Rotating Roster Templates

Follow this guide to understand what rotating rosters are, and how to utilize Template Manager to configure rotating rosters in Humanforce Cloud WFM.

If you are familiar with Rolling Templates in our Back Office product, this update to our Cloud product works in a very similar way.

Note: This feature is not enabled by default in WFM Cloud. 
New Customers: You can enable the feature from System Settings > Roster, at any time
Back-office users: Please review this article to understand the implications of migrating from Rolling Templates (in Back Office) to Rotating Templates in WFM Cloud.

What is a rotating roster?

A rolling, or rotating, roster is typically used when there are multiple shifts - such as morning, afternoon and evening shifts - for the same role. Employees get assigned to shifts within a period as a starting point. At the end of each period, employees will rotate to the next group of shifts, eventually cycling back to the first position.

This type of scheduling system ensures that employees take turns covering different work patterns, or duties, ensuring a fairer workload. Importantly, unpopular shifts (like nights or weekends), and desirable shifts (like daytimes) are shared fairly, which can improve employee work-life balance, operational efficiency and equitable shift distribution.

Common Examples

1. Weekly rotation – e.g., Week 1: early shift, Week 2: late shift, Week 3: night shift.
2. Daily rotation – shifts change each day, often in environments that need continuous coverage.
3. Pattern-based rotation – such as a “4 days on, 4 days off” sequence, where shift start/end times also vary.

How can Templates assist with Rotating Rosters?

It could be fair to say that building a rotating roster is more complex than a fixed roster, because the roster typically needs to be significantly longer to capture all the necessary staff rotations - until you arrive back at the start. However, an intelligent rostering template should allow you to create the shift pattern once and indicate where the employees must rotate through the pattern. This means creating and maintaining significantly less templated shifts.

Template Manager in Humanforce Cloud WFM now has a feature to support the configuration of a rotating roster.

Creating a Rotating Roster Template in Humanforce WFM Cloud

1. Access Template Manager

1. Navigate to Management → Rostering → Template Manager in WFM Cloud.
2. Select Create Template
   • You will need to start from a blank template. Converting an existing template to be rotating is not yet supported.
   • However, if you have migrated rolling templates from Back-Office, these will be available for editing.

2. Define Template Details

Set-up your template with the details as required. Follow this guide to understand the standard template options. However, for a rotating template, you may wish to also consider:

1. Naming your template clearly (e.g., “7-Day Rotating Roster – Nursing Department”).
2. Is Rotating: Check this box for a rotating roster template.
   • If you enable this, you will need to also specify the Location and Department.
3. Length: Set the template length — for most rotations, this is 7 days (but it can be longer, like 14 days, if your cycle requires).
4. Effective Date: Choose when this rotating roster starts (or started). This helps ensure the rotation continues into the future without skipping or doubling up on any sequences.
    
5. Hit “Create” to proceed to the template shift editing screen for your new template.

Effective Date explainer
When you generate a rotating roster, the system will count from the Effective Date - which is typically in the past - up to the dates for the roster you are generating, and will use this information to continue from the next logical sequence.This means the newly generated shifts won’t necessarily start as per the starting shifts in the template. However, if you want the generation process to build the first set of shifts as per their starting position in the template, you will need to set the Effective Date to match the first day of the new roster.

3. Add Fixed Shifts (Fixed Row)

Fixed Shifts: These are shifts where the employees do not rotate. This is where you define shifts for permanent roles/times - like a regular template. This is included in the Rotating template so that you can manage regular shifts and rotating shifts inside the same template - and not have to juggle 2 or 3 templates!

1. Locate the Fixed row in the editor.
2. Add shifts here for roles and times that never change — these shifts will remain in place every week/period without rotation.
   • Example: A permanent Monday–Friday 9–5 shift for the Team Leader.
3. This ensures your non-rotating coverage is locked in before you build sequences.

4. Create Sequences for Rotating Shifts

1. If you are starting from scratch, the first Sequence is already visible. Click the “Add Sequence” button from the toolbar to add more sequences.
2. Expand a sequence to start building shifts for it. You can only add one shift per role, per sequence.
3. Add additional sequences as required. Employees will rotate down to the next sequence into the shift (if one exists) for the same role as their starting sequence.
4. You can drag shifts between sequences to copy the shift - building out sequences more efficiently.

What is a sequence?

• Each sequence is a full schedule for one or more specific employees within the rotation cycle.
• At the end of the template period, each employee moves to the next sequence down, taking over the shifts (same role) that were assigned there.
• The number of shifts per sequence may differ — rotation is based on role continuity, not identical shift counts.
• Once the last sequence is complete, the rotation loops back to Sequence 1.

Important: It’s not the shifts that move — the employees rotate between the shifts across sequences. For a 7-day template, the employee in Sequence 1 has their 2nd week of shifts defined by Sequence 2.

5. Save and Apply

1. Review all sequences to ensure every role/day combination has coverage.
2. Click Save to store the template.

6. Generate Rolling Template.

Note on permissions:
Any user with Permission to Template Manager page will see the rotating templates (providing they have the Location/Department permission)
“Generate Roster” permission is required to perform the below actions.

1. From the Template Manager page, locate your template, then click “Generate” from the 3 dot menu on the right edge.
   
   
2. In the dialog, enter the Number of weeks that you want to generate shifts for.
   • E.g. if you template has a length of 7 days, and there are 4 sequences in the template, you probably want to generate 4, 8 or 12 weeks worth of shifts.
3. Select the Start Date for the first shifts to be generated into the Roster.
4. Ensure the “Is Rotating” checkbox is set to perform the employee rotations through the sequences with each week/period that is generated.
5. Select whether you want the rotation to start fresh from the Start date (chosen above) OR whether you need the system to consider all rotations from the template's effective date and thus calculate where the rotation is up to given the Start date. This second option can be critical to use if you have a long-standing rotating sequence that must be observed.
   NOTE: This option will be pre-selected based on any previously used Back-Office setting. Only change it if you are confident in adjusting the generation behaviour.
6. Once you hit “Proceed”, a warning is displayed “All existing rosters for selected periods will be deleted. Are you sure you want to continue?”
   • Confirming will delete all shifts within the single location & department of the rotating roster from the start date and number of weeks set.
7. A banner will display “Roster generated successfully” to confirm that the rotating roster generation has completed.

Additional information

• How can I have additional shifts for the same role (in a day)?
  Because the sequence validation won’t let you have 2 shifts for the same role on the same day (within the same sequence) - if you need 2 staff working that shift simultaneously, you will need to copy those sequences. E.g. if there’s 3 sequences for that role, you will need to add sequence 4, 5 and 6 to account for the complementary shift.
• I can't find or create rotating templates in WFM Cloud?
  This feature must be enabled by a system admin before use. Please review this guide for enabling and/or migrating templates from Back-Office