# Build a weekly schedule with the Time Grid

> The Time Grid is where you build the week: place shifts, see who's available, catch double-bookings, and publish so staff get notified.

Canonical: https://enmantle.com/help/weekly-schedule-time-grid · Section: Scheduling & Coverage · Updated: 2026-09-20

The Time Grid is the week view where you build and manage your schedule. Each row is a person or a home; the grid runs across the days of the week. This guide covers building a week from scratch and getting it in front of your staff.

*Video: Building a week on the Time Grid*
## Read the grid first

Before you place anything, learn to read what's already there. Choose `Time Grid` from the view-mode dropdown (alongside `Week by Location` and `Week by Employee`); the date-range dropdown lets you look at a `Day`, `Week`, `2 Weeks`, `Month`, or `List`. Each scheduled shift shows as a bar in its location's color. Beside it, a separate "actual" bar drawn from clock data shows what really happened: `Completed` (a solid dark bar) or `In progress` (a gray dashed bar that grows to now). That side-by-side is how you spot, at a glance, where the plan and reality drifted apart: a late clock-in, a short shift, a no-show. The legend labels these under `Actual:` — `Completed`, `In progress` — plus `Open shift`.

*Screenshot: The Time Grid — a week view of every shift, by staff and home.*
## Place a shift

There's **no "Add shift" button**. You create a shift in one of three ways:

- **Click an empty Time-Grid slot** for the day and location you want (admins).
- **Drag an employee** from the roster on the left onto a day — it drops in at a default `09:00–17:00` you can adjust.
- **`Duplicate`** an existing shift card to copy it.

Any of these opens the shift editor — titled `New Shift`, `Edit Shift`, or `Shift Details` — where you set the times and assign a staff member from the picker (see below).

## Use the availability picker

When you assign someone, the staff picker doesn't just list everyone — it groups people by whether they can actually work:

- `✓ Available` — free for that window, based on the availability they maintain.
- `⚠ Partial availability` — free for part of the window.
- `✗ Unavailable (conflict)` — not free.

Staff who work at the **same location** get a ` (same location)` suffix and sort to the top, so your most natural coverage is right there. Conflicting staff are hidden until you flip the `Show staff with conflicts (N)` toggle. Availability comes from grids your staff keep up to date — see [Staff availability](/help/staff-availability).

## Double-booking is blocked

If you try to schedule someone who's already on a shift at that time, Enmantle **hard-blocks** the conflict with `Conflict detected` — you can't quietly double-book a person. How an override works depends on your role: Directors, Admins, and Super-Admins auto-override the block; Managers can override with a reason that's written to the audit log. There's no separate reason pop-up in the editor — it's an audit reason or a role-based auto-bypass. (When a *recurring* shift lands on a conflict, that occurrence is simply skipped.) The block is there to protect you from an honest mistake, not to get in your way.

## Publish so staff know

Here's the part people forget: a schedule you've built is still a **draft** until you publish it. Drafts are yours to rearrange freely. Nothing reaches your staff until you hit `Publish (N)` — the count tells you how many changes are waiting; once there's nothing left it reads `All published`. That opens the `Publish Schedule` modal, where you choose `Publish updates only` or `Publish all visible`.

When you publish, everyone affected is notified **in-app** (a notification titled `Schedule Updated`) **and by email** — so "I never saw it" stops being a thing. Build the week, get it right, then publish once.

> Rearranging a published week? You can keep editing. Publishing again pushes the updates out the same way.

## Next steps

- Most weeks repeat. Set up [repeating shifts and copy a week forward](/help/repeating-shifts-copy-week) so you're not rebuilding from zero.
- When someone calls off, [convert the shift to open and find coverage](/help/call-off-coverage) fast.