Define shifts and your timezone
Align every number in IoTFlows with the hours your plant actually works.
A shift is a named block of hours on named days, for example Night, 22:00 to 06:00, Monday through Friday. IoTFlows sorts every stop, cycle, and part count into the shift and the day it fell in, read against one organization-wide timezone. Both settings live in the Schedules panel of Organization Settings, at /settings/organization, and they save together.
Before you start. You need to be an Organization Owner or an Organization Administrator. See Roles and permissions.
Set the organization timezone
- Open Organization Settings from the gear at the top right of the header, and scroll to the Schedules panel.
- Select Edit at the panel's top right. Nothing in the panel is editable until you do.
- Open Schedule Timezone and pick the zone the plant runs on.
- Select Save. A "Work shifts modified" toast confirms it.
The dropdown lists named zones, for example (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada), rather than raw offsets. A named zone carries its own daylight-saving rule, so your 06:00 shift still starts at 06:00 on the Monday after the clocks move.
One zone covers the whole organization. There is no per-shift timezone field, so an organization running plants in two zones aligns its shifts with one of them. Pick the zone of the plant whose reports are read most, and read Troubleshoot wrong utilization or OEE before you explain the other plant's numbers.
The Schedule Timezone dropdown in the Schedules panel of Organization Settings. Set this first.
Why the timezone comes first
The zone decides which day and which shift each reading belongs to. Get it wrong and every number in the product is wrong by the offset, while each one still looks plausible. A machine in Ohio reporting under a Pacific zone credits its evening output to the following day, and the night shift reads as though it produced nothing.
Pick the plant's zone, not the head office's, and not the one you happen to be reading this in.
The timezone and the shift list save in a single request, so there is no way to change one without the other. Read both back before you leave the panel.
Why can I open this panel without an admin role?
The Schedules panel renders its Edit button for every signed-in member, unlike the device-assignment block above it. IoTFlows enforces the role when the request reaches the platform. Treat the permission matrix as the rule, not the controls you happen to see.
Add a shift
Still in Edit on the Schedules panel:
- Enter a name in Shift Name, for example
Day. - Check the days the shift runs. The checkboxes are Monday through Sunday.
- Set Shift Start and Shift End on the two time pickers.
- Select Add another shift, and repeat for each remaining shift.
- Select Save. The "Work shifts modified" toast covers the shifts and the timezone together.
Nothing is written until you select Save, and Cancel discards every row you added.
Define shifts even if you run one. Every report, every auto-downtime rule, and every operator view buckets by shift, and a plant with no shifts defined reads its whole day as one undifferentiated block. Working hours on the scheduler stays switched off until at least one shift exists.
Three shifts covering the day, including one crossing midnight.
A shift window is the stretch of clock time one shift covers on one date, for example Night on Friday 12 June, 22:00 to 06:00 the next morning. The shift selector on a report picks a window, not a shift. It preselects the window running right now, and falls back to All Day when the current time sits outside every shift.
Shift fields
| Field | Required | Accepts | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shift Name | Yes | Free text | Labels the bucket in every shift filter, report, and gauge. Give each shift a distinct name. |
| Days | Yes | Any of the seven checkboxes, Monday through Sunday | A row with no day checked is ignored, so the shift never appears in a filter. Check the days the shift starts. |
| Shift Start | Yes | A time, on 15-minute steps | The field is not typeable: set it on the clock that opens when you select it. A new row starts at 8:00 AM. |
| Shift End | Yes | A time, on 15-minute steps | At or before the start time makes the shift overnight. A new row starts at 5:00 PM. |
| Schedule Timezone | Yes | One named zone for the whole organization | Saved with the shift list, never on its own. |
Times are stored and listed to the second, so the read-only list shows 06:00:00 - 14:00:00. You cannot set the seconds, only the hours and the quarter hour.
One shift row in edit mode: the Shift Name field, the seven day checkboxes, and the Shift Start and Shift End pickers.
Overnight shifts
A shift whose end time is at or before its start time runs past midnight into the next day. Night, 22:00 to 06:00, is one shift of eight hours, not two entries.
Check only the days the shift starts. A night shift that runs Friday 22:00 into Saturday 06:00 is a single entry with Friday checked. Adding a second entry for the Saturday morning both double-counts the hours and overlaps.
A shift that ends at the same time it starts, for example 06:00 to 06:00, covers a full 24 hours. Use it for a continuous operation that has no break in coverage on the days it runs.
Where the overnight hours land
The live views and the reports divide an overnight shift differently, so the same Friday night shift can give you two different hour counts.
The Assets page and a machine's own page show the shift whole. Select Friday's night shift and you get all eight hours, 22:00 through 06:00, with no break at midnight.
Reports split the shift at midnight. A Friday report on that shift counts 22:00 to 24:00 only, and the six morning hours report on Saturday.
