UAS Dashboard splits shift work across two screens that feed each other. Schedule is the unit calendar: what is planned, when, where, and who is on it. Activity Logs is the record of what actually happened — the flights flown, the activities the crew logged, and a summary. Scheduling a deployment creates the calendar entry; the crew turns that entry into a shift activity log when the shift starts.
This article is for the supervisors and unit admins who do most of the scheduling. Pilots fill in their own logs, but creating a deployment takes a Supervisor role or above.
Before you start. Scheduling and activity logs are licensed features. On the shared product they arrive with the Complete plan; on an agency's own instance they follow the instance's feature flags. If Schedule or Activity Logs is missing from the Operations group in the sidebar, one of those gates is off.
The unit calendar
Open Schedule for the Deployment Schedule — a month grid with a color key above it. Each entry is a chip showing its start time and title; completed entries pick up a green check and cancelled ones show struck through. Click a chip for that deployment's detail dialog, and move between months with ‹ Prev, Today, and Next ›. An Upcoming card below the grid lists the next entries with their type, window, unit, and crew.
What you see depends on your role. Global and system admins get an agency-wide calendar plus a selector to narrow to a single unit. Everyone else sees their own unit's calendar, any unit calendars they have been granted, and entries carrying no unit at all.
The deployment types on the legend — Mission, DFR Shift, Field Deployment, Training, Shift, and Other — are defaults. A global admin can rename, reorder, and recolor them and add types of their own in the Schedule Deployment Types card on the Admin page. Mission, Shift, and Other are used elsewhere in the product, so they can be renamed but not deleted.
Scheduling a deployment
Click Schedule Deployment, or click any day cell to start on that date.
- Pick a Type. Title defaults to the type's label — only Other requires one.
- Set the Date and Start Time. End Date and End Time are optional; an end at or before the start is ignored rather than saved.
- Choose the Unit. This decides which calendar the entry lands on and, later, who can see the shift log that comes out of it.
- Add a Location if there is one. It does real work later: the pre-shift briefing pulls weather and airspace for the deployment site.
- Select pilots from the searchable list, give each one a role, add Notes, and click Schedule.
Open an existing entry to Edit any field, Mark Completed to close it out, or Cancel Deployment to strike it without deleting. Assigned pilots using the mobile app get one push reminder in the hour before start, sent once per deployment.
Availability and conflict warnings
Mark Unavailable records a window for a pilot: start date, end date, and a free-text reason such as vacation, IOD, or court. Availability windows do not draw on the calendar; they exist so the app can warn you.
When you save a deployment with crew on it, each pilot is checked against overlapping unavailability windows and against other deployments they are already scheduled for. Either one holds the save and lists the conflicts in a warning panel. Adjust the crew, or click Schedule Anyway to override — covering shifts often means overlapping assignments, so the check warns rather than blocks.
Crew assignments and roles
Every pilot you select gets a role dropdown beside their name. These are the same roles the app uses for flight participants, so the assignment carries through: the deployment's crew and roles become the shift log's crew, and each person is added as a participant on every flight in that log.
| Role | When to use it |
|---|---|
| Pilot in Command | The rPIC of record. The default for anyone you add. |
| Pilot in Control | Someone at the controls under the rPIC's command. |
| Co-Pilot | A second pilot sharing the flying. |
| Visual Observer | A dedicated VO maintaining visual line of sight. |
| Support | Ground support, tactical liaison — crewed but not flying. |
| Instructor | Training flights with an instructor supervising. |
| Flight Supervisor | A supervisor overseeing the operation. |
The first Pilot in Command becomes the primary pilot on the shift log; with nobody assigned as rPIC, the first person on the list is used instead.
Cross-unit coverage
A user's home unit calendar is always visible to them. To let someone cover for another unit, open Calendar Access on the Schedule page — available to unit admins and above. Pick the unit calendar, choose a person, and click Grant. They can now see and work that calendar alongside their own, and the grant extends to shift logs in that unit. Granted people are listed underneath with a Revoke button.
You can only grant access to a unit you administer: a unit admin manages their own unit, while global and system admins can grant any unit.
Shift activity logs and flight records
A flight record covers one sortie — its telemetry, path, duration, and checklists. A shift activity log wraps a whole shift: who worked it, under what call sign, which flights happened during it, and everything else the crew did that never produced a flight. Standby on a perimeter, a call that cancelled before launch, a battery swap, a public contact — those belong in the activity list, not in a flight record.
The two are linked but independent. Flights attach to a log as snapshots and each still opens its own flight record; removing one from a log does not touch the flight record, and deleting a log deletes no flights. There is one log per deployment, shared by everyone assigned.
Starting a shift log
There are two ways in, and the one you use decides how the log relates to the calendar.
