Fixed: availability colors in the builder. In 1.9.0 the availability rows under each day showed no colors, on every week, and the builder no longer outlined a shift assigned outside someone's availability or over their disliked hours. A new helper for the availability message box reused the name of the function that picks each color, and replaced it. The colors and both outlines are back, and a new check refuses two builder functions with the same name.
Locked days hide the availability rows. On a published week, a day that is not open for editing no longer shows the availability rows, which keeps the week short. Open a future day with Edit this day to see them. The outlines on shifts stay.
Pro: Check again finds a new release at once. Pro used to keep the update server's answer for 12 hours, so Dashboard → Updates → Check again could miss a new version. Pro now asks each time WordPress checks for updates, like other plugins with their own update servers. The License panel and the update row show the last answer without contacting the server, and an unreachable server is not retried for five minutes.
1.9.0
Pro: an Availability message for each week. A new box in the builder, under the Schedule message, holds a note that staff see in a white box above the grid on their Availability tab. Use it to say a future week needs more or less availability, for example a busy weekend. It saves when you leave the box, shows at once, and is read-only once the week is past. The free builder shows the box read-only with the PRO badge.
Staff see the schedule message in the portal. The builder's message box is renamed from Staff message to Schedule message. Both schedule tabs show the published week's message, read-only, below the shifts. The message saves when you leave the box, so staff never see half-typed text. Both builder message boxes have an arrow to collapse them. They start open, and the builder remembers the choice for each user. Before, it reached staff only in the publish email. The builder's message box now opens four lines tall (was two). The message stays editable for the current and future weeks. After a week's last day it is read-only.
Messages follow the writing standard. Every error, status, and notice message now uses short sentences, with no em dashes, no semicolons, and no contractions.
The Debug snapshot is free. It moved out of the Pro add-on and drops "Assist" from its name (Settings → Builder). It is a read-only support diagnostic over the plugin's own data, not a Pro feature.
A shorter Pro update changelog. The update modal shows one line per change: the bold heading of each bullet, or its first sentence. The full notes stay behind the changelog link.
Grid settings moved to the Builder tab. Day window, granularity, week start, and active days moved from Settings → Site to Settings → Builder. Site keeps the operating settings (work roles, event catalog, trade approval, reminders, uninstall).
Deactivation checks only upcoming shifts. Deactivating a staff member warned about "open assignments" and listed every shift they had ever worked as "day 2, 15:00–20:00". The check now counts only shifts from today on and names each by its date ("Sat Sep 5 · 11:00 am–3:00 pm", marked draft when the week is unpublished). Someone whose shifts are all in the past deactivates on the first click.
1.8.9
Fixed: a backslash typed into a staff name, staff note, staff message or template name was silently dropped on save. Apostrophes and quotes were always stored correctly; the new slash-roundtrip suite pins both directions.
Documentation: the settings, staff, Pro and troubleshooting chapters now use the same words as the interface — mark, work roles, color, catalog — and state the work-role rule correctly (the tradeboard refuses; the builder warns).
Settings: the POS integration key moved to the Pro tab (from Integration), beside the license — it is a Pro feature, so its controls live with the add-on's. The Integration tab now holds the calendar feed only.
Pro: the Assist debug snapshot moved to the Builder tab (from Pro), below the sample-data section, with the other builder settings. Fixed with the move: Show snapshot used to return to the Site tab, where the panel does not render, so the snapshot never appeared.
Staff now mark their availability with markers. The paint wording is gone from the portal and from wp-admin. The narrow-screen toggle says "Mark mode".
American spelling in the interface: Color theme, Event catalog, Canceled.
The documentation's index file carries only the reader-facing introduction and article index — the writing conventions that briefly shipped with 1.8.8 moved back to the development notes.
1.8.8
The documentation now ships with the plugin (Schedules → Documentation): the full user guide — getting started, scheduling, the staff portal, settings, Pro — readable right in wp-admin, with the same articles the studiotoolbox.com documentation pages carry. Pure text; it adds almost nothing to the download.
A Feedback screen (Schedules → Feedback): a short form that sends your suggestion to studiotoolbox.com, where it lands in our support inbox — delivery no longer depends on your site's own mail setup. Name and email are optional — leave an email if you'd like a reply. Besides the text you enter it sends only the plugin name and version and your site's address.
A short optional exit survey when you deactivate the free plugin: pick a reason, add a comment, or just skip — skipping is instant, sends nothing, and deactivation never waits on the dialog. Answers go to studiotoolbox.com the same way Feedback does.
Pro: deactivating a license on a local or staging site no longer claims "this site's slot was freed" — local activations never use a site slot, and the message now says so.
The Approvals screen's three sections — pending time off, pending shift trades, and History — each sit in their own white rounded card, matching the header.
The admin header reads screen-first. Each wp-admin page opens with its own name large — Schedule builder, Staff, Approvals, Settings — and the plugin name with "by Studio Toolbox" on the smaller line beneath, instead of the plugin name leading and the screen name trailing after a dash. Matches the Bookings plugin's header.
1.8.7
The staff portal's availability painter got the same treatment. It is a separate stylesheet and script that draws the same shape as the builder, so none of 1.8.6's display fixes reached it: dashed outlines are now solid, a day opening mid-hour no longer overlaps its label with the first hour mark, and a past day's PAST tag no longer pushes the date onto a second line and shifts the whole column of day labels.
The Staff admin screen is called that, rather than "Staff users".
