# What publishing a shift does

**For:** Manager
**You'll need:** Nothing.

Publishing is what makes a shift visible to the people on it. A draft shift is yours alone; a published shift is on your team's schedule.

## What happens on publish

1. The shift's state changes from **'Draft'** to **'Published'** — {{ app_name }} stamps who published it and when.
2. Assigned workers see the shift on their schedule.
3. If your company uses {doc}`shift acceptance </settings-and-admin/company-settings/shift-acceptance>`, each assignee is asked to accept or decline.

There's no separate step to "publish the assignments" — a person is on the shift or they aren't, and publishing the shift is what shows it to them. An assignment doesn't carry its own draft/published state; it just gains a worked-hours status (**'Published' → 'Confirmed' → 'Approved'**) once the shift is over and time is recorded. See {doc}`/plan-schedules/shifts/lifecycle`.

## What's skipped

A shift is skipped if it's **locked** — i.e. one of its assignments is attached to an approved time entry. Locked shifts stay as they are; the rest of the batch still publishes.

## Taking it back

Published the wrong week? **Unpublish** it — that retracts the shift to draft, as long as nobody has clocked in and the shift hasn't started yet. Once a shift has run or its hours are approved, unpublish is blocked; cancel it instead. See {doc}`/plan-schedules/shifts/lifecycle`.

## Related

- {doc}`publish-up-to-a-cutoff`
- {doc}`/settings-and-admin/company-settings/shift-acceptance`
- {doc}`/plan-schedules/assignments/index`