From spreadsheet chaos
to calmer weeks.

• Landing FAQ anchors: Jump links from the footer no longer hide section headings under the sticky nav on smaller screens.
• Overview chart tooltips: Hours-by-location tooltips no longer clip off the right edge on narrow laptops.
• Save status stuck state: The “Saving…” indicator now clears correctly after returning from a backgrounded browser tab mid-edit.
• Compare table contrast: Slightly stronger row borders in light mode so the competitor table is easier to scan without feeling heavier overall.

• Refreshed landing page: Clearer hero, product proof, savings calculator, and FAQ—so new venues understand shift planning before they sign up.
• Category compare section: Honest positioning against spreadsheets and generic workforce tools, focused on small restaurants and bars.

• Smarter draft sync: Auto-save no longer overwrites remote weeks with empty drafts when you open a fresh browser—your shifts stay where you left them.
• Same-origin public API: Staff and employee links load through the web app first, with a worker fallback only when needed.

• Richer Overview: Multi-location health bars, attention queue, hours chart, and pay totals grouped by currency for owners running more than one site.
• Expandable location rows: Drill into a site from the portfolio table without switching workspace first—useful when you only need a quick headcount check.

• Published week timezone labels: Staff link day headers now always match the venue timezone, even when the viewer's phone is set elsewhere.
• Invite accept redirect: Co-manager invites land on the dashboard after login instead of a blank settings page when the session was created mid-flow.
• Team page portal link: “Copy employee link” feedback is instant again after regenerating a token—no double-click required.

• Contextual help: A Guide button in the nav opens topic-specific tips for Week board, Team, History, Settings, Locations, and Overview.
• Cleaner board chrome: Long inline hints under By day / By person moved into Guide so the schedule stays focused on shifts.
• Theme toggle: Light and dark mode from the dashboard shell—easier on the eyes for late-night scheduling.

• Help “seen” state: Topics you have opened in Guide are remembered locally so repeat visitors see what is new at a glance.
• Settings section spacing: Person week metrics and staff portal blocks breathe more on small screens—less accidental mis-taps between toggles.

• Drag-and-drop hydration: Stable DndContext id on the week board so assistive tech and SSR stay in sync.
• Dark mode shift cards: Team color chips on night shifts read clearly against the dark board background without losing saturation.
• Guide keyboard trap: Escape closes the help panel and returns focus to the Guide button as expected.
• History date formatting: Published timestamps use the venue locale instead of the browser default—fewer “is that US or EU?” moments.

• Person week settings: Venue-wide toggles for rest between shifts, week hour/shift limits, overtime bands, night windows, and target hour bands.
• Per-employee overrides: Edit any team member to replace venue defaults for rest, limits, or pay on the By person board only.
• Pay estimate column: Optional weekly gross estimate (USD/EUR/GBP) with overtime-aware math—not a legal payroll export, but a useful planning signal.

• Time inputs tuned: Dedicated styling for shift times in the person grid so editing hours on mobile feels less cramped.
• Hard limits feedback: When week limits block an edit, the board explains which rule fired (hours, shifts, or days off) instead of silently refusing the drop.

• Legacy person settings migration: Old draft JSON person-view keys merge into venue settings once, without duplicating toggles on every load.
• Pay currency display: PLN values stored from early beta accounts map to USD labels in the UI until you pick a supported currency explicitly.
• Overtime badge overlap: Stacked compliance badges on dense weeks wrap instead of covering shift times.

• Locations plan badge: Tier labels align on mobile and no longer wrap awkwardly beside the “Add location” button.
• Roster limit at cap: The soft warning now appears when you are exactly at your plan limit, not only after you try to add one more person.
• Billing copy spacing: “Venue Plus” labels and feature bullets use consistent punctuation in Settings.
• Workspace switcher truncation: Long venue names show a tooltip on hover instead of clipping mid-word.

• Billing tiers: Free, Venue, and Venue Plus plans with roster caps (10 / 25 / 50 active staff) and multi-site limits for growing operators.
• Locations page: Dedicated settings view to add sites, see plan usage, and understand when you need to upgrade.

• Narrow layout on settings: Team, History, and Locations share a centered column—less eye travel on admin tasks.
• Upgrade hints: When you hit a roster or location cap, inline copy points to the right plan without leaving the page you are on.

