How to Approve an Open Shift Claim — Live Eligibility Card

Approving an Open Shift Claim

When a staff member requests an open shift, the claim appears in your approval queue. You can review the Live Eligibility card — fortnight hours, rest, overlap, and scope — before approving.

If IRIS Auto-Approve is enabled

When your org has the IRIS Auto-Approve add-on (Organizations → Add-ons), a strict-clean claim shows IRIS confirming for the confirmation wait and is not a normal approval. It assigns when the wait ends, or immediately if the shift starts inside the wait. The person can undo until then. Items with conflicts, leave, window violations, or swap-with-open-shift claims (when that toggle is off) still appear here for manual review.

• Setup and backlog queue: IRIS Auto-Approve setup
• Staff experience: What staff should expect
• Swap auto-approval: Swap Auto-Approval Rules

Where to find pending claims

You have three entry points; all use the same approval logic:

Entry point	Best for
Shift Deck → Approvals	Reviewing all pending swaps and open-shift claims in one place
Living Roster → Open Shifts pane → Requests tab	Approving while you are already rostering — see claims in grid context
In-app notification	Jumping straight to a new claim when it lands

From the Living Roster (Open Shifts pane)

This is often the fastest path when you are already on the grid:

1. Go to The Living Roster (Sidebar → The Living Roster)
2. Click Open Shifts in the toolbar (orange button — badge shows pending request count)
3. In the slide-out Open Shifts pane, open the Requests tab
4. Each pending claim shows the claimer, shift details, and Fortnight hours impact (Live Eligibility)
5. Click Approve or Decline on each request, or use bulk actions at the top

You can also click the hand icon on an open-shift cell in the grid for a quick popover — approve or decline from there, or choose View all requests in panel for the full Live Eligibility view.

From Shift Deck

1. Go to Shift Deck (Sidebar → Shift Deck)
2. Open the Approvals tab
3. Find the claim under Shift Requests (grouped by vacancy)

What the Live Eligibility card shows

Each claim displays a decision-support panel, for example:

RN Patel claiming: ED Morning, Wed 14 May
Current fortnight: 32 h | Projected: 40 h | Min 30 / Max 80 ✅
No overlap | No rest violation | Holds Resus ✅
Conflicts: none

Check	What you're seeing
Hours band	Current period hours vs min/max
Overlap	Any other shift on that day
Rest	Tier-based rest from previous shift
Scope	All required scopes held
Availability	Their declared availability for that window
Conflicts	Cross-stream conflicts (if any)

Approve or reject

1. Read the Live Eligibility card and any out-of-qualification warnings
2. Approve — staff is assigned to the shift; the grid updates
3. Reject with reason — the requester is notified (keep reasons factual)

For out-of-qualification requests (craft group or scope mismatch), you must acknowledge the mismatch before approving.

Bulk actions

When multiple staff requested the same vacancy, use bulk actions — available on both Shift Deck → Approvals and Open Shifts pane → Requests:

• Approve & Decline Rest — approves your selection and auto-declines all other pending requests for that vacancy (fastest for single-slot shifts)
• Approve Selected — for multi-slot vacancies, approve some and leave others pending
• Decline Selected — bulk reject

Other staff whose requests are auto-declined receive an automatic notification explaining why.

Tips

• Read the Eligibility card before approving — it is the difference between a clean assignment and a fatigue-rule violation you will override later.
• Use the Living Roster Open Shifts pane when you are already filling gaps on the grid — you do not need to switch to Shift Deck.
• "Approve & Decline Rest" is the fastest way to fill a single-slot vacancy — pick one person and everyone else is notified automatically.

Related guides

• How to Approve Shift Swaps — including from Living Roster → Shift Swaps pane
• Bulk Approving and Declining Open Shift Requests
• How to Request an Open Shift
• How to Broadcast an Open Shift