Odoo Planning & Shifts: Roles, Shift Templates, Auto Plan & Open Shifts for GCC Companies

Shift rosters still live in spreadsheets and WhatsApp groups at many GCC retailers, warehouses and service companies. Someone copies last week's grid, juggles leave requests by memory, and sends a screenshot the night before. Odoo 19 Planning replaces that with one live schedule linked to your employees, their working hours, time off and attendance. This guide walks through a practical setup using an example company, Gulf Mart Trading LLC, which runs three shops and a central warehouse in Muscat.

Step 1: Install Planning and review the settings

Install the Planning app from Apps. It works on top of Employees, so your employee records, departments and working schedules are reused. Then open Planning › Configuration › Settings and decide how much freedom staff get. You can let employees unassign themselves from shifts they can no longer cover, and set how far ahead that is allowed, so nobody drops a Friday evening shift an hour before it starts.

Before planning anything, check each employee's working schedule on the employee form (Employees › Employees, Work Information tab). Planning uses these hours to calculate allocated time and to flag people who are booked beyond their contract. A cashier on a 48-hour, six-day schedule and a storekeeper on 45 hours should not share the same calendar.

Step 2: Create roles

Roles describe the job someone does on a shift, not their HR job title. Go to Planning › Configuration › Roles and create roles such as Cashier, Picker, Driver and Shift Supervisor, each with its own colour so the Gantt chart is readable at a glance. Then assign roles to employees on their employee form; a person can hold several roles and have a default one. At Gulf Mart, warehouse staff hold both Picker and Driver so supervisors can move them when deliveries peak.

Step 3: Build shift templates

Templates turn your standard shifts into one-click entries. In Planning › Configuration › Shift Templates, define start time, duration and the role for each pattern. Gulf Mart uses three:

A shift with resource, role, template and weekly recurrence

Step 4: Plan the week on the Gantt chart

Open Planning › Schedule › By Resource (or By Role when you think in coverage rather than people). Click a cell to create a shift, pick a template, then drag and resize shifts as needed. Useful tools on this screen:

• Copy previous week to start from last week's roster instead of a blank grid.
• Recurring shifts for fixed patterns, such as a storekeeper who works the same day shift every week.
• Auto Plan, which assigns unstaffed shifts to available employees with the matching role, taking working hours and approved time off into account.
• Shifts without an employee stay as open shifts that qualified staff can claim.

Conflicts show up visually: overlapping shifts, employees on leave, or people planned above their contract hours are highlighted, so supervisors fix them before publishing.

The By Resource view: shifts per employee, colour-coded, with open shifts waiting to be claimed

Step 5: Publish and let staff swap or claim shifts

Nothing reaches employees until you click Publish. Odoo then emails each employee their schedule, and staff can see their upcoming shifts from the portal or the Odoo mobile app. If you allow it in settings, employees can unassign themselves within your time limit, ask colleagues to take over a shift, or pick up an open shift that matches their role. Changes made after publishing are shown so you can republish and notify only the people affected.

Step 6: Compare planned vs actual hours

Once the week is done, use Planning › Reporting › Planning Analysis to group allocated hours by role, department or employee. If you also run Attendance or Timesheets, compare planned hours with what was actually checked in or logged, and you'll spot recurring late starts, understaffed evenings and employees who regularly exceed their contract. That data feeds back into next week's templates and headcount decisions.

The weekly planning cycle: roles, templates, planning, publishing, swaps and actuals

Go-live checklist

• Working schedules are correct for every employee, including Ramadan schedules.
• Approved time off and public holidays are recorded in Time Off.
• Roles are assigned to every employee who appears on the roster.
• Shift templates cover at least 90% of your standard shifts.
• Self-unassign and switching rules are agreed with supervisors.
• Employees have portal or mobile app access and know where to see shifts.
• The first two weeks run in parallel with the old roster before you retire it.