Schedule hub

Plan: Complete for everything in this hub except Call Outs & Tardies, which is included with Core.

6.1 Guard Requests

Where: Schedule > Guard Requests · Roles: Admin, Branch Manager

A guard request is a customer asking for coverage: "two officers at the loading dock Saturday night". Requests arrive by email to your company's inbound address, from the customer portal link, by phone (entered by you) or directly in the dashboard, and move through a dispatch board.

Statuses: New → In progress → Awaiting client → Confirmed (or Denied) → Closed / Cancelled. Each request carries a response SLA and a resolution SLA; the countdown turns amber within an hour of the deadline and red when breached.

Creating a request by hand

1. Click the new-request button.
2. What do they need? — a one-line summary of the coverage.
3. Choose the Customer and Site (or type a new site name and address for a one-off location).
4. Priority: Routine or Urgent — pages the on-call roster (urgent requests page every on-call contact for the site or branch the moment they are saved; see section 5.5).
5. Guards requested (headcount) and the shift starts / ends date-times.
6. Contact details for the person asking — Contact name, phone, email — and Notes.
7. How did this come in? — Phone call or Entered directly.
8. Save. The request opens as New with both SLA clocks running.

Working a request — open it to see the tabs Overview, checklist, Activity (internal notes) and Email (the thread with the client):

• Acknowledge it to stop the response clock.
• Tick the checklist items (required items must be complete before confirming).
• Reply to the client from the Email tab; their replies thread back automatically.
• Confirm coverage: the dialog asks for the Bill rate code to attach to the resulting shifts (section 11.3) and offers Confirm and schedule, which writes one shift per requested guard into the Working Schedule with that code set. Assign guards there. Alternatively Deny with a reason.
• Close or cancel once the work is done.

Dispatch settings (gear icon on the page; admins) holds everything that governs the board:

• Response targets — the response and resolution SLAs in minutes.
• Escalation — tier delays and the emails notified at each tier, whether tiers also page on-call contacts, and whether the client receives an acknowledgement email and status emails.
• Routing — the Default dispatcher new requests land on (customers can override this in their Requests panel).
• Checklist — the checklist template applied to new requests and which items are required.
• Inbound email — the company request address and its readable alias (for example requests@your-company.instanotified.com), a spam cutoff and toggles for accepting emailed requests.

Emails that reach the inbound address but cannot be matched to a customer collect in Unrouted mail; open the drawer, assign the customer and the message becomes a request.

6.2 Working Schedule

Where: Schedule > Working Schedule · Plan: Complete · Roles: Admin, Branch Manager

The live week-by-week schedule that guards see in their app. On Free and Core the page is the upgrade prompt whether or not you have added sites and employees yet — it reads Scheduling requires the Complete plan with an Upgrade to Complete button, matching the amber spark on the tiles and sidebar entry that open it; on Complete, a company with no sites or employees sees Set up your team first with Add Sites / Add Employees shortcuts instead of the schedule. Use the view switcher at the top left to change how it is displayed:

Creating a shift — the Create Shift dialog

Click Add Shift (or an empty cell in a grid view). The fields, in order:

Editing a shift opens the same dialog with three tabs: Shift Details (the fields above), Time Entries (the clock records logged against this shift, with adjustments) and Location History (every location verification sent for this shift, pending or answered, with its result, distance and a Sent via badge — SMS, Push or SMS + Push — showing how the link actually went out, or Not recorded when no delivery was logged). When the shift is part of a recurring series you are asked whether the change applies to Only this event or This and all future events; editing the series parent itself offers Update parent only or Update and generate new schedules.

Filling a week

• Roll over copies shifts into the week you are viewing from either a Prior Working Schedule week or a Master Schedule Template — choose the source in the dialog. Use it for "same as last week" operations.
• Publish from Master stamps the Master Schedule templates into the chosen week(s) (section 6.3). Existing shifts are never duplicated.

Other tools on this page

• Week navigation arrows and a date picker; filters for sites and employees; the view switcher.
• Shift colours indicate status: Scheduled (purple), Started (orange), Confirmed (green), Completed (blue), Cancelled (red). Open (unassigned) shifts are highlighted so they can be filled.
• Holidays configured for a site are overlaid on the calendar.
• Notification Override lets you change, for one shift or one Master Schedule template, the reminders that the site's Notification Settings would otherwise send (for example silence a periodic verification for a training shift). Overrides cover timing, delivery channel and the verification tool; the message text itself always comes from the site's Message Wording.
• Delivery channel label. A site that sends automatic notifications shows a small badge next to its name in the Site Grid view (and via SMS / via Push / via SMS + Push in the Automatic Notifications panel when one site is selected). It is the site's Notification Delivery Channel from Site detail > Settings > Notifications; changing it affects only notifications sent afterwards, so check a shift's Location History tab for how an earlier one went out.
• Notification Forecast lists every automatic notification the visible week will generate — shift reminders, periodic verifications, clock-in reminders — so you can check the volume before it goes out.
• AI Suggestions opens the optimizer's recommendations for the visible week (section 6.6).
• Right-click or open a shift to edit, reassign, duplicate or cancel it.

What the guard sees. Guards see assigned shifts in the app's Schedule tab (next 7 days) and can clock in from Early clock-in window minutes before the start. There is no accept / decline step in the app: Confirmed is a status you set here once coverage is agreed, and the dashboard's Unconfirmed Shifts card counts shifts still at Scheduled.

