What an open shift is for
An open shift is a hole you are willing to show. The date, the start, the end and the place are known. The person is not. Putting that hole on the published rota is how the team sees the gap, instead of hearing about it in a message after the week has started.
A draft is not an open shift
A draft is private. Staff do not see it, even if the name is empty. You publish when the week, or that one shift, is ready to be followed. An open shift with no name, once published, is visible. An open shift you have not published is still a draft. The difference is the publish step, not the missing name.
In Shiftbrook you choose Open shift when you know the hours and not the person. Notes can say who holds the keys, or which section the shift covers. The break minutes are the unpaid break you expect. None of that assigns a person.
What people do with the gap
Someone still has to take it. Publishing the gap does not move a person onto it, and it does not text the whole team a claim button that overrides the manager. You edit the shift and put a name on it when you know who is working, then that named shift is what the week shows. A person can also ask to swap a different shift with someone else. A manager approves the swap. An open shift is the gap. A swap is two named people trading a shift that already has a name.
Leave sits on the same week. Do not leave an open shift on a day you have already agreed as holiday and then be surprised when someone offers to work it. Close the gap or move it.
What it will not decide
An open shift does not calculate pay for the hour, and it does not check that the person who later takes it is inside the 48-hour average. Saving the week can warn about 11 hours between shifts, the weekly rest and that average. The warning does not refuse the save. You still look.
It is also not a job advert to the public. The people who see a published open shift are the people in the organisation. Hiring sits outside the product. Approved hours, once the shift has been worked and the timesheet is approved, download as a CSV. Sending approved hours to Xero Payroll UK is not available until that connection works end to end.
The rota guide is the longer version of draft and publish. Use an open shift when the honest sentence is: these hours exist, and we do not yet know who will work them.