Substitute, move, skip, or cancel shifts in your rotation's queue.

The Rotation Queue manager lets you adjust upcoming shifts without changing the underlying rotation configuration. You can substitute users, move them in the queue, insert placeholder spots, or skip and cancel individual shifts.

Opening the Rotation Queue manager

1. Go to Home tab: Learn where to find Rotation App’s Home tab
2. Find your rotation
3. Open the rotation menu and select 📋 Manage Queue.

The dialog shows the current shift, the next few shifts, and upcoming future shifts as well (once you press Load more shifts).

Shift Actions vs Item Actions

Each shift in the queue has two dropdowns:

• Shift Actions: applies to the whole shift (e.g. cancelling it, skipping it). Affects every assignee in the shift’s group at once.
• Item Actions: applies to a single user position within the shift (e.g. moving that user, substituting them with someone else).

Picking the right dropdown matters most for group rotations, where one shift contains multiple assignees: a Shift Action affects all of them together, while an Item Action changes only the user you target.

Item Actions

Item Action	What it does
Move to (queue order)	Moves this user (or group spot) to a different position in the queue. The rest of the queue shifts to fill the gap.
Substitute with…	Replaces the assignee for that shift with someone else, just for that shift. The original user keeps their place in the queue and will be assigned again on their next natural turn.
Undo substitution	Reverts a substitution back to the natural assignee. Only appears on a shift that currently has a substitution.
Duplicate	Adds an extra recurring slot for this user in the queue. The duplicate persists across every cycle, so the user is permanently assigned more often than the others. Use this only when you actually want the user to be assigned more frequently. For a one-off cover, use Substitute with… instead.
Remove	Removes one of this user’s slots from the queue. Only appears when the user has more than one slot (i.e. has been duplicated). They stay in the rotation; you’re just trimming one of their extra slots.
Insert one-time empty spot	Inserts a placeholder slot with no assigned user, for a single cycle. Useful when you want a group of fewer people than the configured group size, just this once.
Insert persistent empty spot	Same as above, but the empty slot stays in the queue every cycle.
Remove empty spot	Removes an empty placeholder slot.

Shift Actions

Each non-past shift exposes a Shift Actions dropdown with one of two pairs of actions, depending on the shift’s current state:

• For a normal shift: Skip this shift and Cancel this shift.
• For an already-skipped shift: Unskip this shift.
• For an already-cancelled shift: Uncancel this shift.

The two destructive actions (Skip and Cancel) both result in no assignee for that shift, but they affect the rest of the queue differently. The two short sections below explain each one, and then a comparison shows which to pick.

Skipping a shift

Skipping a shift means nobody is assigned to that shift, and the queue is deferred by one shift. Everyone after the skipped shift moves back by one, so nobody loses their turn.

How to skip a shift

• In the queue manager: open the Shift Actions dropdown on the shift you want to skip and select Skip this shift. Save the modal.
• From the channel announcement: the channel message for the current shift includes a Quick Actions dropdown. Pick Skip shift to skip the shift that’s happening right now.
• Via the API: see Manage shifts via the API.

How to unskip a shift

• In the queue manager: open the Shift Actions dropdown on the skipped shift and select Unskip this shift.

Cancelling a shift

Cancelling a shift means nobody is assigned to that shift, and the rest of the queue stays exactly on schedule. The original assignee’s turn is used up, so they’ll come back around in their normal place in the next cycle.

How to cancel a shift

• In the queue manager: open the Shift Actions dropdown on the shift you want to cancel and select Cancel this shift. Save the modal.
• From the channel announcement: the channel message for the current shift includes a Quick Actions dropdown. Pick Cancel shift to cancel the shift that’s happening right now.
• Via the API: see Manage shifts via the API.

How to uncancel a shift

• In the queue manager: open the Shift Actions dropdown on the cancelled shift and select Uncancel this shift.
• From the channel announcement: when the current shift is cancelled, the channel message’s Quick Actions dropdown shows an Uncancel this shift option that immediately reverts the cancellation and announces the natural assignee.

Skip vs Cancel: which one?

Both actions produce a shift with no assignee, but they have different effects on the rest of the queue.

Picture a rotation with three users (Alice, Bob, Carol) assigned Monday through Friday in a simple round-robin:

Original:            MON       TUE       WED       THU       FRI
                     Alice     Bob       Carol     Alice     Bob

If you skip Tuesday, Bob’s turn is preserved: it shifts to Wednesday, and everyone after slides forward:

After Skip TUE:      MON       TUE       WED       THU       FRI
                     Alice     —         Bob       Carol     Alice

If you cancel Tuesday, Bob’s turn is used up, and Wednesday continues on the original schedule:

After Cancel TUE:    MON       TUE       WED       THU       FRI
                     Alice     —         Carol     Alice     Bob

Pick the one that matches what you want the rest of the queue to do. The actions are otherwise interchangeable; the same situation (a holiday, a missed shift, a one-off cancellation) can be reasonably modelled either way.

From the channel announcement

Every shift announcement Rotation App posts to your channel includes a Quick Actions dropdown for fast adjustments without opening the queue manager. The exact set of options depends on the shift’s state. For a cancelled current shift, the dropdown surfaces Uncancel this shift. For an active shift, it surfaces the standard reassignment options.

You can configure which channel quick actions are available per rotation. See Custom Quick Actions.

Via the API

All of these shift management operations are also available programmatically through the public API. This is useful when you’re pushing schedules from a spreadsheet, calendar, or external scheduling tool. See Rotation API for endpoints and payload examples.