If you are unable to add staff to ShiftCare, it may be because the staff has an existing account with another organisation that uses ShiftCare.
To enhance privacy and ensure staff are consciously accessing shifts and client details of one organisation or another, the staff member must log in to one organisation's account or another's. For this reason, the same email address can't be used for more than one organisation.
This article covers:
Solutions for the error email has already been taken
If it is an email duplication then, you will see the message below on the screen while adding a staff.
Error: Email has already been taken and Email has already been taken
There are two solutions to this:
You can request your staff to create a different email or
You can use an alias email for the staff. An email alias is simply a forwarding email address. The 'email alias' is an additional inbox to the existing one.
For example, the original email jane@example.com would have email alias jane+organisation@example.com
Note: If you wish to go ahead with the second option, please notify your staff about their email alias as they will need to use this in order to log in to your organisation's ShiftCare account. This means for your organisation they will log in using email alias jane+exa@example.com and for the other organisation they work they will use their staff email jane@example.com.
Staff can keep the same password for both logins if they wish.
About email alias addresses
The alias email address is simply used to differentiate the login address from one account to another account so the staff member doesn't confuse the clients and shifts between organisations.
In this way, the staff member is consciously making the decision to access the details of one organisation over another.
When you notify the worker about their shifts the email provider will deliver the emails to their main inbox.
Gmail or Google Workspace for business email addresses
Regular gmail.com
The first way to create an email alias in Gmail is with dots. Gmail will ignore any dots added before the @ sign and treat it the same as the original email address. The dots can be added between words, letters, or numbers to create email aliases. No matter how many dots you use or where you put them, Gmail will still deliver those messages to your primary inbox. e.g.
ExampleName@gmail.com could become Example.Name@gmail.com
Google Workspace for business
Another way you can create email aliases in Gmail is with the plus sign. You can insert a + with a combination of words at the end of your username (but before the “@” sign) and the emails will still go to the original / primary email address. Gmail will not look at what comes after the plus sign in the address e.g.
staffname@yourorg.com could become staffname+example@yourorg.com
Yahoo email addresses
With Yahoo it's no longer possible to create an extra email address. If you have an existing one you'll find it here:
Click the Settings icon
Click More Settings
Click Mailboxes.
Beside "Email alias," click the Expand icon
Click your extra email address.
For Yahoo users who don't have an additional email address linked to their account, the alternative is to use another email account.
Hotmail, Outlook and Microsoft email addresses
Microsoft provides these instructions to create an alias email address.