• Owner-only billing guard: Managers no longer see a flicker of billing controls before permissions resolve on slow connections.
• Active roster count: Inactive employees are excluded from plan usage consistently across Team and Overview.

• Multiple locations: Owners can create additional venues, switch between them instantly, and keep separate rosters and week drafts per site.
• Overview dashboard: Portfolio KPIs across all your locations—publish status, coverage gaps, pending time-off, and roster headroom in one place.
• Workspace switcher: Always-visible control in the header; one site links straight to Locations.
• Cookie + profile sync: Switching sites updates both the active workspace cookie and your profile so refreshes stay on the venue you picked.

• Overview loading skeleton: Portfolio metrics show placeholders instead of a blank flash while parallel venue queries finish.
• Create location validation: Clearer error when plan limits block a second site—message names the plan instead of a generic database code.
• Week draft isolation: Editing week A at site 1 no longer briefly shows site 2's shifts when switching quickly between locations.

• Roles: Owner, manager, and viewer memberships—managers edit the schedule; viewers get read-only boards.
• Co-manager invites: Secure invite links (/invite/[token]) so owners can add shift leads without sharing passwords.
• Scoped preferences: Managers can update coverage rules and staff portal settings while venue billing stays owner-only.
• Viewer mode: Read-only members see the full board and history but cannot publish, unlock, or edit roster—ideal for area managers who only audit.

• Invite expiry display: Pending invites show human-readable dates instead of raw ISO strings in Settings.
• Manager sync snapshot: Managers editing coverage no longer accidentally overwrite unrelated ui_prefs keys owned by the venue owner.
• Publish 403 message: Viewers get a plain “read-only access” toast instead of a generic error when they hit Publish.

• Personal schedule links: Each employee can get a tokenized portal (/e/[token]) showing published weeks—own shifts, team, or full venue based on your policy.
• Time-off requests: Staff submit requests from the portal; managers approve or decline on the Team page.
• Portal visibility controls: Configure max visibility, upcoming days shown, and whether requests are enabled per venue.
• Resolve time-off on Team: Approve or decline with optional note; resolved requests leave the pending queue but stay in history for your records.

• Portal week list order: Published weeks sort newest-first on the employee schedule picker.
• Time-off date validation: Requests spanning invalid ranges show a friendly message instead of a silent failure.
• Regenerate link clarity: Regenerating an employee portal token warns that old bookmarks will stop working—reduces “my link broke” support pings.

• History page: Browse every published week, copy staff links again, and see when a schedule went live.
• Unlock & revise: Published weeks lock editing until you unlock—then publish again without losing draft work.
• Publish from the browser: One-click publish uses your session (RLS-safe) instead of juggling API keys.
• Published lock sync: After publish, the week board shows the lock state immediately without a manual refresh.

• Staff link refresh: Public /s/[token] pages pick up a republish without stale shift counts in the header summary.
• Unlock draft merge: Unlocking applies publishedAt from history when the draft row was missing that field.
• History empty state: First-time publishers see a short explanation of what will appear here after go-live.

• By person row height: Toggling metrics no longer causes a visible layout jump on each row.
• Badge overlap on mobile: Compliance chips for long shifts wrap cleanly on narrow screens.
• Weekly totals refresh: Summary hours update when you edit times in place without nudging the week picker.
• View mode persistence: By day / By person preference sticks for the session after navigation to Team and back.

• Person week board: Flip from day columns to rows per employee—see the whole team's week at a glance.
• Hours & badges: Running totals and compliance badges on day view when person metrics are enabled.
• Target hour bands: Soft min/max targets per person with visual cues when someone is under- or over-scheduled.
• Row reorder within team: Person view respects roster order by team so your floor lead always appears where you expect.

• Cross-midnight shifts: Shifts ending after midnight display on the start day only, matching how managers think about “Monday close.”
• Metric toggle performance: Enabling many person-view badges at once no longer stutters on rosters above 30 people.

• Coverage rules: Define minimum headcount by daypart; the board highlights gaps before you publish.
• Staff portal prep: Settings for how much of the published schedule employees will eventually see on their personal link.
• Coverage strip clarity: Understaffed dayparts show a subtle warning stripe before you publish—no more squinting at tiny numbers.

• Rule editor validation: Coverage rules with overlapping dayparts highlight the conflict inline.
• Pool duration defaults: New employees inherit venue pool minutes until you set a personal override.

