Does Capillary change our group's schedule?

No. Capillary only reads the calendar. You send the swap request from Capillary, or ask your colleague yourself, then enter the swap in your group's scheduling app.

Can my colleagues or my scheduler see that I brought in the schedule?

No. Your copy belongs to your account. No one in your department can see it. The Capillary team can open your account read-only to help you. Every time they do, it is logged.

Which minimum rest does it use?

It uses the short rest setting in My hours, which is 11 hours unless you change it. Eleven hours is the EU's minimum daily rest. Under ACGME rules, emergency medicine residents on ED rotations need time off at least as long as the shift they just worked. A resident on 12-hour shifts might set 12.

Why is a colleague missing from my swaps?

They may work none of your shift types: choose the link under the summary that shows the others. You may have hidden them: choose Show them again to bring them back. If they never work the hours or days of your shift, they rank as unlikely, at the bottom of Everyone who can swap. If every swap with them fails a check, they appear only under Swaps that don't work, each with its reason.

Find a shift swap that works for you and your colleague

Updated October 13, 2026 · 9 min read

Capillary's free Find a swap reads your group's whole schedule from a calendar link or file. For any of your upcoming shifts, it lists the swaps in which neither you nor your colleague would overlap another shift or get less than your minimum rest. Colleagues likely to say yes come first. You still arrange the swap in your group's own scheduling app.

When your group schedules in another app

Your group's scheduling app shows who works when. Finding a swap still means reading the whole schedule for a colleague who is off that day. Then you have to work out whether the trade would leave either of you with an overlap or too little rest between shifts. Capillary runs those checks before you ask anyone.

How Find a swap works

1
Bring in the whole schedule
In the menu, under Coworkers, open Everyone's shifts. Paste the calendar link that lists everyone's shifts in your group, or upload the calendar (.ics) file, and choose Bring in my department. Each entry has to name the person on the shift. The sample entry "Main ED - Day 7a-3p - Lee" gives the schedule group, the shift and the person. A link with only your own shifts belongs in My hours instead.
2
Pick your name
The calendar's names appear in a list. If one matches your account name, Capillary selects it for you to confirm.
3
Read the week
Everyone's shifts appear a week at a time, Monday to Sunday, with yours highlighted. You can move between weeks, look up a colleague by name and choose which schedule groups to show. The view starts with the groups you work in.
4
Pick a shift to swap
Open Find a swap and pick one of your shifts in the next 60 days, other than backup or sick call. Capillary shows your best bets first, one colleague each, six to start and the rest a click away, each with Why it ranks here: every factor behind each side's score and how the two combine, then three-way swaps: one colleague takes your shift and hands one of theirs to a second, who gives you one of theirs. When those run short, it looks for bigger swaps of up to six people the same way. Then comes everyone who can swap with you directly, as a row of dots along the same dates, with the colleagues most likely to say yes at the top. Below them, you see who could take your shift outright, then the swaps that don't work, each with its reason.
5
Send the request, then enter the swap
Send a swap request from the swap's card: each colleague gets a link to answer yes or no without an account, and you see every answer (how swap requests work). Capillary only reads the calendar, so once everyone says yes you enter the swap in the app your group schedules in, and Capillary ticks it off when the calendar shows it.

What makes a swap work for both people

Neither of you would overlap another shift after the swap.
Each of you would have at least your minimum rest before and after the shift you pick up. The minimum is the short rest setting in My hours, 11 hours unless you change it.
Your other shifts count, including shifts from calendars you added in My hours, such as another hospital's. Capillary also counts a colleague's shifts in the calendar's other schedule groups.
Capillary only offers shifts from your own schedule group, such as Main ED. It never offers a backup or sick call entry as a shift to swap for.
By default, Capillary checks only colleagues who work at least one of your shift types, such as Day 7a-3p. To see the rest of the group, choose the link under the summary that shows them, such as Show the other 7.
You can hide a colleague from your swaps and bring them back later with Show them again.

Colleagues likely to say yes come first. Among them, a swap of one shift for another of the same type, such as two Evening 3p-11p shifts, ranks highest. After that, Capillary prefers the same time of day and length, then a date close to yours, then the most rest for both of you.

How Capillary judges who might say yes

A swap asks a colleague to take on one shift and give up another. Most people say yes when they give up at least as much as they take on, and an extra night or weekend is a hard ask for almost anyone. So Capillary weighs every shift the same way for everyone, then adjusts for each colleague's own schedule.

Each shift counts in 8-hour weekday day shifts: a day 1, an evening 1.25, a night 2. From Friday evening to Sunday, or on a holiday, it counts 1.5 times as much. On Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day it counts twice as much. A longer shift counts more.
Like for like, such as your Saturday night for their Saturday night a week later, counts toward a yes. A swap that hands your colleague more than they give up counts against it, more the bigger the gap, so your Saturday night for their Tuesday day ranks as unlikely.
Each colleague's own weights come from their shifts. Someone who works fewer weekends than their group, such as a parent keeping weekends for family, finds a weekend shift heavier. Someone who works mostly nights finds a night lighter.
Their weights also cover start times, weekdays, shift lengths and areas. Someone who rarely starts at 07:00 finds a 07:00 start heavier, even in a like-for-like swap, and someone who never works in one area finds a shift there heavier. Capillary counts these only where chance would rarely give the gap.
Shifts a colleague takes from others move their weights too. When the calendar shows someone picking up nights, a night weighs less for them. Each shift they take moves their weights a little, so one trade never decides it.
The same weights apply to you. A swap that hands you a night for your evening ranks lower, even when your colleague would gladly say yes.
If a colleague never works the hours or days of your shift, they rank as unlikely to say yes, at the bottom of Everyone who can swap, with the reason. For example: Your shift runs between 15:00 and 23:00. None of their 41 shifts do.
A pattern shows only when chance is unlikely to explain it. For example, Capillary marks someone No evenings only when that many shifts in the same groups would almost always include an evening.
Patterns come from each colleague's shifts in every group of the calendar. Capillary uses up to a year of past shifts and every published shift ahead. Backup, sick call and admin entries don't count. Colleagues with fewer than 8 shifts have no pattern yet, so their shifts are weighed as for most people.
For someone taking your shift outright, the shift's weight counts against a yes, so a weekend night is a hard ask. Capillary also compares their shifts that month with their usual month.

