Getting started

Take the dashboard tour (or don't)

When you first land on the dashboard, an overlay offers to walk you through the same three setup steps we're about to do: add a tag, add a worker, create a shift. Follow it or skip it; you can restart it any time from Settings.

Add a tag

Go to the Tags page and hit Add tag. Give it a name that fits your operation ("Server", "Line cook", "Cleanup crew") and save. Spaces are fine; the app stores "Line Cook" as line_cook, but your workers just see "line cook" in their texts.

Tags are how ShiftRobin knows which workers are eligible for which shifts. Think of them as roles, though you can also tag by certification, location, or language, and a worker can hold more than one. One tag is enough for the trial; you can add the rest later.

Add yourself as a worker

Go to the Roster and hit Add worker. You'll be worker #1 on your own trial roster, and in a minute or two ShiftRobin is going to text you.

Here's what to enter:

• Name. Your own.
• Phone. Your real mobile number.
• Tags. Tap the one you made in step 2.
• SMS consent. Pick Admin confirmed. You're consenting to yourself, which attests you have permission to text yourself. For your real team later, this is the "did I actually get their consent" conversation. More on that in the next step.
• Notes. Write "trial worker, deactivate later" so future-you knows what this row is.

Save, and you're on the roster with an "active" badge.

Add a friend as worker #2

To see priority-based dispatch actually happen, you need two workers on the list, so ask a friend if you can borrow their number for five minutes.

It's the same modal as before, with one difference:

When your friend replies YES, their row flips from "pending" to "active", and you have your two workers. One heads-up: the roster filter defaults to Active, so switch it to All statuses if you want to see your friend while they're still pending.

Create a test shift

Go to Shifts and hit New shift. Keep it simple for the trial: one row, one slot.

Here's how to set it up:

• Date. Today or tomorrow.
• The shift row. Pick your tag, leave the count at 1, and set start and end times. Anything plausible works. It's a test.
• Response timeout. Tap Custom and set it to 5 minutes. That's how long each worker gets to reply before ShiftRobin moves on to the next person. Five minutes keeps the trial moving; the 30-minute default is a better fit for real shifts.
• Must be resolved by. How far ahead of the shift's start ShiftRobin should stop trying. The dispatch ends there even if the shift isn't filled, so you get a clear deadline for making backup plans. Leave the default for the trial.
• Extra information (optional). By default the SMS includes just the tag, date, and time. If you want to add a location, dress code, gate code, or anything else, put it under Extra information for job offer and workers get it as a tap-through link in the SMS. It doesn't make the text any longer or cost anything extra. Skip it for the trial.
• Cohort & offer order. Who gets asked, and in what order. Auto-rank is the default; leave it. You can hand-pick the order on a real shift when it matters.

Hit Create, and the shift shows up on the calendar with a Dispatch button.

Dispatch

Tap the shift's day on the calendar, then hit Dispatch on the shift. Before anything sends, you get a pre-dispatch check: candidates available, slots needed, minutes until cutoff, and any quiet-hours overlap, topped with a verdict like "Looks good — dispatch should fill" or a warning about what's working against you.

If you're inside quiet hours (9 PM to 7 AM local by default), sends hold until morning; for the trial, that's what Dispatch anyway is for. In real use, quiet hours are what stop your workers from getting shift texts at 2 AM.

There's also a Dispatch all open button that fires every open shift in the next seven days at once. It'll be useful later. For the trial, dispatch your one shift by itself.

Watch it work

You land on the live dispatch page, with your name in the candidate list next to a "waiting" spinner. Within a few seconds, your phone buzzes.

Reply Y from your phone. The dispatch page updates live: your row flips to "accepted", the filled counter ticks to 1 of 1, and the dispatch closes with a green "completed" badge. Every reply gets logged right on the page: who was contacted, in what order, and how long each person took. It's the same view you'll use for real dispatches.

See the fall-through

Create a second test shift the same way. When the SMS hits your phone, reply N.

Your row flips to "declined", and a few seconds later your friend's row goes "waiting": ShiftRobin has moved on and texted them. If they reply Y, the shift fills. If they reply N, or don't reply within five minutes, the dispatch ends unfilled and you get a summary.

Clean up the trial

There are two things to tidy up before you go live.

Test shifts

If your test shift didn't fill (you declined and your friend didn't accept), open its edit modal and hit Delete. Filled shifts can't be deleted. That's deliberate: they're part of your paper trail. They drop off the active view once their date passes, so just leave them.

Test workers

Open each worker's edit modal (yours and your friend's) and hit Deactivate. ShiftRobin never hard-deletes workers: deactivating removes them from every future dispatch but keeps the SMS history, which you may want later and which some carriers require us to retain.

If you later add yourself back for real, because you're one of the people who covers shifts, just create a fresh worker record. The old trial row stays inactive in the background.

Run it from your phone

Everything above works from a phone browser. The day-to-day flows (posting a shift, dispatching, watching replies) are built for it. ShiftRobin will also offer to install itself to your home screen; take it up on that and it opens full-screen like an app, no app store involved. The one thing that's genuinely nicer at a desk is the initial setup, CSV import in particular.

Add your real team

It's the same pattern, at scale.

• Tags. Add every role your team can fill. A worker who does two gets tagged with both.
• Workers. Add them one at a time from the roster form, or upload a CSV; the format's documented in the CSV import reference. The short version: name,phone,tags, one worker per row. CSV imports default to "admin confirmed" consent, so only use them for workers you've already asked in person.
• Priority order. There isn't one to set on the roster page. ShiftRobin auto-ranks your workers on each dispatch, favouring the ones who accept reliably and rotating through fairly so nobody is always first on the list. If one specific shift needs a different order, Cohort & offer order on that shift lets you pin the list by hand. A durable per-worker preference is on the roadmap.
• Shift templates. Every shift's SMS can be customized. If you dispatch the same few shift types over and over, set up templates so you're not rewriting the message every time.