How to send shifts from your Sona rota to Care Hires

The Sona integration lets you hand an unfilled shift straight from your Sona rota to Care Hires, without anyone typing it in twice. You keep planning your rota in Sona exactly as you do today. Care Hires finds the worker, and the outcome shows back against the shift on your rota.

Shifts travel one way only, from Sona to Care Hires. We never create shifts on your rota. What comes across with each shift is its date, start and end times, and site. Your worker records and invoices stay in their own systems and are managed as they are now.

Before you begin

• This is for providers who plan their rota in Sona. Nothing changes for agencies, who continue to suggest workers as they do today.
• You will need an API URL and API key from Sona. Only Sona can issue these. Care Hires cannot generate or retrieve them for you.
• Decide how agency workers should show on your rota before you connect, as this is set during setup. You can choose to see the allocated worker by name, or to keep the shift under Unknown Agency Worker with their name in the shift description.

Getting connected

1. Contact Sona and ask for your API URL and API key. They sit under Sona's developer or API settings.
2. Send both to Care Hires. We store them on your provider record (the API key is encrypted and never shown again), connect Sona, set which information flows across, switch the connection on and confirm it with you.
3. Tell us at setup whether allocated workers should show by name or under Unknown Agency Worker. If your Sona credentials ever change, send us the new ones straight away.

Please note: If you run two parent companies, you will have a separate login for each, and we can set them up so notifications still reach your usual inbox.

Sending a shift for cover

This is the everyday journey.

1. On your Sona rota, open the shift and assign it to an agency. Choose Care Hires as the agency, leave the agency worker as Unassigned, pick a reason and save.
2. The shift arrives with us as a job request, with the date, times and site already filled in.
3. We find and allocate a suitable worker, and the outcome shows against the shift on your rota.

How the allocated worker appears

How the worker appears depends on the choice you made at setup:

• Shown on your rota. The allocated worker's name appears against the shift, marked as coming from Care Hires.
• Kept off your rota. The shift stays under Unknown Agency Worker, and the worker's name, their agency and the Care Hires job reference are written into the shift description, so your team still knows who to expect.

Reconciling an out-of-hours call

When you need cover urgently, late at night or at the weekend, and cannot get to Sona:

1. Phone Care Hires with the shift details. We post the shift straight away and start finding a worker.
2. When you are next in, add the shift to Sona, using the same date, times and site you gave us on the phone.
3. We link your Sona shift to the booking we already posted, so there is one record, not two.

Please note: A booking we post after your call does not create a shift on your rota. Until you add it to Sona, the shift exists only on our side. This is why adding it afterwards matters.

Cancelling cover you no longer need

There are two ways to release a shift you sent us, and both start in Sona:

• Cancel the shift in Sona. The cancellation comes across to us and we stop looking.
• Fill it with your own staff. This counts as a cancellation too, because the shift is no longer for the agency, so we stop looking.

Either way, the agency cover is released, so nobody turns up to a shift that is already covered.

Please note: A shift that came from Sona has to be cancelled in Sona. If you try to cancel it with us, you are pointed back to Sona to do it there. If a shift keeps switching between your own staff and the agency, give us a call so we can check nothing has been missed.

What we look after, and what stays with you

What Care Hires looks after

We look after connecting Sona, filling every shift you send, posting bookings when you ring us, linking out-of-hours bookings to Sona, and stopping the search when you cancel.

What stays with you

You look after your rota, your own staff and your records in Sona, getting your API key from Sona, adding out-of-hours shifts to Sona, cancelling shared shifts in Sona, and telling us if a shift keeps changing hands. Keeping the rota accurate is your managers' job; the integration reflects what is in Sona, it does not correct it.

If something looks wrong

• A shift you shared still looks open on your rota. Open it to check its status. If it has been filled with us, the outcome shows against the shift. If a booking exists with us but not on your rota, it came from an out-of-hours call and needs adding to Sona so the two can be linked.
• You cannot cancel a shared shift with Care Hires. Shifts shared from Sona can only be cancelled in Sona. Cancel it there and the cancellation reaches us automatically.
• The connection has stopped working. Your Sona credentials may have changed. Send us the new API URL and API key.

For anything the integration does that this article does not explain, contact our Support Team.