The Guides tab of the Calendar is where you staff your trips. It shows who is working when, which trips still need someone, and who is off, and it lets you set a guide's days for a whole season in one step.

See who is working

Open the Calendar and select the Guides tab. The sidebar lists your guides and your activities with checkboxes, so you choose what appears. Every assignment is a colored block, and Day, Week, and Month change the span. Turn on Show unstaffed slots and every trip that still needs a guide appears as a light, dashed block with a +, so gaps are easy to spot:

• Needs guide (in amber) means the trip has bookings and no guide yet. Staff these first.
• No guide yet means nobody has booked it yet either.

In Day view, open trips sit together in an Unstaffed column with a count. In Month view, each day shows an Unstaffed link with the number of open trips. Select any open trip to assign a guide to it. The words follow your account, so if you call guides "Captains," you'll see Needs captain. If you can manage users, a Manage guides button next to New recurring schedule takes you straight to the Guides roster.

Find every trip that still needs a guide

Switch the toggle above the calendar from Calendar to Staffing for a list of every trip in the dates you're viewing, in order, with its guide status. The line at the top counts how many have no guide and how many of those have bookings. Days with a booked trip and no guide are marked in amber.

• Assign one. Select Assign guide on a trip that needs one, or Add to put another guide on any trip.
• Assign many at once. Tick the trips (or a whole day), then select Assign guide in the bar that appears. To take guides off the selected trips, select Remove guides.
• Show only the gaps. Turn on Only runs without a guide.

Schedule a guide for the season

For a guide who works the same days every week, create a recurring schedule instead of assigning trip by trip.

1. Select New recurring schedule.
2. Choose the guide and the activities.
3. Under how often it runs, choose Specific days and leave on only the weekdays that guide works, such as Monday and Friday.
4. Set the Starts on and Ends on dates. You can also limit it to certain start times.
5. Check the line at the bottom, which says how many assignments will be added.
6. Select Create schedule.

If the guide is already on another trip at one of those times, you'll see a warning with examples. Nothing overlapping is added unless you choose Assign anyway.

Change or remove a shift

• Move a shift. In Week view, drag it to another day. In Day view, drag it onto another guide's column to hand it over. For a recurring shift, a dialog asks how far the change reaches: Only this one, This and following, or All in schedule, with the number of events each affects. The Undo link in the confirmation reverses it.
• Remove a guide from a shift. Select the shift and choose Remove. For a recurring shift you get the same three choices. Removing the last shift of a schedule removes the schedule, and Undo restores it.

Share or print a guide's schedule

Open a guide's menu in the sidebar.

• Share iCal link opens the Subscribe drawer for that guide, with a link to copy and Apple Calendar, Google Calendar and Outlook buttons that add it in one click. Email link to and Text link to open your email or messages app with the link ready to send to the guide. Once a guide adds it, new assignments show up in their own calendar automatically. The Include booking details checkbox controls whether each event shows the guest name and headcount. See Calendar feeds for every option.
• Print schedule lets you pick this week, next week, or the next 14 days, every day or working days only, and portrait or landscape. Choose what each assignment shows, such as meeting point, guest names, ticket types, and check-in boxes, and watch the preview update. Guest details appear only for people who can view bookings.

Block out time off

When a guide is unavailable for vacation, a day off, or an appointment, add time off on their profile (Availability tab). Time off is marked on the calendar so it's obvious they can't be scheduled then. See Set up a guide.

Try this

• Fill tomorrow's gaps. Switch to Staffing, turn on Only runs without a guide, and assign the trips marked Needs guide first.

• Staff the season. A guide works Mondays and Fridays on your two morning tours through the end of the year: create one recurring schedule for those days and both tours.

• Cover a sick day. Drag that Friday's shift to another guide and choose Only this one, so the rest of the schedule stays as it was.
• Hand a guide their week. Print next week's schedule with check-in boxes and give it to them before the first trip.

Frequently asked questions

Watch: scheduling guides

Schedule your guides in the Calendar: assign guides, set a recurring schedule such as Monday and Friday for the rest of the year, drag to reassign with undo, remove recurring assignments, and share or print a schedule.

Related

• Assign a guide to a timeslot
• How guides see their schedule
• Limit what a guide can see
• Set up a guide