📌 Note: The screenshots and settings shown in this article may not match what you see in your own platform, as Rosterfy is highly customisable. If you need guidance specific to your setup, please contact our support team.
If you have a routine Shift that occurs regularly, such as every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you can apply a repeating schedule to avoid building each instance from scratch. This connects your scheduled blocks together so you can easily assign a Volunteer to the entire Shift series at once.
💡Tip: If you need to build a complex, multi-week schedule template from scratch and deploy it across large blocks of time, see the Bulk Creation Using Shift Patterns article.
IN THIS ARTICLE:
Configure Settings for Repeating Shifts
By default, repeating Shift patterns require Volunteers to commit to the entire series. To change this behavior and allow volunteers to select or drop individual days, navigate to Organization Settings > Events tab and configure the following options:
Allow volunteers to withdraw from a single shift in a recurring set: Enabling this setting allows a Volunteer to cancel a single day without removing themselves from the remaining Shifts in the series. Disabling this means that withdrawing from one Shift cancels their entire assignment. This setting is disabled by default.
Allow volunteers to apply to a shift in a single recurring set: Enabling this setting allows Volunteers to apply for specific days within the cluster. Disabling this forces them to apply for the entire series simultaneously. This setting is disabled by default.
Create Repeating Shifts
Click Events > Events.
Click the View Shifts button on the Event you wish to create a repeating Shift schedule for. The Event's Shift list appears:
Click the More Actions menu on the Shift you wish to add a repeating schedule to.
Click Update. The Update Shift page appears:
Click the Repeat option in the left-hand menu.
Check the Has Repeat box. The following options appear:
Configure the following options:
Which days?: Select the days of the week you want this Shift to repeat.
Repeat Until: Enter a specific end date. If left blank, the system automatically generates Shifts for the next 90 days on a rolling basis.
Portal Description: Enter the text volunteers will see in their portal when viewing this repeating series.
Click the Save button. The following window appears:
Click the Yes button. The following window appears:
Click the Close button. The repeated Shifts appear in your Shift list. To view the entire repeating Shift series, see the View Repeating Shifts section.
In the User Portal, repeating Shifts appear with a link icon:
Update Repeating Shifts
When you edit or delete a Shift within a repeating series, the system will ask if you want to apply the change to just that single Shift, or apply the change to the other linked repeating Shifts.
Click Events > Events.
Click the View Shifts button on the Event you wish to create a repeating Shift schedule for. The Event's Shift list appears:
Click the More Actions menu on the Shift you wish to update.
Click Update. The Update Shift window appears:
Update the Shift as desired.
Click the Save button. The following window appears:
Click the Yes button to apply the updates to all linked repeating Shifts occuring in the future, or click the No button to only update the selected Shift.
💡Tip: Alternatively, repeating Shifts can be updated from within the repeat Shift list itself. See the View Repeating Shifts section.
Delete Repeating Shifts
When deleting a Shift within a repeating series, the system will prompt you to choose between removing just that single instance or deleting the current Shift along with all future occuring Shifts in the repeating series. This ensures your past Shift history remains untouched.
Click Events > Events.
Click the View Shifts button on the Event you wish to create a repeating Shift schedule for. The Event's Shift list appears:
Click the More Actions menu on the Shift you wish to update.
Click Delete. The following window appears:
Click the Yes button. The following window appears:
Click the Yes button to delete all future repeating Shifts in the series, or click the No button to delete only the single Shift you selected.
View Repeating Shifts
To view all repeating instances in a series, see the following:
Click Events > Events.
Click the View Shifts button on the Event you wish to create a repeating Shift schedule for. The Event's Shift List appears:
Click the More Actions menu on the Shift you wish to update.
Click Update. The Update Shift window appears:
Click the View linked Shifts option in the left-hand menu. The Shift's Linked Shifts page appears:
Manage Shift View and Visibility
Once your schedule is generated, use the following Shift display settings to organise your view and manage the visibility of your Shifts:
Default View: When viewing Shifts directly from the Event itself, the system sorts them alphabetically rather than by date. Click the arrow icon next to the Date/Time field header to arrange your Shift view to present chronologically.
Publishing and Unpublishing: You cannot publish or unpublish a linked series from the More Actions menu. To change the publication status, you must individually select the Shifts on the Shift list and apply a bulk action.
Volunteer Sign-Up Limitations
While repeating Shifts streamline your scheduling, the system enforces specific guardrails around Volunteer sign-ups to prevent scheduling conflicts and overstaffing. When a Volunteer applies for a recurring Shift series, the system automatically checks both global roster capacities and the Volunteer's personal calendar before confirming their assignments.
Capacity Limits: If a Volunteer applies for a linked series of 5 Shifts, but 1 Shift has already reached its Volunteer capacity, the system will assign them to the remaining 4 open slots.
Schedule Clashes: If a Volunteer applies for a linked series of 5 Shifts but has a scheduling conflict on even one of those days, the system will block them from applying to the linked group entirely to prevent double-booking.