How shift validation works#
For: Manager You’ll need: Nothing.
When you assign a person, drag a shift, or hover one on the calendar, Shiftavo runs a battery of checks and surfaces issues as badges, tooltips, and save blockers. This article walks through what’s checked, the three severity levels, and where each issue surfaces.
The three severity levels#
Every check produces an issue with one of three severities:
Blocking — a hard violation. Examples: the person isn’t eligible for this position at this location, or they have no availability defined for the period. A blocked person doesn’t appear in the person picker at all, and the form refuses to save a blocking assignment.
Warning — a soft violation worth flagging but not blocking. Examples: the assignment would exceed the person’s daily or weekly working-time limit, or the shift only partially overlaps their stated availability.
Info — informational. Example: a required break line such as “Lunch: 30min (Mandatory)”.
What gets checked#
The checks fall into five families:
Eligibility — is this person eligible for this position at this location (does an MLP entry exist for the pair)? If not, they don’t appear in the candidate list at all.
Skill requirements — does the person hold every skill the position requires, with a non-expired certification where required?
Availability — does an unavailable block or confirmed leave overlap the shift? That’s a blocking error for everyone, whatever their availability mode. For people with ‘Set my availability’ turned on (Mode B), is there also an availability block covering the shift? No covering block is a blocking error; a partial overlap is a warning. People on Mode A need no availability block.
Working-time limits — daily hours cap, weekly hours cap, rest-between-shifts, consecutive-day limit, overtime tier thresholds. Driven by the work policy resolved for the assignment (see How Shiftavo picks a work policy). These surface as warnings.
Break rules — does the shift trigger a required break? Driven by the break policy that the resolved work policy picks. These surface as info lines. When a workday’s plan can’t fit a required break, or the workday needs review, you see a warning instead — it never blocks the assignment. A shift that owes no break shows no line.
Headcount thresholds (minimum, target, maximum) on the position are also surfaced — both under-min and over-max produce blocking errors; target is informational.
Where issues surface#
The same issue can show up in several places:
Eligibility badges in the assignment dropdown — each candidate row shows a red icon for blocking errors and a yellow icon for warnings. See How to read the eligibility badges.
Calendar hover tooltip — hovering a shift block lists every active issue under ‘Shift validation:’ and ‘Assignment validation:’ headings.
Coverage cell tooltip — on the coverage grid, each cell tooltip lists the issues that gap the staffing for that hour.
Save blocker — blocking errors always stop the save, whatever your display settings, and render under the field that caused them.
Example: one shift, three levels#
A Tuesday 14:00 – 22:00 Barista shift can surface all three severities at once:
Blocking — Cara uses ‘Set my availability’ but has nothing defined for Tuesday: “No availability defined for this time period”. She doesn’t appear in the person picker at all.
Warning — assigning Ben would exceed his daily working-time limit. He appears in the picker with an amber warning, and you can still assign him.
Info — the shift is long enough to require a break, so an info line reads “Lunch: 30min (Mandatory)”.
Tune what you see#
Two personal settings control how loud validation is. The defaults are reasonable for most planners; tune them once you know which issues are noise for your team.
‘Show validation messages - Calendar tooltip’ — the threshold for what shows up on hover. The options are ‘Blocking’, ‘Blocking, Warning’, and ‘Blocking, Warning, Info’.
‘Show validation messages - Shift assignment’ — the same three options for the shift and shift-assignment pages: which messages you see next to each person.
Both live on How to set your calendar preferences. They are per-user, not per-company, and they apply everywhere assignment validation is shown — including the mobile app.
The settings only change what’s displayed, never what’s enforced: a blocking issue prevents the save even when your display level hides its message.
Verify it worked#
Open a shift, click ‘Assign new person’, and look for the badge column. Hover an assigned shift on the calendar — the tooltip should list any issues. Open How to set your calendar preferences and toggle the validation level; the next page load reflects the new threshold.