Roster management is a cornerstone of IbisLink and what generates the most positive feedback.
It's also the biggest area where people ask for my help with how to use IbisLink. That might be on me, I have an analytical mind... not a designers mind.
In the video below I show you how to get the most out IbisLink when it comes to the most important part of your life in the sky. Your roster.
If you want more information about the Roster Management workflow, see the rest of the blog post.
Roster Management Tutorial
--- Video Coming Soon ---
Blog Discussion
IbisLink Roster Management is built in 3 parts.
The Importer
IbisLink can help you better if it has your roster. It will still work! But calculating your pay will require a bit of manual work without your roster imported.
You can either import your roster from your rostering website directly, or you can drop a PDF in. We are not allowed to directly have background access your roster. Because of that, it's difficult for us to guess exactly how every airline software displays the roster to their users. But, we do guess using some basic knowledge even the 13 year old at the viewing platform knows.
A lot of what is contained within your roster is already public information. For example, the flight number, departure airport, and arrival airport, as well as the depart and arrival times are all public information. Even your aircraft type and registration too.
We do not collect or attempt to collect crew details from your roster.
Users start the Roster Import workflow by using the green Import Roster button on the Pay and Roster Centre.
Option 1 - Website Capture
Use the browser to navigate to your rostering website (E.g. Jeppesen Crew Management, IBS iFlight Crew, Merlot, Sabre AirCentre Crew Manager, Lufthansa Systems NetLine/Crew, and CAE Crew Management).
IbisLink does not inject any special code into the website to capture your roster. That would be rude. What we do instead is read the HTML that the website displays. When the HTML resembles something of a roster (using keywords like roster calendar, roster display, roster list), the blue Capture button displays.
The capture button takes what it sees in HTML and then sends it to the roster processing script built into IbisLink. The processing script simply breaks all that raw code into reasonable rows by date, and then interprets what you are doing on a particular date. It's basically a whole bunch of if/else statements. Once the roster import is complete, the raw roster code gets dumped from memory.
Processing is done on device, not using the cloud. Once your roster is captured, internet is not required to do the processing that IbisLink does. That is all done on the device.
Option 2 - PDF Import
Alternatively you can use the PDF import feature. This is really intended to be a backup when your airline either prohibits direct roster import to 3rd party apps or you don't feel comfortable doing so.
You can import your PDF directly by sharing a PDF to IbisLink, or by selecting "Manual PDF Import" from the roster importer.
The thing about PDFs is, they are tricky to interpret. The coding languages built in PDF interpreter is okay, but not great. It does really well if the PDF is formatted exactly the way it wants it.
Once the PDF is imported, the code looks at all the column headers and determines which column matches the fields we are looking for (like, start time, end time, departure port, arrival port). Once it reckons it knows what's going on. It will run the import the same way it does the HTML capture in option 1. Then it dumps the data.
Expect errors when using Chrome. Dunno why.
The Storage
Yeah yeah great mate but how is my data stored? Great question.
Which ever way you choose to import your roster, the raw data (HTML or PDF) is dumped after import. We store only what our code interprets. Which means, unfortunately sometimes, shit in... shit out.
IbisLink ships with a built in database. It's basically just a big excel spreadsheet with multiple tables. The IbisLink database holds all of the information the app needs. Technical quiz questions/answers, enterprise agreement data and your roster information.
The Database cannot be accessed by other applications on your app, and the database is secured by encryption in case of malicious intent by 3rd parties.
Most importantly, your roster information stored in the database doesn't leave the device. The exception to this is if you enable calendar sharing.
The Calendar Sharing
Calendar sharing is the main feature that IbisLink is used for and is a very cost effective alternative to other options on the market for roster processing.
The great thing about IbisLink is your developer is local to Australia. We aren't a big company with shareholders. It's just me. So if you have problems, you come straight to me and I can help fix it. It also means you don't have to pay $60 per year.
How does it work?
Depending on your export options that you chose, we generate a ICS (Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification) file.
The file sets out events that any calendar app is able to interpret and display.
Example ICS file
BEGIN:VEVENT UID:sum-2025-12-01-BC-14:00-20:20-PER-DPS-PER-BC123-04/01DEC25/F@ibislink.app DTSTAMP:20260505T065506Z SEQUENCE:0 DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Perth:20251201T140000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Perth:20251201T202000 STATUS:CONFIRMED SUMMARY:PER-DPS-PER LOCATION:1400 - 2020 DESCRIPTION:Route: PER-DPS-PER\nActivity: BC123-04/01Dec25/F\nDuty Code: BC\nFlight Hours: 3.4\nDuty Hours: 6.333333333333333 BEGIN:VALARM TRIGGER:-PT60M ACTION:DISPLAY DESCRIPTION:Reminder END:VALARM END:VEVENT
Step 1. IbisLink generates a random identifier and assigns it to your device. This stops duplicate uploads while simulatenously making it impossible for anyone who might find the calendar file to be able to link it back to you. All they'd see is a bunch of flights and such.
Step 2. IbisLink creates an ICS file using the data is has in its database. None of your identifiable data (name, staff number, address, email, dogs name, favourite food, political alignment), is exported in this file. It's literally just start time, end time, routing.
Step 3. IbisLink uploads this to cloud storage under the random identifier we assigned to you in step 1.
Step 4. IbisLink asks the cloud for the URL to this file and then shares it with you. You are then free to share it to whoever you like.
Can I delete my data? Yes you can. By opting out of calendar sharing.
I shared it to the wrong person, can I cancel the link Yes you can. By opting out of calendar sharing, we will delete your file. When you opt in again, we will regenerate the link with a new unique identifier. Make sure you do so with internet connectivity.
Can you delete my data? Not directly. Stay with me. Because IbisLink is built with absolute priority on security, I can't figure out who's calendar file is who's. But under our privacy policy, roster files that are not updated in 2 standard roster cycles (28 days x 2 in most airlines), will be automaticlly deleted.
For questions contact me at admin@ibislink.com.au
-- Drizzle.