From a scheduled deployment. Open the entry and click Create shift log. The button appears only for pilots assigned to that deployment — a supervisor cannot start someone else's deployment log from the calendar. The log inherits the deployment's window, unit, and crew with their roles. If a log already exists, the button becomes Open shift log.
Ad hoc, from Activity Logs. Click New log, set the date and start and end times, and optionally a unit. An end time earlier than the start is treated as an overnight shift and rolled to the next day. Supervisors and above also get a Pilot dropdown to log on another pilot's behalf. An ad-hoc log creates its own calendar entry, so the shift still shows on the unit calendar.
Either way, the app immediately scans the window and attaches every flight flown by anyone on the crew.
Who can see a log. The pilot it belongs to, anyone on its crew, and supervisors and above whose unit access covers the log's unit. Pilots who are not on a log never see it in the Activity Logs list.
The pre-shift log
If your agency has a pre-shift template configured, the log page opens with a Pre-Shift Log card marked Not completed.
The card shows a live briefing for the deployment location — current weather, the METAR flight category, the surface airspace class, and nearby airspace hazards within 50 miles. It defaults to the location on the linked calendar entry and falls back to your device's location; you can also type an address. Answer the items below it and click Complete pre-shift log.
Completing it stores the answers and a snapshot of that briefing, so the record shows what the crew actually briefed on rather than the weather whenever someone opens the log months later — which is what makes the log hold up in an audit or records request. See the recordkeeping and audits guide. There is one pre-shift log per shift and it cannot be re-submitted once complete. Templates are built by a global admin under Admin → Checklists, in the Pre-Shift logs section.
Filling in and completing a shift log
The log page is display-first: each card shows the record, and an Edit link opens the fields.
- Shift — start and end date and time, the Call sign the shift was worked as (for example, Air-3), and the unit.
- Flights — the attached flights with time, unit, and duration. Add flight attaches one from outside the window or flown under another pilot's name; Re-scan shift window picks up flights that imported late; the trash icon removes one that was not part of the shift.
- Activities — timestamped entries. Add a row, type a time and what happened, and save. A new row left without a time is stamped with the current time.
- Shift summary — free text for the shift overall.
When the shift is done, click Mark shift complete. A log's status is one of two values:
| Status | Shown as | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
draft | Open | Still being worked. The default for every new log. |
submitted | Complete | Marked complete. Still editable by anyone with edit rights. |
Completion is gated on checklists. Where the checklists feature is enabled, a log cannot be marked complete while any flight on it is missing its post-flight checklist. The error names the flights involved. Finish them and try again — see the post-flight checklists article.
Export PDF produces a branded PDF with the shift window, call sign, unit, status, flight list, activity entries, summary, and the completed pre-shift log with its briefing snapshot. Times print in your own time zone, not the server's. Export is open to the pilot the log belongs to and to supervisors and above whose access covers the log's unit, and every export is written to the audit log.
Deleting a log is an admin action — unit admins within their own unit, global admins anywhere. A log that created its own calendar entry takes that entry with it; one started from a pre-existing deployment only unlinks. Flight records are untouched either way.
Frequently asked questions
Who can create a scheduled deployment?
Creating and editing deployments requires a Supervisor role or above; pilots see the calendar but not the Schedule Deployment button. Deleting is narrower — a supervisor can delete only deployments they created, while unit admins and above can delete any entry on a calendar they administer. Recording a pilot's unavailability is open to anyone signed in.
Can I schedule a pilot who is already booked?
Yes, but not silently. New and edited assignments are checked against existing scheduled deployments and against recorded unavailability windows, and the save is held while the app shows what it found. Click Schedule Anyway to proceed. Covering shifts often means overlapping assignments, so the product warns rather than blocks.
What is the difference between a shift log and a flight record?
A flight record covers one sortie — its telemetry, path, duration, and checklists. A shift activity log covers a whole shift: the crew who worked it, every flight flown during the window, and the timestamped activities that never produced a flight, such as standby time or a cancelled call. Flights attach to a log as links, so both records stay independent.
Why can I not mark my shift log complete?
Almost always because a flight on the log is missing its post-flight checklist. Where checklists are enabled, completion is blocked until every attached flight has one, and the error names the flights involved. Either complete the missing checklists, or remove the flight from the log if it does not belong to this shift.
A flight I flew is missing from my log. How do I add it?
Use Re-scan shift window on the Flights card, which picks up anything that imported after the log was created. If the flight falls outside the shift window or was logged under another pilot's name, use Add flight instead and search by title, pilot, drone, or date. Both are available to anyone with edit rights on the log.
Where to go next
Set your pre-shift and post-flight templates up before crews need them — the post-flight checklists article covers building both. To turn completed shifts into program-level numbers, see reports and exports. Deployment types, units, and the roles behind calendar access are configured in admin and agency setup.