Why it ranks here, on every best bet, lists each factor with its weight, so you can check the arithmetic. Department analytics, under Coworkers, shows every colleague's pattern next to their hours, nights, weekends and rest between shifts, with what each kind of shift weighs for them. You can list everyone who works fewer weekends, for example.

Worked example: three colleagues, one swap that works

Say you work Thursday night, 23:00 to 07:00. You want to trade away Saturday's evening shift, 15:00 to 23:00. Your minimum rest is 11 hours. Three colleagues with sample names, Ava, Ben and Cy, each have one evening shift you could take in return.

Example: swaps for your Saturday evening, 15:00 to 23:00 (minimum rest 11 h, sample names)
Colleague	Shift you would take	What the check finds	Result
Ava	Sunday evening, 15:00 to 23:00	You get 56 h off before it. Ava has no other shift nearby.	Works for both
Ben	Friday evening, 15:00 to 23:00	"You would have 8 h of rest before it, under your 11 h."	Doesn't work (rest)
Cy	Monday evening, 15:00 to 23:00	"Cy already works during your shift."	Doesn't work (overlap)

Only Ava's swap works. In the list of swaps that work, it carries a Same shift label, the closest kind of match. Ben's swap fails on your side. His Friday evening would start 8 hours after your Thursday night ends. Cy's swap fails on Cy's side, because Cy already works Saturday evening too.

If you took Ben's Friday evening, you would work Thursday night from 23:00 to 07:00, then Friday evening from 15:00 to 23:00. That leaves 8 hours off, 3 hours short of the 11-hour line.

Ava and Ben also appear as free to take your Saturday evening outright. Ben's Friday evening ends at 23:00, 16 hours before your shift starts. Cy does not appear, because Cy already works then.

Hard shifts and weeks off

For a shift with no good swap yet, choose Tell me when a likely swap shows up. Capillary checks every few hours and emails you once a likely swap appears (swap alerts). To clear several shifts at once, mark them and the days you want off in your want-off list, and Find a swap picks swaps that work together (getting a week off).

Who can see it

Your copy of the department schedule belongs to your account. Your colleagues and your scheduler can't see it. Capillary stores the calendar link encrypted and never shows it again, because the link works like a password for that calendar. Choosing Remove deletes your copy and every shift in it. Your calendars in My hours stay.

Bring Capillary to your department

Find a swap is free for clinicians. If you want your whole department to schedule in Capillary, the short form at the bottom of Everyone's shifts tells the Capillary team which department to contact. Once a department schedules in Capillary, trades happen inside it, with rest checked before anyone agrees.

From My account, you can also invite a colleague by email. They get their own free account. Nothing of yours is shared with them.

What it does not do yet

It doesn't change your group's schedule. You enter the swap in your group's own app.
It needs a calendar that names the person on each shift. A calendar with only your own shifts can't show colleagues.
It can't tell an attending from a resident or an APP, because the calendar lists no roles. A resident who works one of your shift types can appear in your swaps.
Two people listed under the same name, such as a shared surname, count as one person. A swap that clashes with either one's shifts is blocked.
It checks overlap and rest only, with your minimum applied to both of you. Nights in a row, weekly hours and credentials aren't checked. The ED shift swap policy guide lists what else a group's swap rules can cover.
Patterns come from the schedule only. Capillary can't see what colleagues told the scheduler or which past shifts were swaps.
It finds swaps for your shifts in the next 60 days, among colleagues' shifts up to 90 days ahead.
It shows times in the time zone saved in My hours. Until you save one, it uses US Eastern time.
A calendar file is a one-time copy. A link refreshes when you open Everyone's shifts or Find a swap and the copy is more than 6 hours old, or when you choose Update now. Calendars with a watched shift or an open swap request also refresh every few hours on their own.

Try it

Sign in or create an account, open Everyone's shifts under Coworkers and paste the calendar link that lists everyone's shifts. To see a fictional department that schedules entirely in Capillary, open the demo department. It needs no account.

Common questions

Does Capillary change our group's schedule?: No. Capillary only reads the calendar. You send the swap request from Capillary, or ask your colleague yourself, then enter the swap in your group's scheduling app.
Can my colleagues or my scheduler see that I brought in the schedule?: No. Your copy belongs to your account. No one in your department can see it. The Capillary team can open your account read-only to help you. Every time they do, it is logged.
Which minimum rest does it use?: It uses the short rest setting in My hours, which is 11 hours unless you change it. Eleven hours is the EU's minimum daily rest. Under ACGME rules, emergency medicine residents on ED rotations need time off at least as long as the shift they just worked. A resident on 12-hour shifts might set 12.
Why is a colleague missing from my swaps?: They may work none of your shift types: choose the link under the summary that shows the others. You may have hidden them: choose Show them again to bring them back. If they never work the hours or days of your shift, they rank as unlikely, at the bottom of Everyone who can swap. If every swap with them fails a check, they appear only under Swaps that don't work, each with its reason.

Build your ED schedule with rest checked on every save.

Capillary checks role, overlapping shifts and rest, including shifts at other sites, before anything is published or traded.

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