To report the shift whole, turn on Shift islands in the Shifts filter. It puts an overnight shift entirely on the day it begins, so Friday carries all eight hours. It is available on the Advanced Report and the Downtimes report, and nowhere else.
Turn it on for any shift that crosses midnight. For a shift that does not cross midnight it changes nothing: a 08:00 to 17:00 day shift and a 01:00 to 08:00 third shift report identically either way.
The hours are moved, not lost. The six morning hours are still counted, against the day after the one they were worked. Two things follow from that, and the second is what misleads people.
A day the shift never runs collects hours. A Monday-to-Friday night shift spills into Saturday, so a Saturday report shows time for a shift that was never scheduled.
A mid-week day can show the right total and the wrong night. Tuesday's eight hours are Tuesday's two before midnight plus Monday night's six after it. The total is right, so nothing on screen suggests you are reading two nights at once.
So the split is easiest to see at the ends of a run. Monday is short the hours that belong to it, and Saturday carries hours that do not.
A 5 PM to 1 AM shift with Shift islands off. Only one hour falls after midnight, so Monday is an hour short and that hour lands on Saturday.
The same shift with Shift islands on. Each night reports whole on the day it began, and Saturday is empty.
A night-shift report is missing hours?
Check which view produced the number before you check the data. A report six hours short against the Assets page is the midnight split, not a sensor gap. Turn on Shift islands, or read the shift on the Assets page instead.
Shifts cannot overlap
The panel states the rule under Work Schedule: shifts can't overlap in time. The platform does not enforce it. An overlapping schedule saves like any other, with the same Work shifts modified toast, so nothing on screen tells you the schedule is wrong.
Adjust the boundary rather than the second shift's start. A shift ends the instant the next one begins, so Day 06:00 to 14:00 and Afternoon 14:00 to 22:00 do not overlap. If the handover really takes 15 minutes, give the time to one shift or the other; it cannot be in both.
Keep the rule yourself, because nothing else will. Read the shift list back after every save and check that each shift ends where the next one begins.
You do not need a shift for scheduled breaks. A lunch or a cleandown inside the shift is configured as a break rule, which classifies the stop without taking the time out of the shift. Carving a break out as its own shift instead leaves two shifts with a gap between them, and the machines keep reporting into the gap.
Edit or delete a shift
Select Edit on the Schedules panel, change any field on any row, and select Save. Every row is rewritten on each save, so a single Save can rename one shift, move another's boundary, and change the timezone at once.
To delete a shift, select the cross at the right of its Shift Name field, then Save. The shift disappears from the shift filter everywhere, for past dates as well as future ones, because the filter lists the shifts you have now.
Renaming has the same reach. The name is how a bucket is labeled in every report and every export, so a rename shows up on historical windows too.
What changing shifts does to existing data
Shifts bucket data as it arrives. Editing a shift changes how data recorded from now on is sorted, and does not rewrite a report that was already computed under the old schedule. A figure that moved after a shift edit is correct going forward and unchanged historically.
This is why the schedule is worth getting right on day one, before the first machine reports.
Changing shifts on a plant that is already running?
Make the edit at a boundary, ideally between the last shift of one week and the first of the next. An edit made mid-shift leaves one window that is half old schedule and half new, and that is the window somebody will question later.
If numbers look wrong straight after an edit, work the checks in order on Troubleshoot wrong utilization or OEE. The timezone is check one, and the shift schedule is check two.
See also
- Classify downtime automatically, the start-of-shift, end-of-shift, and break rules that read this schedule
- How each metric is calculated, what a shift window does to each number
- Troubleshoot wrong utilization or OEE, for production landing in the wrong shift or day
- Set your organization name, logo, and handle, the other half of the same settings screen
- Track production against shift goals, the view that reads one shift at a time
How an IoTFlows organization appears to its members and to anyone they chat with. The logo, name, description, and handle all live in the Organization section at /settings/organization, behind an Edit button, and save together with Save. The logo is the exception: it opens a crop dialog and uploads on its own. The handle is the unique short name for the organization and the second half of every member's chat address, in the form username:orghandle. The field accepts lowercase letters, digits, and underscores, and checks availability half a second after you stop typing, but nothing blocks Save on a taken handle. Changing the handle rewrites every member and team chat address, so people outside the organization who saved the old one can no longer find you.
How to end your own membership in an IoTFlows organization, and what it costs you. The Leave organization row sits near the bottom of Organization Settings at /settings/organization and is there for every member whatever their role. Leave, then Confirm Leave, and IoTFlows reports "You left <organization> organization" and returns you to the dashboard home. An Organization Owner has to hand ownership to another member first, because an organization cannot be left without an Owner. Leaving costs you every asset, board, team, and chat scoped to that organization; your IoTFlows account and any other organization you belong to are untouched. There is no way back on your own: rejoining takes a fresh invite, and the new membership starts with access to all machines and no team or board memberships.