”On the Employees page, open a person and choose their Weekly rota role. Unassigned · existing attendance rules keeps them on their usual schedule. Each person has one role.
Plan a week
Section titled “Plan a week”-
Open Rota. It starts on next week. Use the arrows or the date picker to choose another week.
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Start a draft. Select Generate to let BioTrack fill the week, or Copy last week to start from the week before.
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Review the Review this week panel. It lists staffing shortfalls for each shift, role and day, people below their weekly target of work days, leave, and employment dates.
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Adjust individual days. Select a person’s day to choose their shifts, set the day Off, or Lock this day, then select Save day. A locked day stays as it is when you regenerate; select Unlock day before changing it.
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Regenerate if needed. Regenerate unlocked refills every day that is not locked. Tick Keep changes small when regenerating to stay close to the current draft.
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Select Publish when the week is right, and confirm with Publish week.
Generating can take a few seconds for a large team; a progress bar shows with Cancel generation, and cancelling saves nothing.
What the generator respects
Section titled “What the generator respects”BioTrack’s generator follows leave, employment dates, locked days, the weekdays each shift runs, the role’s days off, double limits and minimum rest (including rest after last week’s published Sunday). Doubles never overlap. It tries to meet staffing and each person’s weekly work-day target, but cannot always: the result is a suggestion that still needs a person to review it.
Hard problems, such as a locked day that now breaks a rule, show as errors and must be fixed before you can publish. Staffing shortfalls and unmet work-day targets are warnings: publishing acknowledges them.
Publishing
Section titled “Publishing”- Publish freezes the week as it is: its shifts and times, roles, names and who is on it. Later changes to a shift, a role or an employee do not change a published week until you publish it again.
- To change a published week, edit the draft and publish again. The rota shows Published · revision n; switch between Draft and Published to compare.
- Unpublish returns the week to the default or assigned shift for everyone, and recalculates attendance. Corrected days are kept.
- People given a role after a week was published are not on it until you republish.
A shift that a current or future draft uses cannot be deleted, and you cannot remove a shift’s weekday while staffing is set for it.
Limits: 200 people, 32 shifts and 64 active roles per week.
How a published week changes attendance
Section titled “How a published week changes attendance”For the people on a published week, BioTrack measures each day against that day’s rota instead of their usual schedule.
- Working days come from the rota, not the site calendar. A day with no shifts shows Day off and never becomes an absence. Leave and employment dates still win.
- A scan on a day off counts as present and is never late.
- Back-to-back shifts are treated as one stretch of work.
- Split shifts and doubles with a break between them are separate stretches. Worked time leaves out the break. If the person did not scan at the break, a scan at the start and one at the end cover both. A stretch with no scans counts as late and left early.
- Overnight shifts. A shift whose end time is at or before its start time, including one ending at
00:00, ends the next day. Scans up to four hours after its end belong to the day the shift started. - Publishing and unpublishing recalculate that week’s attendance, from the Sunday before to the Monday after, up to today. Corrected days are never changed; the confirmation says how many were kept.
- Leave entered after publishing shows as a conflict on the published rota.
Export CSV
Section titled “Export CSV”Export CSV saves the draft or published week you are looking at. The file has a row per employee with their Role, their shifts for each day Mon to Sun, and the number of Days and Doubles. Cells that a spreadsheet could read as a formula are made safe.
Published weeks in the portal
Section titled “Published weeks in the portal”If the PC sends attendance to the BioTrack portal, each published week also appears there under Rota, where viewers and administrators can read and export it. Drafts never leave the PC, and unpublishing removes the week from the portal. See Attendance in the portal.