6.3 Master Schedule

Where: Schedule > Master Schedule · Roles: Admin, Branch Manager

The Master Schedule holds recurring weekly patterns (templates) — for example "Site A: 2 guards 08:00–16:00 Mon–Fri". Publishing a template stamps those shifts into the Working Schedule for the weeks you choose.

1. Each site has one template. Click Create on the site's row to open the editor.
2. Add template shifts to the week grid with the + on a day (times, headcount, shift code, default guards), then Save Master Schedule.
3. Publish it with the row's Publish (choose the target weeks; Notify employees when published is off every time the dialog opens, including Roll over on the Working Schedule), with Publish from Master on the Working Schedule, or select several sites and Bulk Publish. Existing shifts are not duplicated.
4. Templates can be edited, duplicated or deleted at any time without affecting weeks already published.

6.4 Shift Codes

Where: Schedule > Shift Codes · Roles: Admin

Shift codes are reusable shift definitions such as DAY, NIGHT or ARMED-SUP. Each one stores default start and end times, headcount, required certifications and can be linked to a bill rate. Like the rest of the Schedule hub, the page asks you to Set up your team first until the company has a site and an employee.

• New Shift Code opens the dialog: Scope (company-wide, or the sites it applies to), Name (the code identifier is generated from it on save), Description, Default start time / Default end time, Typical days of week, Default headcount, Default meal break, Required certifications, Default bill rate (optional) and Active. Create saves it.
• A row's pencil (Edit) reopens it with the generated code shown; Save applies changes. The copy icon duplicates a code and the bin deletes it after a confirmation.
• Select a code when adding shifts to pre-fill the dialog.
• Deactivate codes you no longer use: select them and choose Deactivate (or switch Active off in the dialog). The list shows Active codes by default; set Status to All statuses to see the rest. Historical shifts keep their code.

6.5 Call Outs & Tardies

Where: Schedule > Call Outs & Tardies · Plan: Core or Complete · Roles: Admin, Branch Manager

When a guard cannot make a shift or will be late they submit a call-out or a lateness / relief-delay report from the app (both also page the on-call contacts — section 5.5). This page is the manager's queue; on-call contacts see the same items in the app's On-Call tab.

• Filter by status (pending, approved, denied), site, date and guard; search by name.
• Open a call-out to see the guard, the affected shift, the reason and notes, plus a Responses tab listing which on-call contacts replied ACK or DENY by text.
• Find Coverage with AI → Find Replacement asks the optimizer for the best available replacement (assigned to the site, no conflicting shift, fewest hours this week, right certifications, lowest overtime risk). The suggestion appears in AI Recommendations; approving and applying it there cancels the original shift, creates the replacement's shift, notifies the new guard and approves the call-out in one step.
• Manual Actions — Approve Manually or Deny Request — when you have arranged cover yourself. Approving records the decision and notifies the guard; no replacement schedule is created, so add the covering guard's shift on the Working Schedule.
• Lateness reports are acknowledged rather than approved; arrange relief from the Working Schedule.
• Create Call-Out lets a manager file one on a guard's behalf (for example after a phone call).

6.6 AI Optimizer (schedule recommendations)

Where: AI Supervisor > AI Optimizer (also reachable from the Dashboard's AI Recommendations card) · Plan: Complete · Roles: Admin

The optimizer analyses upcoming shifts and proposes changes: filling open posts, swapping in guards with the right certification, avoiding overtime and balancing hours.

• Click Run Analysis to generate fresh recommendations. In the analysis options, Use Schedule Templates includes your templates: every template shift with no matching shift in the coming week becomes a Scheduling Needed recommendation.
• Every recommendation that would create a shift names a guard. For a template gap that is the guard the template assigns to that weekday and time; if they are already scheduled then (or the template names nobody available), the analysis proposes guards assigned to or experienced at the site instead, listed under Available Guards so you pick who gets the shift. A gap nobody can fill is not shown as a recommendation.
• Tabs: Sites (coverage recommendations per site), Guards (per-guard suggestions) and Settings (what the optimizer is allowed to consider, such as overtime thresholds and preferred guards).
• Settings also holds the Scorecard card. Configure scorecard opens Scorecard settings, where you choose which data points count toward each guard's score and how much each weighs (section 17.1). The optimizer does not use scores yet.
• Filter by status; the header shows how many were Approved This Week.
• Each site-coverage card shows the AI's confidence as a percentage badge (for example 72%) next to the Pending / Approved status, colour-coded from green (Excellent, 90+) to red (Poor, under 30). The same score appears with a bar in the details dialog; alternative guards there carry their own percentage. Underutilized-guard cards do not carry the badge: their score measures hours below the minimum, not confidence.
• On each recommendation choose Approve & Apply Now (executes immediately) or Approve Only (apply later). Select several and use Approve or Apply in bulk. Delete stale suggestions you do not want.
• Applying creates the shift exactly as the schedule dialog would: it runs the same checks (bill and shift code scope, branch rules) and, when it replaces a cancelled shift (call-out coverage, Find Coverage), copies that shift's timezone, breaks, bill/shift codes, required certifications and rate overrides onto the replacement. The guard receives the same SMS/push and email as a shift published from the schedule. If the shift cannot be created (the guard is already scheduled, a code does not belong to the site), the recommendation is not applied and the reason is shown.
• A recommendation left over from an older analysis that names no guard cannot be applied: its card reads No guard named - deny and re-run and the details dialog offers Deny only. Deny it and click Run Analysis again.