Rotation Configurations

Owned by Sydney Hoeper (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jan 10, 2023 by Meredith Apfelbaum
6 min read

With ActiveTeam you can make just about any configuration of rotating shifts that you’d like.

The basic elements that make up a rotation configuration are:

  • Number of shifts

    • This indicates the total number of shifts you’d like to be in your configuration

  • Shift length

    • This indicates how long each shift will last before it ends

  • Number of days

    • This indicates how many days will pass before the configuration repeats itself

 

Template Patterns

24 On, 48 Off (ABC)

A typical 24-48 shift pattern can be selected from the Template dropdown, which will automatically configure the schedule to fit this pattern.

You can see that for the ABC schedule, there are 3 shifts which all last 24h and there are 3 days before the schedule repeats. Each shift occupies one day in the rotation. There are no empty spaces, so there will always be a shift in progress.

 

48 On, 96 Off (AABBCC)

A typical 48-96 shift pattern can be selected from the Template dropdown, which will automatically configure the schedule to fit this pattern.

You can see that for the AABBCC schedule, there are 3 shifts which all last 24h, and there are 6 days before the schedule repeats. Each shift occupies two days in a row in the rotation. There are no empty spaces, so there will always be a shift in progress.

 

California

A California shift pattern can be selected from the Template dropdown, which will automatically configure the schedule to fit this pattern.

You can see that for the California schedule, there are 3 shifts which all last 24h, and there are 6 days before the schedule repeats. The shifts are placed in the rotation so that each shift happens every other day over a span of 5 days, then has 4 days off.

 

Custom

Custom schedules have hundreds of possible configurations, so you can create one to fit your needs.

First decide how many shifts you want on your schedule. You may decide to have only one shift that repeats many times, or many different shifts that occur only once. One factor in this decision may be the regularity of people on a particular shift. For example, at the bottom of the page you can add people to positions in a shift, then that person will always show up in that position on that shift in every instance that it occurs (called an occurrence). Otherwise you can keep the positions blank and fill them in on a shift by shift basis.

Next choose how long you want each shift to be. At this time every shift must be the same length.

Then select how many days occur before the rotation repeats. You can make this decision based on the type of coverage you’re looking for for this schedule. For example, you may be making a weekly schedule, and in that case you would want 7 days to occur before the schedule repeats. Alternatively you may have the same shift every day, so you may only need 1 day in your rotation.

Next drag and drop your shifts into the rotation you want. Shifts can be used as many times as you’d like. Any time in the rotation where a shift does not occur will still take up space on the calendar as time without a shift. Blank spaces are great for schedules that don’t include weekend shifts, or schedules with any break in coverage. You can always remove a shift from your rotation by clicking the “X” at the bottom of a shift. Or you can start your rotation over completely by clicking “Clear All” in the top right.

Don’t forget that you can preview your schedule above to make sure your rotation works the way you intended.

Another factor to consider is the start date and start time of your schedule, as this will determine when your rotation begins. For example, if your 24h shifts always start at 06:00, you should change your schedule to start at 06:00 so everything will align to that time.

As you can see, changing the start time will change the start time for each day in the rotation. The numbers on the side of each day will indicate the time over which the shift passes. Since this schedule starts at 06:00, you can see in the preview that the 24h shift goes from 06:00 on one day to 06:00 on the next day.

If your shifts are specific to days of the week, change your start date to make sure your rotation will line up as intended.

Schedule start dates and times cannot be changed once the schedule is saved. In order to update either option you will need to make a new schedule.

 

Here are some examples of schedules and rotations that you can follow or use to inspire your own configuration:

Weekday and Weekend Schedule

This schedule uses two shifts at 24h long and 7 days repeating. The schedule’s start time in on a Monday to ensure the Weekend shifts will actually align with weekends.

 

Day Shift and Night Shift Schedule

For a day and night shift, there can be 2 shifts which are 12h each. There only needs to be one day in the rotation, since every day will have the same amount of day and night shifts. The schedule starts at 06:00 and the Day shift is in the first half of the day in rotation. Putting the Night shift in the second half of the day in rotation means that it will start immediately after the day shift. With this configuration, the Day shift goes from 06:00 - 18:00 and the Night shift goes from 18:00 - 06:00 the next morning.

 

Weekday and Weekend, Night and Day Schedule

To make a schedule for both days and night, weekends and weekdays, you’ll need a schedule with four shifts at 12h each. That will cover:

  • Weekday Day

  • Weekday Night

  • Weekend Day

  • Weekend Night

By making the rotation 7 days long, you can ensure the days of the week will line up properly. As in the first example, the schedule starts on a Monday, so the first 5 days in the rotation represent the week days and the last two days represent the weekend.

 

Schedules with Various Shift Length

Shift lengths that are not divisible by 24h will not fit perfectly into a 24h day in a rotation. If this is the case, there will be a blacked out area to show that no matter how you configure your day, that shift length just won’t fit into a 24h period and there will be a gap before the next 24h period in the rotation starts. For example, if you had two shifts that were 9h each, you would only be able to fit 2 shifts into a single day, since 9 +9 = 18 and 24 - 18 = 6. In this case, there will be a 6h gap after the second shift, and the next shift would start after the 6h has passed. At this time there is no way to have continuous coverage with uneven shift times.