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Shifts

Shift Management defines the working windows that drive overtime calculations, after-hours flags, and the Work Life Balance chart in Behaviour Analytics. Shifts can be assigned at the department or project level, and SWA resolves them through a precedence chain that ends with a built-in fallback so every employee always has a working window.

Shift Definitions​

A table of every shift defined for the tenant:

ColumnDescription
NameShift display name (e.g. General Shift, Night Shift)
StartStart time (24h or AM/PM)
EndEnd time
TimezoneTimezone of the shift
Working DaysDays the shift applies (e.g. Mon–Fri)
BreakBreak window in minutes
Late GraceAllowance after start time before flagging late
ActionsEdit, Delete

A shift may be marked as the Default for the tenant — the default applies to any user not covered by a department or project shift.

The Search field locates a shift by name; Export downloads the table as CSV.

Creating a Shift​

Click + New Shift to open the Create Shift modal. Fill in:

  • Shift Name — Display name (e.g. General Shift)
  • Start Time — Shift start (e.g. 09:00 am)
  • End Time — Shift end (e.g. 06:00 pm)
  • Timezone — Defaults to the tenant timezone (e.g. IST (Asia/Kolkata))
  • Break (minutes) — Total break time (default 60)
  • Late Grace (minutes) — Allowance before flagging late (default 15)
  • Early Leave Grace (minutes) — Allowance before flagging early leave (default 15)

Save to create the shift. It then becomes available as an assignment target in Shift Assignments.

Shift Assignments​

Below the shift table, the Shift Assignments section has two tabs:

  • Departments — Assign a shift to one or more departments
  • Projects — Assign a shift to one or more projects

Use the Assign to Department and Assign to Project buttons in the section header to add new assignments. Each assignment binds a shift to a scope; when the SWA analytics engine resolves a user's shift, it walks the precedence chain (below) until it finds a match.

Shift Resolution Precedence​

When SWA needs to know an employee's working window, it resolves the shift in this order — the first match wins:

  1. HRMS-synced override — Shift imported from Zoho People or iPeople (highest priority)
  2. Project assignment — Shift set on the employee's active project
  3. Department assignment — Shift set on the employee's department
  4. Tenant default — The shift marked as Default in the shift table
  5. Built-in fallback — 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM IST, Mon–Fri (always available)

This chain guarantees that overtime and after-hours analytics work for every user, even before a tenant has configured anything.

Best Practices​

  • Set a sensible Tenant Default early — without one, users without a project or department shift fall through to the built-in fallback, which may not match your timezone.
  • Use project-level assignments sparingly — they take precedence over department shifts and are easy to forget when a project ends.
  • Keep Late Grace and Early Leave Grace modest (10–20 minutes) — too generous and you'll under-count overtime; too strict and morning meetings flag everyone.
  • For follow-the-sun teams, create one shift per timezone and assign by project rather than department — projects often span timezones, departments often don't.