The Pro add-on's description on the Plugins list names the plugin in full — it still said "Pro add-on for Schedules", a short name retired when the public names were set.
Activating (or deactivating, or re-checking) a license returns you to Settings → Pro, where the confirmation shows — not to the Site tab. The redirect predates the tabbed Settings screen and was never taught which tab the license section lives on.
The License section's intro now says what a license includes — the Pro features (Schedule Assist, Templates and more) plus plugin updates and support for a year — and that each license is tied to one site at a time.
License messages ("License active…", "Could not verify right now…") appear beside the license controls, under the status box — WordPress was relocating them to the top of the page, above the Settings tabs, pushing everything down.
The Pro update's "View version details" window shows the release's changelog right in the window when the update server provides it (it now does), with the full-changelog link beneath — previously it offered only the link.
The Pro update's "View version details" window no longer warns "not tested with your current version of WordPress" on a WordPress the plugin IS tested on. WordPress compares full versions, so the plugin's "Tested up to: 7.0" read as untested on 7.0.1 — the update feed now reports the running version whenever it is on the tested branch, the same normalization wordpress.org applies for plugins it hosts.
1.8.6
The builder timeline fits the window. Narrowing the browser now shrinks the grid instead of producing a horizontal scrollbar; it only scrolls once the window is genuinely small. Previously the grid stopped shrinking at its old fixed size, which meant a 15-minute week scrolled in almost any window.
Smoother redraw while resizing. The grid settles between frames rather than re-drawing on every pixel of movement, so the gridlines no longer shimmer as the window changes size.
No more dashed outlines in the builder. An unassigned shift, the how-to tip, the lane divider and the ＋ add-lane buttons now use a thinner, lighter solid border. Besides reading more quietly, it removes a side effect of the fluid grid: a dashed border re-lays its whole pattern whenever its box changes width, so those edges crawled while the window was being resized.
Fixed: on a narrow window the shift editor could open partly off the right edge, putting its Save button out of reach. Popovers are now positioned by measuring themselves rather than assuming a size, and are capped to the viewport.
Each screen's name is in the header. "Staff Schedule and Work Roster — Approvals" rather than the name repeated in a second heading underneath, which frees a line of vertical space on every screen. Settings, which never had that second heading, is now labelled like the rest.
Staff names look draggable. The names under a day are the handles you drag onto a shift to assign it, but they were bare text that only revealed itself on hover — and a touch screen has no hover, so on a phone they read as plain labels. They now carry a resting fill and border. The builder's how-to tip says it outright too: "Drag a name from the availability list onto a shift to assign."
1.7.2
The builder opens on the week you’re actually building — a bare open skips a published current week and lands on the next one.
Staff portal: the week selector lists the two previous weeks (view-only); the availability painter fits the whole day on screen in landscape; the hours summary sits below the grid; the how-to tip is dismissible; time off is requested as From – To dates.
The free plugin has no usage limits — unlimited staff and unlimited events. Free vs Pro is purely about features.
The team calendar feed is now part of the Pro add-on; the free plugin serves each person’s own feed.
Pro: Assignment assist fills the whole schedule — the weekly shift target is a minimum, not a ceiling; one shift per person per day still holds.
Pro: an Assist debug snapshot in Settings for support conversations.
Fixed: the Settings page refused administrators; stray grab cursor over names on a locked published week.
Security: deactivating a staff member ends their live sessions and calendar link immediately; time-off requests require a staff account.
1.7.1
Maintenance release — no functional changes.
1.7.0
Pro is a separate add-on you install alongside this plugin — nothing gets overwritten, and removing it drops you back to free with all your data intact.
Editing a published week is now deliberate: it opens read-only, you unlock a single future day with a password confirmation, and staged edits save and email the affected staff in one Commit & email step. Past days and today stay locked.
Schedule history: from the moment a week is published it keeps an append-only log — publishes, notifications, trades, time-off decisions — plus a full as-published snapshot per publish, shown in a History panel on the builder.
Approving time off that would leave a published shift without its person is no longer silent: the Approvals screen lists each affected shift with eligible cover, and the reassignment happens together with the approval.
New installs start with example staff and two weeks of schedule so the builder has something to show; remove it in one click from Settings.
The opt-in “delete all plugin data when uninstalled” wipe is now complete — it previously left behind queued email, reminder logs, and calendar feed tokens.
Grid settings refuse a change that would strand stored shifts or availability; widening always passes.
Simultaneous decisions on the same trade or time-off request settle to exactly one outcome — one decision, one email, one history entry.
The login lockout tracks one counter per account, whether you type the username or the email.
Fixed: a phantom “Saved” when editing a past day of a published week; a swap claim now hands back the shift the claimer actually picked (and shows it at every review step); Assignment assist no longer reshuffles an already-published week.
1.6.0
Configurable week start day: choose which weekday your schedule weeks begin on (Settings → “Week starts on”). Set it before you start scheduling — it locks once schedules or availability exist.
1.5.5
Maintenance release — no functional changes.
1.5.4
Maintenance release — no functional changes.
1.5.3
Settings → POS integration shows a connection health line; the POS endpoint gained a version-compatibility handshake.
1.5.2
Schedule builder: naming a week template uses an inline field instead of a browser popup.
1.5.1
Sales-demo sandbox improvements only; no changes for regular sites.
1.5.0
Free and Pro editions: Assignment assist, week templates, the team calendar feed, and the POS integration are Pro features. Data carries over untouched in both directions.
The schedule builder shows a clear message when a save is rejected instead of retrying silently.