Fill the whole roster with one button

Twenty Sundays of gaps, filled in a second

Picture the Riverside Community Garden’s watering roster in spring: two people every Sunday morning, a list of eleven volunteers, and twenty Sundays to fill. By hand, that’s an evening with a pencil, counting who has done how many and trying to remember who did last week.

Fill does that counting for you. It goes through every empty place in the range you choose, one date at a time, and gives each place to whoever has had the fewest turns in that position so far. The roster you get is one anyone can look at and follow.

How Fill decides

• Fewest turns first. The person with the fewest turns in that position goes on. When two are level, whoever has had fewer turns on the team overall goes first.
• Away days are respected. Anyone who has marked themselves away on a date is left off it.
• No clashes. Inside your organisation, nobody is put in two places at overlapping times, across all its teams.
• Only people set up for the job. If Sofia only does the barbecue, she is never put on the till.
• Nobody already on is moved. Fill only adds. You can run it every week and it just fills whatever has opened up.

Running it, step by step

1. 01

   Open Fill

   In the team, go to Fill. It shows the empty places and the Turns booked chart beside it.

2. 02

   Choose the range

   Under How far ahead, pick the next month, or the next 3, 6, 9 or 12 months.

3. 03

   Pick the position

   If the team has positions, choose one under Which position, or Every position.

4. 04

   Untick anyone to keep back

   Who to use starts with everybody ticked. Untick a reserve or someone taking a break.

5. 05

   Press Fill empty places

   The places are filled and the chart updates straight away.

The Turns booked chart

Beside Fill sits a bar for each person showing how many dates they have in the range. It is the easiest way to answer “why am I on again?” before anyone asks. If the bars look lopsided because people were added by hand, Redistribute shares the dates out again and shows you what would change first.

Undo and fine-tune

Changed your mind? Clear the range takes everybody off the dates in the range (for one position or all of them) and shows how many places it would clear first, with the option to keep the ones you set by hand. The dates themselves stay.

For dates with more than one time, like a morning and an afternoon session, tick Same person all day and Fill keeps one person on each position for the whole day. If they can’t do one time, only that one goes to somebody else.

Fill is free, for any number of people and teams. With Pro, new dates can also be filled by themselves as they are added.

Questions