• Login redirect: The ?next= param survives a mid-flow session refresh on signup and invite links.
• Auth email templates: Confirmation links render readable contrast in dark-mode mail clients.
• Dashboard nav focus ring: Keyboard users can see which nav item is active across all workspace pages.

• Week key on hard refresh: The board no longer flashes the wrong week for a frame when reloading mid-navigation.
• Public staff routes: Session cookies refresh on read-only /s/[token] views without bouncing logged-in managers to login.
• Workspace bootstrap: First login after signup always creates a venue row—fewer empty states on brand-new accounts.

Cloud-native InShifts. We rebuilt the app on Next.js App Router with server-loaded workspaces, a shared dashboard shell, and optional Cloudflare Worker APIs for public reads—ready for teams that outgrew a single laptop.

• SSR week state: Shifts hydrate from Supabase on first paint—no flash of an empty grid.
• Supabase auth: Email sign-in, protected dashboard routes, and invite-aware login redirects.
• Shared workspace shell: Dashboard, Team, History, and Settings reuse one layout—navigation no longer remounts the whole app between tabs.

• Hydration warnings: Week board markup is stable between server and client on first paint.
• Logout redirect: Sign out returns to the marketing home page instead of a blank 404.

• Debounced auto-save: Week drafts sync to the cloud as you drag—status indicator shows saving, saved, or error.
• Offline-friendly cache: Local storage overlay for speed, with guards so a new device never clobbers the team's live schedule.
• Venue settings in the cloud: Timezone, opening hours, week start day, and UI preferences follow your account.
• Save status indicator: See saving, saved, or error at a glance in the header while edits stream upstream.

• Empty draft guard: A fresh browser no longer posts an empty week over shifts that already exist in the cloud.
• ui_prefs overlay: Local cache respects remote venue settings when hasRemoteCore is set.
• PostgREST minimal responses: Treats 200 with an empty body as success on upsert—fewer false “failed to save” toasts.

• Custom teams: Group staff into FOH, bar, kitchen—or whatever matches your floor plan.
• Team order: Drag teams into the order you think about them when building the week.
• Active roster toggle: Hide seasonal staff without deleting history.
• Team color chips: Each custom team gets a distinct tone on shift cards for faster scanning on busy weekends.

• Roster drag order: Reordering people within a team persists after refresh.
• Inactive on board: Inactive employees are hidden from the week board but remain editable on Team.

• Staff link: Publish a week to a read-only URL (/s/[token])—no app install for servers and bartenders.
• Locked weeks: Published schedules stay fixed until a manager intentionally unlocks them.
• Tokenized staff URLs: Publish links use opaque tokens (pw_…) instead of guessable week IDs.

• Staff view mobile layout: Day columns scroll horizontally on phones without crushing shift text.
• Publish confirmation: Dialog summarizes shift count before go-live so you catch an empty week early.
• Link preview title: Browser tabs show venue name + week range on public staff pages.

• Week templates: Save a typical week and apply it to any future date—Friday bar staffing in one click.
• Copy week: Duplicate last week's shifts as a starting point when the roster hasn't changed much.
• Template naming: Name templates after patterns (“Summer patio”, “Quiet January”) and overwrite with confirmation.

• Apply template overlap: Applying a template asks whether to merge or replace existing shifts.
• Week navigation: Previous/next week buttons respect your “week starts on” setting consistently.

• Shift pool: Unassigned shifts sit in a pool—drag onto days when you know who is available.
• Default durations: Venue-wide and per-employee default shift lengths so new blocks land at sensible times.
• Pool drag preview: A ghost card follows the pointer while dragging from the pool so you know where the shift will land.

• Resize handle hit area: Slightly larger touch targets on shift end times for bar staff with wet hands.
• Accidental double-booking hint: Same employee twice in one day shows a soft warning—not a hard block yet, but enough to catch obvious mistakes.

InShifts goes live. The first release: a drag-and-drop week board, employee roster with roles and team colors, and shift times you can adjust in place—built for a single café that refused to use another Excel tab.

It was rough around the edges. Shifts sometimes stuck to the cursor, there was no publish link, and “undo” meant refreshing the page. But it was faster than a spreadsheet for one manager—and that was enough to keep going.

• No cloud sync yet—schedules lived in the browser until v1.5.
• Single venue only; multi-site operators kept a second tab open.
• Mobile layout was usable but cramped—we rebuilt touch targets through 2024.