🟡 This feature is currently limited to select Planday organisations or regions, with full availability gradually extending to all.

🔓 Access level in Planday: Administrator, Schedule manager.

🌐 Subscription plan: All

⏱️ Reading time: 4 min.

ℹ️ Important read: Scheduling explained.

What are Draft shifts?

In Planday, you have the option to save shifts as drafts before publishing your schedule. This allows you to create and assign shifts as needed and then publish them all at once when the schedule is ready.

Draft shifts let you work on the schedule without having to hide the entire week or individual days. Employees won’t see draft shifts until they are published while existing published shifts remain visible.

How to create and use Draft shifts

Start by creating a new shift on the schedule.
Set the start and end time for the shift.
Either leave the shift open or assign it to an employee.
Choose a group or position and, optionally, a Shift type if needed.
Turn on the Draft shift option and click Save as draft.

The draft shift will be saved and displayed in orange on the schedule.

You can edit, move, or assign draft shifts just like any other shift. These shifts will remain hidden from employees except for those with Admin or Schedule manager access.

Once you've finalised your planned shifts, click Publish shifts in the top right corner to make the schedule visible to employees.

⬆️ The screenshot above shows draft shifts (Thursday to Saturday) and an open shift (Friday), along with a few published shifts on the same schedule. This flexible setup lets you plan more easily — assigning some shifts, keeping others as drafts, and posting open shifts while you finalise the schedule.

Publish only selected Draft shifts

Clicking Publish Shifts lets you make all shifts visible or only publish selected ones. You can also exclude certain employees or skip publishing open shifts, giving you more flexibility and control over your schedule.

You can choose draft shifts from the schedule and publish only the selected ones.

Notify employees when publishing shifts

When you publish shifts, a confirmation message shows the number of shifts published, and you can choose to notify your employees about the new shifts.

Message: Alerts the employees using a Planday message. Learn more about messaging in Planday.
SMS: Sends a text notification to the employees’ mobile number (charges may apply).

Regardless of how many draft shifts you've added, each scheduled employee will only receive one notification.

How to use Draft shifts along with Schedule templates

You can save your week’s schedule as a template. This is useful if your schedule has patterns and is similar from week to week. Read more about how to Create and use Schedule templates.

When applying a Schedule template, you have two choices:

Apply as draft — This option puts the shifts from the template as drafts on your schedule when you apply a template. You will have to publish the schedule to make the shifts visible to employees.
Apply — This option publishes the shifts from the template and makes them visible to employees at once.

The same logic applies when using the Copy week feature in Schedule > Templates > Copy week.

How to use Draft shifts on the Planday app

For Schedule managers using the Planday app, drafts will be visible on their schedules and just like in the web version, drafts will be highlighted in orange.

Managers can edit and publish drafts created through the web schedule using the mobile app. Pressing Save as Draft on the app will keep the shifts as drafts on the web schedule.

Please note:

You can't create new draft shifts through the Planday app; you'll need to use the web version of the schedule to create draft shifts.
This also applies to applying Schedule templates. Any draft shift included in a template applied through the Planday app will be published automatically.

Comparison between Draft shifts and Open shifts

Draft shifts are a bit different than Open or assigned shifts in the sense that:

You or your employees cannot punch in/out for a draft shift. Punch Clock can be used for draft shifts after they have been published.
Your employees cannot sell or swap drafts, as those shifts will not be visible to them before they are published.

However, they are also similar to Open or Assigned shifts in some ways:

To edit or create a draft shift, you would need to have a Schedule manager or a higher access level.
When assigning draft shifts, the contacted availability set per employee will be visible. Read more about How to use Contracted availability for employees.
You can notify your employees about the new schedule after the drafts are published with only one message.
Draft shifts can be accessed through our API if you have a custom application or integration that requires access. Read more on Developer.Planday.com.

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