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Departments

The catalog of work areas at the venue — Kitchen, Dining Room, Bar, Dishwashing — that you tag every shift with. Set them up once, then every shift in the roster picks from this list.

What it does

A staff member’s shift isn’t fully described by “Marco, Monday, 6 PM to 11 PM” — the missing piece is what is he doing? Cooking? Serving? Pulling drinks? Without that, the manager can’t answer “are we covered in the kitchen tonight?” because every shift is just a body-with-hours.

Departments fill that gap. Every shift you create on the Roster — whether one-off or recurring — must be tagged with at least one department. Multiple departments are allowed for one shift: a runner who covers both Dining Room and Bar in the same shift gets both tags, and is counted in both areas on the coverage view.

The system doesn’t impose any specific list — every venue defines its own. A small bistro might have two (“Kitchen”, “Dining Room”). A fine-dining restaurant with a separate dessert station and lobby might have six. A coffee shop might just have one (“Counter”) and use departments only as a colour-coding aid for shifts.

Each department also gets a colour, used as the visual identity throughout the roster: chips on the planning grid, intensity bands on the coverage view, columns on the comparison report.

How to use it

Open Settings → Roster and tap the Departments tab.

Adding a department

  1. Type a name in the Add a department field at the top — Kitchen, Sala, Bar, whatever your venue calls them.
  2. Tap a colour from the palette (nine colours are available — pick whatever helps you tell them apart on the grid).
  3. Tap Add.

The new department appears in the table below as Active.

Renaming or recolouring a department

In the table, you can edit a department’s name in place — tap the name field, type the new name, click outside the field to save.

To change the colour, tap a different swatch from the colour picker on the same row. The change applies immediately everywhere — the Week grid, the Coverage view, the comparison report all recolour to the new value next time they load.

Archiving a department

Tap Archive on a department’s row. It disappears from the picker on shift dialogs (you can no longer assign new shifts to it), and from the Coverage view (its row is removed). But existing historical shifts that were tagged with it still resolve correctly to the department’s name and colour — past data stays intact.

To bring it back, tap Restore on the same row (the table shows archived departments too — you’ll see them with a grey “Archived” badge).

A note on the order

The order of rows in the Departments table is also the order they appear in the dropdowns and rows on the Coverage view. The current version doesn’t have a drag-to-reorder; the order is set by when you created each one, with newer departments at the bottom. If reordering is important, archive and re-add in the desired order.

What happens behind the scenes

A department is just a small record per venue: a name, a colour, an active flag. Nothing depends on the internal slug (the system creates one automatically based on the name — “Sala Pranzo” becomes sala-pranzo — and uses it as a stable ID for future export integrations).

When you archive a department:

  • Active shifts that reference it keep their reference. The Coverage view filters out the archived department’s row, but if a shift carries two departments and one is archived, that shift still counts toward the other department.
  • The shift dialog and the recurring-shift dialog hide archived departments from the picker, so new shifts can only be tagged with currently-active ones.

Renaming has no side effects: the system uses internal IDs for references, so the rename only changes how the department is displayed. Old reports, exported spreadsheets, and historical shifts will show the new name when re-loaded.

Examples

🍝 Small trattoria Two departments: Cucina (red) and Sala (blue). Three chefs and two waiters. Every shift on the Roster is tagged with either Cucina or Sala. The Coverage view has two rows + a TOTAL.

🍽️ Mid-size restaurant Four departments: Kitchen (red), Dining Room (blue), Bar (yellow), Dishwashing (grey). The aperitivo runner is tagged with both Bar and Dining Room — they cover both areas during their shift. The Coverage view shows four rows; the runner appears in both the Bar and Dining Room rows for the hours they’re working.

🥤 Coffee shop One department: Counter (cyan). Departments are barely a feature here — but the colour-coding still makes the planning grid easier to read at a glance. The Coverage view has a single row + TOTAL, which is essentially the same number.

⚠️ Renaming a department that’s in active use The manager renames “Sala” to “Front of House” mid-week. Marco’s Wednesday shift (which carried “Sala”) immediately shows “Front of House” on the planning grid. The Coverage view’s row label updates. No data is lost; nothing to re-enter.

⚠️ Archiving a department that’s still in active use Same scenario, but instead of renaming, the manager archives “Sala”. Marco’s Wednesday shift still has its tag — the shift card still shows “Sala” because that’s what was assigned. But on the Coverage view, the “Sala” row disappears (the department is no longer active). The shift is not re-counted toward another department; it just contributes only to the TOTAL row until you restore the department or re-tag the shift to an active one.